Mark van der Linden is Director of the National Reference Center for Streptococci, Department of Medical Microbiology, University Hospital Aachen, Germany. The Reference Center is responsible for epidemiology of Streptococci in Germany. Apart from standard analyses (serotyping, MIC), a large number of studies focusing on different aspects of streptococcal disease (resistance mechanisms, clonal spread) are conducted at the center. Dr van der Linden gained his PhD in Biochemisty in 1993 at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. During his post-doctoral career in Germany, first at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and then at the University of Kaiserslautern, Dr van der Linden was engaged in research on molecular aspects of antibiotic resistance in S. pneumoniae. During his stay at the Bioinformatics Department of the German Cancer Research Center he developed his skills in bioinformatics, which he then applied in an industry position as Director of Bioinformatics at a start-up company. Dr van der Linden has given many presentations at international meetings, and published over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts. Recent papers have focussed on aspects of post-vaccination serotypes among Streptococcus pneumoniae infections in Germany.

Epidemiologist and infectious disease modeller at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine with a strong focus on answering policy-relevant questions in relation to (pneumococcal) disease transmission and vaccine strategies. Over eight years of experience in programming, data science, and web-development. His research predominantly focuses on identifying alternative vaccination strategies that can effectively and feasibly be used to deliver PCVs in humanitarian crises.

Dr. Srinivasan Velusamy is the Microbiologist in the Streptococcus Laboratory, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducts surveillance, research and public health response to Streptococcus pneumoniae, and groups A and B streptococcus. Dr. Velusamy joined CDC in 2009 as Microbiologist. He has worked extensively in method development and validation for streptococcal species detection, antimicrobial resistance, and molecular epidemiology. He is the curator for CDC’s Group A streptococcal M protein database since 2011. Before joining CDC, Dr. Velusamy worked as postdoctoral fellow in Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and Food Safety Center of Excellence at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Velusamy earned Bachelor and Master degree from Bharathiar University and completed his PhD in Biological sciences in the University of Madras, India.

Jennifer Verani works in the Respiratory Diseases Branch, Division of Bacterial Diseases at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She is a pediatrician, epidemiologist, and a Captain in the United States Public Health Service. She obtained her medical degree from Harvard Medical School, MPH in International Health from Harvard School of Public Health, and undergraduate degree in International Development from Brown University. Dr. Verani completed residency training at Children’s Hospital of New York-Columbia. Dr. Verani joined CDC as an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer in the Parasitic Diseases Branch in 2006. In 2008, she moved to the Respiratory Diseases Branch, where she focused on the impact and effectiveness of vaccines against pneumonia and invasive bacterial diseases in Latin America and Africa and provided technical assistance for respiratory disease surveillance in low-resource settings. From 2014-2019, Dr. Verani worked for CDC-Kenya, leading the Population-Based Infectious Disease Surveillance platform in Kibera and Asembo, a network of Acute Febrile Illness sentinel surveillance sites, and serving on the expert panel determining cause of death for the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Kenya site. In early 2020, Dr. Verani returned to the Respiratory Diseases Branch as Deputy Branch Chief for Science, and was deployed to work on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness from May 2020 through April 2022. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine.