Dr. Kellner is a paediatrician and subspecialist in paediatric infectious diseases and clinical epidemiology. His research focuses on vaccine preventable infections, working closely with experts from clinical medicine and public health across Canada and globally. Between 2008-2018 he was the Head of Paediatrics at the University of Calgary and the Calgary Zone of Alberta Health Services. Dr. Kellner has served on the Alberta Advisory Committee on Immunization since 2002 and was Chair for a decade. He is a member of the federal COVID-19 Immunity Task Force Leadership Group and Co-Chair of the Task Force’s Field Studies Working Party. He is also leading the multi-faceted Alberta Childhood COVID-19 Cohort (AB3C) Study, is an investigator with the Canadian Immunization Research Network, and is Co-principle investigator for Alberta on the Canadian National Vaccine Safety Network (CANVAS) COVID-19 vaccine project.

Dr. Kelly is a pediatrician and physician-scientist trained in infectious diseases, global health, and human microbial ecology. He received his MD degree from Harvard Medical School and his MPH degree from the Harvard School of Public Health before completing his pediatrics training at the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics. He was a David N. Pincus Pediatric Global Health Fellow through the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, during which he worked as a pediatric hospitalist in Gaborone, Botswana and started a research program focused on childhood pneumonia. He completed pediatric infectious diseases training at Duke University with a focus on the role of the microbiome in the prevention of common infections among children. Dr. Kelly is now an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Research Professor of Global Health at Duke University. His long-term career goal is to develop novel microbiome-based strategies for the prevention and treatment of childhood infections, particularly those for which the highest burden is among children in low- and middle-income countries. His research focuses on understanding the roles of the upper respiratory microbiome and host-microbe interactions within the upper respiratory tract in modifying the risk and severity of childhood respiratory infections.

I’m an enthusiastic epidemiologist, passionate about learning and mastering new concepts, and enjoy playing an active role in training activities and to provide epidemiological support, mentorship and supervision to students and colleagues. In my current role, I support the development and implementation of epidemiological studies: from assisting in protocol writing and logistics for field implementation, through to data management, cleaning and analysis, as well as result dissemination through reports, conference presentations and peer-review publications. My PhD focuses on how social contact patterns influence the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. My primary research interests include the epidemiology of respiratory diseases like influenza and COVID-19, vaccine impact studies, contact patterns in the context of disease transmission, and modelling of infectious disease transmission dynamics.

Professor Keith Klugman is the Director of the Pneumonia, Meningitis, Neonatal Sepsis and Antimicrobial Resistance Programs at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle WA. He is the Emeritus William H. Foege Chair of Global Health at the Hubert Department of Global Health, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, he serves as an Honorary Professor in the Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Professor Klugman is a past president of the International Society of Infectious Diseases; and a past chair of the International Board of the American Society for Microbiology. In 2015 Keith was elected to membership of the US National Academy of Medicine. He has chaired or served on numerous expert committees for the World Health Organization (WHO), the Welcome Trust and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). He currently serves as an editor or member of the editorial advisory board of the journals Clinical Infectious Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases and MBio. Professor Klugman has made his major contributions in the field of pneumococcal research, including antimicrobial resistance. His work demonstrating pneumococcal conjugate vaccine efficacy in the developing world, has led to interventions that continue to save millions of lives especially in Africa and in Asia. He has published more than 650 scientific papers which have been cited more than 44,000 times to date. During the covid pandemic he has kept the staff of the Gates Foundation up to date of developments with weekly or biweekly one hour zoom calls open to all the staff. His current position allows him the opportunity to contribute to the mission of the Gates Foundation to reduce deaths from pneumonia (including covid), neonatal sepsis and meningitis in children, thus allowing them the chance to lead healthy and productive lives.

Maria Deloria Knoll, PhD, is the Director of Epidemiology at the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Knoll’s work involves policy-driven research and synthesis of global evidence to evaluate vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases and are generally collaborative efforts involving WHO, CEPI and other institutions worldwide. Recent projects include: the PSERENADE study that evaluates impact of PCV10/13 introduction globally on IPD in all ages; VIEW-Hub.org, a publicly available platform displaying PCV introduction, coverage, access, impact, and pneumococcal disease burden data globally (and for 7 other vaccines); evaluating impact of PCV dosing schedule, age at immunization and product on pneumococcal carriage, immunogenicity and disease; estimating the global disease burden and serotype distribution of pneumococcus, Hib, meningococcus and pertussis; the PERCH study that estimated pneumonia etiology in 7 developing country settings; evaluating new diagnostic tools, such as determining sensitivity and specificity of antigen-based blood tests and pneumococcal serotype-specific urine antigen tests; evaluating new digital tools to standardize clinical findings, such as digital auscultation and computer automated chest x-ray interpretation; developing improved analytical methods for estimating pneumonia etiology; global review and synthesis of effectiveness, safety and neutralizing antibody responses of COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. Tom Kovesi is a pediatric respirologist and Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Ottawa. He is currently a member of the WHO Working Group on Rare Diseases. He is past-Chair of the Ontario Thoracic Society. Dr. Kovesi is past-Chief Examiner for Pediatric Respirology, for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. He has served as a senior author on the Canadian Asthma Consensus Guidelines Committee. Dr. Kovesi has 58 published articles. His main areas of interest are lung health and indoor air quality in Canadian indigenous children, long-term respiratory complications of tracheoesophageal fistula, and asthma.