Raquel Sá-Leão is Principal Investigator and Head of the Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology of Human Pathogens at Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica of Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She completed her PhD studies in Molecular Biology at Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal and at the Rockefeller University in New York. Raquel has a long stand interest on pneumococcal ecology. Current interests include investigating how the use of vaccines and antibiotics is shaping the pneumococcal population, how intra-species interactions affect pneumococcal colonization, and the dynamics of pneumococcal colonization in adulthood. To support these studies, Raquel is actively engaged in the validation of accurate highly sensitive methods to detect pneumococcal carriage in polymicrobial samples.

Dr. Sadarangani is head of the Vaccine Evaluation Center (VEC) at BC Children’s Hospital. Founded in 1988, the VEC is an academic centre of excellence focusing on vaccine and immunization research in BC and across Canada. He is also a pediatric infectious disease specialist and an investigator at BC Children’s, and assistant professor with the UBC Department of Pediatrics. The aim of his research at the Vaccine Evaluation Center (VEC) is to lower the burden of childhood infectious disease through vaccination by building an evidence base for local, national and international vaccine policy. Hisresearch program includes laboratory studies to develop new and better vaccines, clinical trials to identify how best to utilize new and approved vaccines, and population-based investigations to identify targets for new vaccines and demonstrate vaccine impact.

Prof. Samir K. Saha is the Head of the Department of Microbiology at Bangladesh Shishu (Children) Hospital and Institute in Dhaka, Bangladesh and the Founder and Executive Director of the Child Health Research Foundation. He strives to find the true burden of the pediatric infectious diseases in Bangladesh, their causative organisms, drug resistance patterns and serotype distribution. His work facilitated the introduction of the Hib and pneumococcal vaccines in Bangladesh. He was the first scientist from a developing country to receive the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) award. He was awarded the Carlos J. Finlay UNESCO Prize for Microbiology. Saha and his team's publication in The Lancet received The Charles C. Shepard Science Award. Prof. Saha received membership (FRCPath) from the Royal College of Pathologist. Prof. Saha and his daughter (Dr. Senjuti Saha) have been recognized as Bill Gates’s Hero for their work to reduce child mortality in Bangladesh. Under the supervision of Prof. Saha and the direction of Dr. Senjuti, the first SARS-CoV-2 genome was sequenced in Bangladesh. For his lifelong commitment and devotion to the field of science & public health in 2021, Prof. Saha received the prestigious "Ekushey Padak" (second highest civilian award in Bangladesh). Prof. Saha is currently a member of the National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (NiTAG),WHO’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG).

Mathuram Santosham, M.D., is a professor of pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins, as well as professor of immunology, international health and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and director of both its Health Systems Program and Center for American Indian Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He is an expert in oral rehydration therapy, for which his research is world-renowned. Dr. Santosham has conducted numerous clinical trials in the U.S. and worldwide on the safety and efficacy of oral rehydration therapy and gastroenteritis. In the last 15 or more years, he has evaluated numerous pediatric vaccines among the Navajo and Apache Indian populations including Hib, Hepatitis A, rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccines. He conducted the pivotal PRP-OMP conjugate vaccine efficacy trial, which led to the licensure of the vaccine (Pedvax Hib).

Dr. Camelia Savulescu is a medical epidemiologist, PhD in preventive medicine and public health with Epiconcept, France. Between 2012 and 2020, she coordinated the S. pneumoniae Invasive Disease network (SpIDnet), funded by European Centre for disease prevention and control (ECDC/2015/031, ECDC/2012/038) and H2020 I-MOVE+ project awarded to Epiconcept. SpIDnet aimed to enhance the pneumococcal invasive disease (IPD) surveillance and to measure the effectiveness and impact of conjugate vaccines for vaccination policies in the EU/EEA.

I am a clinician and epidemiologist from the UK. I trained in clinical medicine at Oxford University and did specialty training in Infectious Diseases at hospitals in London, Newcastle and Oxford. I then trained in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and in 1993 I moved to the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kilifi, Kenya where I have worked ever since. My interests have ranged across the aetiology of pneumonia in adults and children, transmission of pneumococci in households, diagnosis of pneumococcal disease, pneumococcal seroepidemiology, new vaccine development, effectiveness of conjugate vaccines against Hib and pneumococcus and the use of carriage studies to evaluate vaccine interventions across Africa. I work on the Gates-funded “CHAMPS” study of causes of death in children in Ethiopia. Since 2013 I have also worked at LSHTM where I lead a research team that specialises in policy-relevant vaccine research in the UK and I teach on vaccine epidemiology. I have worked on vaccine policy in Kenya, UK and with WHO. During the COVID-19 pandemic I studied the seroepidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Kenya and the impact of the vaccine on mortality.

Wesley H. Self, MD, MPH, is a physician scientist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (Nashville, Tennessee, USA), where he serves as the Vice President for Clinical Research Networks and Strategy. His work focuses on the epidemiology of vaccine-preventable diseases, evaluations of vaccine effectiveness, and clinical trials investigating therapies for pneumonia, sepsis, and related diseases.

I m the chair of the Department of Paediatrics at Patan Academy of Health Sciences, Nepal. Along with clinical management, we also conduct paediatric researches collaborating with the Oxford Vaccine Group.