A medical doctor who branched out into public life, Dr. Harsh Vardhan has an impeccable electoral record of 25 years, having been elected five successive times to the Delhi Legislative Assembly and serving two consecutive terms as a Member of Parliament to the Lok Sabha (House of Commons). His public life has been stellar and marked by outstanding achievements in health, education, law, science, technology, and the environment.

Dr. Harsh Vardhan’s engagement in the eradication of the dreaded disease Poliomyelitis from India has found overwhelming global appreciation. Subsequently, he has been at the forefront of the battle against tobacco and drug abuse and was instrumental in the enactment of several laws in India to tackle these problems. For his long-standing commitment to humanity, Dr. Harsh Vardhan has been the proud recipient of various national and international awards of repute.

Dr. Harsh Vardhan became Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare for the second time in 2019, and has been at the forefront of India’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. He is also known worldwide for reiterating India’s commitment to end TB by 2025, stating that it is high time for the international community to implement faster and more innovative global TB control measures in the fight against the disease.

Since March 2021, Minister Harsh Vardhan is the Chair of the Stop TB Partnership Board.

Olivier Veran was born on April 22^nd , 1980 in Saint-Martin d’Heres, in the lsere region, where he spent his all of his childhood and attended school. Son of an engineer and an English teacher, his calling for the field of medicine began at an early age. This was strengthened during his night job as an attendant in an elderly home, serving the most fragile, to finance his studies in Grenoble.

Sensitive to the working conditions of caregivers, assistants and interns in the hospitals of Grenoble, he became involved in union life. After completing his thesis on  “Epileptic  confusion in the elderly”, Olivier  Veran became neurologist at the Grenoble-Alpes University Hospital.

As assistant Head of Clinic of the Intensive Care Unit for Vascular Neurology, he was responsible for patients suffering from cerebrovascular accidents. Subsequently, he managed the day clinic of the Neurological department, receiving over 3.000 patients each year.

His political commitment led him to the French National Assembly in 2012, as Member of Parliament for the 1st district of the Isere. Profoundly committed to equal access to healthcare, he devoted the majority of his parliamentary work to health policies and to the fight against poverty, resulting in him becoming General Rapporteur of the Social Affairs Committee.

To uphold his beliefs in the territory that he is so close  to,  and  which  is important to him, Olivier Veran was elected Regional Councilor of the Auvergne-Rh6ne-Alpes region in December 2015. Since December 2019 he chairs the group “La Republique En Marche” (the party of the presidential majority) in this assembly.

On February 16^th, 2020, Olivier Veran was nominated Minister of Solidarity and Health. Olivier Veran is the father of  two  children  and is passionate  about music.

Honorable Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo is  a medical doctor by profession and the Chairperson of the National Health Portfolio Committee in the National Assembly in Parliament. He is also the Chairperson of the national TB Caucus in South Africa. He is a seasoned politician and public health practitioner who has served as the MEC for Health in Kwa-Zulu Natal from 2009 – 2019.

He is a former member of Umkhonto Wesizwe and was incarcerated on Robben Island in the 1980’s.

He has also served in the South Africa National Defence and worked as an academic at the University of KwaZulu-Natal lecturing in Public Health.

Dr. Andersen-Nissen directs cellular immunology studies of specimens from HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) studies in Southern Africa. She holds a Senior Staff Scientist position at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and is an Honourary Research Associate at the University of Cape Town in the Division of Medical Virology. Dr. Andersen-Nissen completed her PhD in immunology at the University of Washington in Seattle in June 2006 under the mentorship of Dr. Alan Aderem. She then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in Dr. Julie McElrath’s laboratory at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where she profiled innate immune responses induced by candidate HIV vaccines, providing new information about human immune responses to experimental adjuvants and viral vaccine vectors. Erica relocated to Cape Town in January 2013 to start CHIL and is studying innate and adaptive immune responses elicited by HIV and TB vaccines in Southern African populations to identify immune correlates of risk and protection.

Álvaro Borges is a physician-scientist educated in Brazil, the United Kingdom and Denmark. He has an MSc in Tropical and Infectious Diseases (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine 2011) and a PhD in Immunology and Infectious Diseases (University of Copenhagen 2015). He  joined the Center for Vaccine Research at Statens Serum Institut as chief medical officer to work on clinical trials testing new candidate vaccines in humans. He has been actively involved in 1) design and coordination of clinical trials and research projects primarily within vaccines, 2) studies of pathogen mechanisms and natural immunity / vaccine immunity in human cohorts, 3) clinical data interpretation, preparation of scientific manuscripts and presentations at international meetings and 4) fundraising for clinical trials.

Muhwa Jeremiah Chakaya, is a Professor, Global Respiratory Health, at the department of clinical sciences, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Prof. Chakaya hails from Kenya where he was born and educated and where he practices and teaches respiratory medicine. He graduated from the University of Nairobi with a basic degree in medicine and surgery (MBChB) in 1985 and a master’s degree in internal medicine (M.Med) in 1992. He then went on to study lung medicine at the National Lung and Heart Institute, University of London at the Royal Brompton Hospital  and at the Kyorin University Hospital in Tokyo, Japan. Prof. Chakaya worked as a TB and Lung disease researcher at the Centre for Respiratory Diseases Research at the Kenya Medical Research Institute and later served as the TB Program Manager at the Ministry of Health between 2003 and 2006. At the international level, Prof. Chakaya has held several positions including, Vice Chair of the Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board, Chair of the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group  for TB (STAG-TB ) of the World Health Organization (WHO), Chair of the Global Fund’s Technical Review Panel (TRP) and President of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease ( the Union).  Prof. Chakaya is a founder member of the Respiratory Society of Kenya (ReSoK) and has remained closely engaged with this organization.  He is a member of the Pan African Thoracic Society and serves in the executive committee of this organization. He has a honorary teaching position at the school of medicine, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.

Professor Cooper received her undergraduate degree from University College, London and her Doctoral degree from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine UK, where she investigated the interaction between macrophages and protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania. Moving to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, US she expanded her investigation of leishmaniasis to include the T cell response of patients suffering from cutaneous, mucocutaneous and visceral forms of this disease. She then moved to the Mycobacterial Research Labs at Colorado State University and began studying the protective immune response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Prior to her move to the University of Leicester she was at the Trudeau Institute, Inc. for 12 years where she held the E.L. Trudeau Chair. The underlying theme of Professor Cooper’s work is the definition of the mechanisms which mediate initiation, expression and regulation of immunity within the lung.

Professor Nigel Curtis is a paediatric infectious diseases physician and clinician scientist. He is Professor of Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the University of Melbourne, Leader of the Infectious Diseases Research Group at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and Head of Infectious Diseases at The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.

He is the Chief Principal Investigator of The BRACE Trial, a randomised controlled trial of BCG vaccination to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in healthcare workers that has recruited in 34 sites in three continents worldwide.

Dr. Sajjad A Desai, is a graduate (MBBS) and post‐graduate (MD) of Dr V. M. Medical College, Solapur with specialization in Clinical Pharmacology. He joined Serum Institute of India Ltd. (SIIL), Pune in 2006 and is working as Deputy Medical Director. After post‐graduation in 2001, he has worked in several pharmaceutical companies in R & D ‐ Clinical Research. Since 2006, he is working with Serum Institute of India Pvt Ltd and is involved in clinical development of new vaccines and biologicals as well pharmacovigilance activities. He has publications in peer reviewed scientific journals and is a life member of the Indian Society for Clinical Research.

Dr. Mustafa Diken received his Ph.D. in tumor immunology from Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz and is currently serving as Vice President Vaccines & Immunology at BioNTech SE. His research focuses on the development of novel cancer and infectious disease vaccines based on antigen-encoding messenger RNA (mRNA). His research led to novel mRNA vaccines which are currently being tested in several clinical trials.

Dr. Lucica Ditiu, Executive Director of the Stop TB Partnership is a Romanian physician, accomplished professional and leader in the global fight against tuberculosis (TB) and other communicable diseases. Dr. Ditiu is driven by the firm belief that we should “leave no one behind” and is one of the strongest advocates within the international community in the fight against tuberculosis. A firm believer in innovation, flexibility, change, breaking the rules and thinking out of the box, Dr. Ditiu is dedicated to driving political commitment and engagement to accelerate the efforts to End TB.

Professor Gordon Dougan F Med Sci FRS, who is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at Cambridge University, is an internationally recognised expert in vaccinology, global health and infections. He was Head of Pathogens at The Wellcome Sanger Institute (WTSI) and worked in the pharmaceutical industry. He studies the molecular basis of infection with a strong emphasis on pathogenic mechanisms/immunity, genomics, disease tracking and antibiotic resistance. He has a particular interest in using genomics to study the evolution of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi, the cause of typhoid.

Before moving to the WTSI he was the founding Director of the Centre for Molecular Microbiology and Infection at Imperial College London and a Professor of Biochemistry. He is a member of EMBO, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has received awards nationally and internationally for his work, including the Albert B Sabin Gold Medal for his work on Affordable Vaccines. He received his B Sc and Ph.D. from the University of Sussex and conducted postdoctoral studies at the University of Washington (Seattle) in the laboratory of the Lasker Prize winner Stanley Falkow. During his work in industry developing novel vaccines at an internationally renowned multi-national company now part of GSK and is a founder of VHSquared and Microbiotica. He is currently a Head of the Infection Health Challenge area at Wellcome.

Shiva Dustdar has over 25 years of experience in the financial industry working for large private and public institutions in New York, London and Luxembourg. Since joining EIB in 2003, she has worked in risk management, lending and investing in innovative companies and currently heads the Innovation Finance Advisory (IFA) Division in the EIB which she was tasked to set up in 2013. IFA has 2 units covering project advisory and thematic finance providing access to finance advice to public and private entities, performing market studies and developing new financial products to meet the financing needs across the innovation spectrum to support smart, green and healthy growth.

Shiva started her career in 1993 at J.P. Morgan Investment Banking in New York  working in M&A, Project Finance and Emerging Markets before joining Fitch Rating Agency in 1999 to set up its European High Yield rating business.

Shiva holds a BA in Economics from Columbia University and an Executive MBA from London Business School (LBS). Shiva co-founded the European High Yield Association (EHYA), which is now part of the Association for Financial Markets in Europe (AFME) and was nominated to Top 50 Women in Credit by Credit Magazine in 2006. She is a regular speaker on innovation and impact financing, gender smart investing, digital and green financing and actively engaged in networks that promote sustainable and mission oriented financing.

Emilio A. Emini, Ph.D. is the Director of the Tuberculosis and HIV Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  He is also a Board member of the Gates Medical Research Institute.  Emilio joined the foundation in 2015 following a greater than 30-year career in the biopharmaceutical industry during which he held multiple senior positions in anti-infectives and vaccines R&D.  At the Merck Research Laboratories, from 1983 to 2004, Emilio led the biological research that developed the first of the highly active antiretroviral therapies for HIV, and he led multiple teams involved in vaccine development programs including the recombinant hepatitis B, inactivated hepatitis A, the human papillomavirus, varicella, and rotavirus vaccine programs.  Following a two-year leave from the industry at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Emilio joined Wyeth/Pfizer Inc. as the Senior Vice President of Vaccine R&D where he led the development of the Prevenar 13 vaccine for prevention of pneumococcal disease.  In addition to his present role at the foundation, Emilio serves as an advisor to the COVID vaccine programs of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Emily Erbelding is an infectious disease physician who directs the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health. As DMID director, she oversees a research portfolio of basic, translational, and clinical research in infectious diseases that exceeds $2B annually. NIAID continues to lead the research response to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Prior to her role as DMID director, she served as Deputy Director in the Division of AIDS at NIAID.

Dr. Michael Gerner obtained his Ph.D. in Immunology in 2009 at the University of Minnesota, studying anti-tumor immune responses. He next completed his postdoc at the NIH, where he developed and employed cutting-edge quantitative imaging tools to study the organization of immune cells in lymphoid tissues. In 2015, Dr. Gerner joined the University of Washington, Department of Immunology as Assistant Professor. His lab investigates how local tissue microenvironments shape the generation of innate and adaptive immune responses during vaccination, infection and cancer. The laboratory also continues to develop advanced image analysis platforms. Current efforts utilize these microscopy tools to better understand correlates of vaccine-mediated protection against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in mice and across species.

Dr. Hannah P. Gideon received her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Medical Microbiology in India and her PhD from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. For her post-doctoral research, she joined Prof. JoAnne Flynn’s group at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, USA, to investigate T cell responses at the local (i.e., granuloma) and systemic level and whole blood transcriptional signatures of Mtb infection in NHP model. Dr. Gideon is currently a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and she leads studies interrogating immune repertories at the granulomas level using single-cell RNA sequencing in NHPs.

Ann M. Ginsberg, M.D., Ph.D., is Deputy Director, TB Vaccines in the Global Health Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr. Ginsberg has conducted and led TB research and product development programs for 25 years, including 15 years leading and designing clinical strategy for development of TB vaccines and drug regimens for the developing world. She previously served as the Chief, Respiratory Diseases Branch, NIAID, NIH; as Director, Project Management at Merck Research Laboratories; as Chief Medical Officer at the Global Alliance for TB Drug Development; as Chief Medical Officer at Aeras and as Senior Technical Advisor at IAVI. In these roles, she oversaw the early clinical development program of Pretomanid® and two recent, positive TB vaccine efficacy trials – of BCG revaccination and M72/AS01E. Dr. Ginsberg has served on numerous national and international advisory committees on vaccines and global health, including the U.S. National Vaccine Advisory Committee. Her undergraduate degree is from Harvard University, her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Washington University and her M.D. from Columbia University.

Ingrid Murillo Jelsbak is since January 2016 the Clinical Research Director at Biofabri, which belongs to Zendal Group at Porriño, a Spanish biopharmaceutical Business Group, focussed on the development manufacturing and marketing of vaccines as well as biological and pharmaceutical products for both human and animal health.

After finishing studies in Biology, with specialization in zoology at Universidad Complutense, Madrid, she started her carrier at  Pharma Industry where she has been for the last 20 years exercising several responsibilities mainly in the Clinical Research area  at Pharmaceutical companies and Contract Research Organizations (CROs) covering several responsibilities at national and international level, reaching the Managing Direction level for the Iberian region at Chiltern International, a UK-based international CRO, during six years.

Having a biomedical background with a specialization in immunology, my main interest is to understand the human immune system in health and disease. Over the last decade my group has been working on host immunity towards tuberculosis (TB). TB biomarkers are one of the key subjects we have been working on, including bioprofiling of clinical samples. In addition, we have been interested in cellular immunity towards Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). My group aims to unravel the pathophysiological role of cellular immune responses in the combat against Mtb. We focus in particular on HLA-E restricted CD8+T-cells, B-cells and more recently also monocyte subsets. We aim to combine clinical data and samples with functional immunological characterization of the responses.

Professor Kang conducts inter-disciplinary research on enteric infections and child health. Her team has evaluated vaccines in pre-clinical and clinical phase 1-3 studies for enteric infections. She is a member of many WHO advisory committees, is the vice-Chair of the Board of Coalition of Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and chairs the Immunization Technical Advisory Group for the WHO’s South East Asian Region.

Evaline Kibuchi is a global health advocate with a key focus on Tuberculosis (TB) with over ten years in TB advocacy. Since 2015, she has served as the Chief National Coordinator, Stop TB Partnership-Kenya. She previously worked with International AIDS Vaccine Initiative in Community preparedness for the HIV vaccines trials. She is also the African Director of African Parliamentary TB caucus and a member of the Civil Society Task force the WHO TB team and a member of Access to Covid Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) an advocacy group that pushes for covid tools and other services.

 She is a graduate of Bachelor of Arts from the University of Nairobi and completing her Masters of Public Health in Moi University. She holds Post Graduate Diploma in Mass Communication and journalism from the University of Nairobi, a Graduate Certificate, Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation, Center for finance and Project Management and Certificate in Resource mobilization and a certificate in policy development and advocacy for global health from the University of Washington.

She is the Chair, board of Directors, WACI Health a South African based Global Health advocacy organization. She is also the Vice Chair, Aids Healthcare Foundation, which is also a global advocacy organization based in the US.

Dr Anastasia Koch is the co-founder and co-director of Eh!woza. The organisation was established in 2013 as an informal collaboration between researchers at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM), conceptual artist Ed Young, social scientists, and young people from Khayelitsha, a peri-urban township in Cape Town. In 2020, Eh!woza was awarded a Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award in Public Engagement, which facilitated the organisation’s transition into an independent NPO. Eh!woza enlists beneficiaries as active partners and facilitate access to accurate information while igniting frank conversations, storytelling and representation of health and disease. Long-term goals are to encourage positive health-seeking behaviour, engender trust, and decrease stigma. Before working fulltime on Eh!woza, Anastasia was a junior research fellow at the Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit (IDM, UCT), which she maintains in a parttime position. Anastasia’s biomedical research interests involve using genomics to understand the transmission and pathobiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Dr. Jim Kublin is currently Executive Director of the COVID-19 Prevention Network and HIV Vaccine Trials Network based at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.  He is also the Medical Director of the Seattle Malaria Clinical Trials Center, a translational research center established by Fred Hutch and the Seattle Children’s Research Institute to test experimental malaria vaccines and drugs in human clinical trials. Jim is also a Clinical Professor in the Department of Global Health at the University of Washington and runs a lab focused on the impact of the microbiome on vaccine responses.  Jim has conducted extensive research on HIV, TB and malaria in South America, SE Asia, and Africa, including clinical trials of novel therapies and vaccines. The Gates Foundation awarded Jim a Grand Challenges Exploration award to apply high-throughput system analyses to malaria vaccine development. Before moving to Seattle, Jim was Director, HIV Vaccines – Infectious Diseases, for Merck & Co., Inc where he played a key role in the development and implementation of HIV vaccine studies, overseeing the coordination of clinical assays, site identification and development, government and ethical approvals and providing guidance on vaccine policy issues. Jim completed his B.S. and M.D. at Georgetown University and received his M.P.H. and completed a residency in Preventive Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Jim continued work in vaccine development and molecular epidemiology while attending the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine for his fellowship in Vaccinology at the Center for Vaccine Development.

Luciana C.C. Leite, has PhD in Biochemistry from the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). She was hired in 1987 at Instituto Butantan, at the Centro de Biotecnologia, changing to vaccine development following a Pos-Doc at Institut Pasteur. She has worked on the molecular biotechnology for development of vaccines, especially vaccines based on recombinant BCG. She has been Director of the Centro de Biotecnologia and Vice-President of Fundação Butantan. She is currently Senior Researcher at the Molecular Biotechnology laboratory of the Laboratório de Desenvolvimento de Vacinas, having over 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals and several patents. She is member of the Academic Management Board of the master program of the Leading International Vaccinology Education of Erasmus/European Union and of the Ethics Committee for Research in Humans of USP.

Lenette graduated with a BA in the Honors Program with a major in Biology and minor in Asian Studies from Swarthmore College where she worked in the laboratory of Elizabeth Vallen on yeast cell cycle regulation. As part of the Medical Scientist Training Program at Case Western Reserve University, she obtained an MD and PhD in the Molecular Virology Program. Her graduate work in the laboratory of Ganes Sen focused on dsRNA mediated signaling and innate immunity in the context of paramyxovirus infections. She completed an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at New York Presbyterian – Weill Cornell and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases in the Partners program at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Her postdoctoral research in the laboratories of Sarah Fortune at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Galit Alter at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard focused on delineating the humoral landscape of immune responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Lenette’s initial work characterized divergent humoral profiles in patients with clinically characterized distinct tuberculosis (TB) disease states that support an immunomodulatory role for antibodies. Using this approach, she went on to examine a population of individuals highly exposed to Mtb yet clinically not recognized as part of the spectrum of human disease. She showed robust humoral profiles in the context of non-canonical T cell responses, providing immunological parameters to help define an additional state of human TB and an alternative model towards understanding host responses to Mtb exposure. Lenette joined the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at UT Southwestern in 2019 with a clinical practice primarily at Parkland Health and Hospitals System and a research lab aimed at identifying the mechanisms by which antibodies modulate the host immune response in TB. Beyond TB, dissecting antibody functions is fundamentally relevant to all infectious disease where antibodies interface host and microbe, informing diagnostic, therapeutic and vaccine design.

Nicole Lurie, M.D., M.S.P.H. is currently the Strategic Advisor to the CEO and response lead at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). She is also a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School, a member of the research faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine.  She served an 8-year term as Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the US Department of Health and Human Services.  In that role she led the HHS response to numerous public health emergencies, ranging from infectious disease to natural and man-made disasters and is responsible for many innovations in emergency preparedness and response.  She also chaired the Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasures Enterprise, a government wide organization ultimately responsible for the development of medical countermeasures, including vaccines against pandemics and emerging threats.    Dr. Lurie has a long history in health services research.  Prior to federal service, she was the Paul O’Neill Professor of Policy Analysis at RAND, where she started and led the public health preparedness program and RAND’s Center for Population Health and Health Disparities.  She has had leadership roles in academia, as Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Minnesota, as Medical Advisor to the Commissioner, Minnesota Department of Health, and as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services.  Dr. Lurie received her BA and MD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and completed her residency and public health training at UCLA.  Her research has focused on access to and quality of care, health system redesign, equity, mental health, public health and preparedness.  She is recipient of numerous awards and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.  She continues to practice clinical medicine in a community clinic in Washington DC.

Prof Hassan Mahomed, MBChB, MMed, PhD, works currently as a Public Health Medicine specialist at the Western Cape Government Dept of Health and Division of Health Systems and Public Health in the Department of Global Health at Stellenbosch University. In the Department of Health, he provides technical support for planning, monitoring and evaluation, health systems reform, health information systems development and outbreak response. He has played a key role in co-ordinating the province’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic including the vaccine rollout. At Stellenbosch University, he teaches public health and runs a clinical trials module. He supervises both masters and PhD students.