Speakers

Galit Alter

Galit Alter is a Canadian-Israeli-American immunologist and microbiologist whose research bridges systems biology and infectious disease. Her work centers on understanding how the human immune system responds to viral, bacterial, and parasitic infections. Early in the rise of systems biology, Dr. Alter played a key role in the development of Systems Serology, a platform that applies computational tools—including machine learning—to study how polyclonal antibody responses interact with the innate immune system to help control or eliminate pathogens. This research has enriched the field of Fc-engineering, enabling the development of new systems level Fc-engineering tools to drive the discovery of mechanistic correlates of immunity against infections. Through this work, she has uncovered both expected and novel immune correlates and mechanisms that shape immune protection and pathology. In addition to her academic contributions, Dr. Alter spent two years leading immunology research at Moderna, where she focused on applying immunoprofiling tools to guide the development of vaccines and therapeutics. She continues to expand the application of systems immunology to both infectious and non-infectious diseases. Known for her collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, Dr. Alter remains committed to advancing tools that can accelerate the rational design of next-generation vaccines and immune-based therapies.  

Chris Chiu

Professor Chris Chiu is an Infectious Diseases physician and Immunologist. He trained as a clinician at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, followed by a PhD supported by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Training fellowship and then an MRC Clinician Scientist fellowship, during which he worked in Rafi Ahmed’s group at Emory Vaccine Center.

His research focuses on mucosal pathogenesis and protective immunity in human respiratory viral infections, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and SARS-CoV-2. To understand why some people suffer life-threatening illness while others have only mild/asymptomatic or no infection following virus exposure, he has developed a set of unique experimental medicine techniques using infection and vaccination.

This is exemplified by his recent role as Chief Investigator of the first SARS-CoV-2 human challenge study, which together with his other programmes aims to enhance our understanding of how respiratory viral illnesses may be better prevented and accelerate the development of more effective vaccines and interventions. 

Rebecca Cox

Professor Rebecca Cox heads the Influenza Centre at the University of Bergen, and Haukeland University Hospital and  has over three decades of experience in influenza research. She completed her PhD at the London Hospital Medical College,  University of London and has since focused on developing and evaluating influenza vaccines, with a particular interest in human immune responses to infection and vaccination. She advises global health bodies, including the WHO, the European Medicines Agency, and the EU HERA. She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. She is deputy chair of isirv, a senior editor of the society’s journal, leads the isirv Correlates of Protection meetings series and is passionate about educating the next generation of scientists. 

Anna Durbin

Anna Durbin is currently Professor of International Health and Director of the Center for Immunization Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH).  

She has been the Principal Investigator for more than 35 flavivirus vaccine clinical trials. Her research interest involves the human responses to live attenuated vaccines and subunit protein vaccines, with a primary focus on the flavivirus vaccines, particularly those for dengue. West Nile virus, and Zika virus.  

Her group conducted the pivotal clinical trials of live attenuated dengue vaccines developed at the US NIH leading to the tetravalent formulation that recently completed Phase 3 clinical trial in Brazil. She and her group have developed two dengue controlled human infection models (D-CHIM) and two Zika virus CHIMs to down-select candidate vaccines and characterize the human immune response to dengue & Zika viruses. She is utilizing D-CHIM studies to evaluate novel dengue antivirals and monoclonal antibodies as prophylaxis and treatment for dengue. 

David Goldblatt

David Goldblatt is Professor of Vaccinology and Immunology at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London (UCL) and a Consultant Paediatric Immunologist at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust. He obtained his medical degree from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, a PhD in Immunology from the University of London, United Kingdom. He is an Emeritus National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator.

He has a long-standing interest in the immune response to vaccines and infectious diseases. He has active research programmes exploring immunity to colonisation/ carriage and infection, correlates of protection and assessing alternative vaccines schedules.  His laboratory (a WHO Reference Laboratory for Pneumococcal Serology) interests include Streptococcus Pneumoniae, Klebsiella Pneumonia, Group A and B Streptococcus and SARS-CoV-2. He is an advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on vaccines including COVID and Co-chairs the recently formed WHO Technical Advisory Group on Group B Streptococcus. He serves on subcommittees of the United Kingdom Department of Health Joint Committee on Vaccines and Immunisation (JCVI), has advised the MHRA on COVID Vaccine licensure via membership of the Commission on Human Medicines COVID-19 Vaccines Benefit Risk Expert Working Group. He chairs several Scientific Advisory Boards including the International SAB advising the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme in Blantyre and the Immunisation HPRU at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is currently secretary of the International Society of Pneumonia and Pneumococcal Disease having served as President until 2024

Jenna Guthmiller

Dr. Jenna Guthmiller is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. 

Jenna received her undergraduate degree from South Dakota State University in 2013 and her PhD from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in 2017. She conducted her postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago and established her lab at the University of Colorado in 2022.  

Dr. Guthmiller’s research focuses on understanding how broadly humoral immunity against rapidly evolving pathogens develops and can be targeted by next-generation vaccines. Her work has identified the epitopes targeted by broadly neutralizing antibodies and how distinct virus exposures and vaccines can drive broadly neutralizing antibodies.   

Jenna has received numerous awards and accolades, including a NIH Pathway to Independence Award, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, U.S. National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellowship, The Michelson Prize for Human Immunology, the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses Young Scientist Vaccine Innovation Award, the American Society for Virology Ann Palmenberg Junior Investigator Award, James S. Huston Antibody Talent Award, and the American Association of Immunologists ASPIRE Award.  

Florian Krammer

Florian Krammer, PhD, graduated from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. He received his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Palese at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York working on hemagglutinin stalk-based immunity and universal influenza virus vaccines. In 2014, he became an independent principal investigator and is currently the endowed Mount Sinai Professor of Vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is also the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness (C-VaRPP). Furthermore, since 2024, Dr. Krammer is Professor for Infection Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna and since 2025 he is also the director of the Ignaz Semmelweis Institute at the Medical University of Vienna. Dr. Krammer’s work focuses on understanding the mechanisms of interactions between antibodies and viral surface glycoproteins and on translating this work into novel, broadly protective vaccines and therapeutics. The main target is influenza virus but he is also working on coronaviruses, flaviviruses, hantaviruses, filoviruses and arenaviruses. He has published more than 400 papers on these topics. Since 2019, Dr. Krammer serves as principal investigator of the Sinai-Emory Multi-Institutional Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Center (SEM-CIVIC), which develops improved seasonal and universal influenza virus vaccines that induce long-lasting protection against drifted seasonal, zoonotic and future pandemic influenza viruses. Finally, Dr. Krammer is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the Henry Kunkel Society, he is on the Board of Directors of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI) and he serves as one of the chairs of the SAVE group which tracks SARS-CoV-2 variants for the US NIH. 

Stacey Schultz-Cherry

Stacey Schultz-Cherry, PhD, is a Full Member and Professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN as well as Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the St Jude Graduate School of the Biomedical Sciences. She serves as Co-Director of not only the Center for Excellence in Influenza Research and Response but also the Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Center, both research centers supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. 

Dr. Schultz-Cherry received her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Pathology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham investigating extracellular matrix and growth factor interactions. After a short postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying influenza virus-induced apoptosis and cellular responses, she served as a Lead Scientist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, GA, doing research on emerging highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses and astroviruses. She subsequently joined the faculty in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison Medical School rising to become tenured Associate Professor before moving to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in 2009. 

Dr. Schultz-Cherry is recognized internationally for her studies on the pathogenesis of influenza and enteric viruses, especially astroviruses, in high-risk populations, and on the interactions of influenza viruses among different avian species and other animals and humans. She is the author and co-author of over 200 research articles, reviews, and book chapters and has lectured internationally.  She has been a member of the editorial boards of several prominent journals and is now the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Virology.                         

Dr. Schultz-Cherry has served on the National Institutes of Health study sections and other of its institutional committees. She was elected President of the American Society for Virology in 2017, is the current chair of the Public and Scientific Affairs Committee for the American Society for Microbiology and is an American Academy of Microbiology Fellow. Since 2012 she has been Deputy Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds.

Kanta Subbarao

Professor Kanta Subbarao is a virologist and a paediatric infectious disease physician. She has worked on molecular virology and vaccine development for emerging viruses that pose a potential pandemic threat, including influenza viruses, SARS and MERS and SARS-CoV-2 coronaviruses. She holds a Canada Excellence Research Chair position on Biology and Control of Zoonotic and Pandemic Respiratory Viruses at Laval University in Quebec and is a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, The University of Melbourne. From 2016-2024 she was the Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza in Melbourne, Australia and before that she was the Chief of the Emerging Respiratory Viruses Section of the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, NIAID, NIH. She is an internationally recognized leader in the field of influenza and received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement award from the International Society for Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, American Academy of Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Charlotte Thålin

Adjunct Professor in Translational Immunology, Department of clinical sciences, Danderyd Hospital, Karolinska Institutet 

[Text Wrapping Break]Charlotte Thålin is a Senior Consultant in Internal Medicine at Danderyd Hospital and holds a position as Adjunct Professor in Translational Immunology at Karolinska Institutet. She is the Principal Investigator of the Covid-19 Immunity Study (COMMUNITY) investigating longitudinal blood and mucosal immune responses to respiratory infections in >2000 healthcare workers. Taking advantage of the COMMUNITY biobank, liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry and human nasal and lung organoids, the Thålin group currently focuses on understanding the role of IgA glycoforms in protection against infection through the ERC-funded T-MAP project (Translating the Functional Role of Mucosal IgA Glycoprofiles to Effective Mucosal Protection). 

Paul G. Thomas

Paul G. Thomas is a Member of the Department of Host-Microbe Interactions at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. His work focuses on understanding the principles of T-cell receptor recognition and specificity during development, infections, and tumors. Dr. Thomas obtained his undergraduate degree in Biology and Philosophy at Wake Forest University. His doctoral training at Harvard University focused on the innate immune response to Schistosomaassociated carbohydrates and their role in promoting Th2 responses. After graduate school, he relocated to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Peter Doherty on T-cell responses in the influenza model. In 2009 he started his independent lab, from which he has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers on TCR biology, immunological mechanisms of disease severity in human viral infections, and cellular immunology.

Rory D. de Vries

Dr. Rory D. de Vries, Department of Viroscience, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Associate Professor

Dr. de Vries studies interactions between respiratory viruses and the host adaptive immune system at the Department of Viroscience (Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands). During his PhD, he unravelled how measles virus partially depletes pre-existing immunological memory to other pathogens, leading to ‘immune amnesia’. Interested in the immunology behind this, he employed this knowledge in the field of influenza vaccination and established a research line on immune responses to poxvirus-vectored influenza vaccination during his PostDoc, with the focus on induction of virus-specific T-cells. After a short visit to the La Jolla institute for Immunology in 2020, Dr. de Vries returned to the Erasmus MC and established multiple research lines on immunity to respiratory viruses. One of his research lines currently focuses on immunity to highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses in the general population, and the immunogenicity of vaccines against these viruses. His long-term goal is to decipher immune responses to respiratory viruses, focusing on all functional aspects of the immune system, and understand how specific ‘immune profiles’ can be linked to protection from respiratory viruses.

Mary Wu

Mary Wu currently leads the COVID Surveillance Unit at the Francis Crick Institute, a team of 5 virologists tasked with supporting translational, research, and public health projects in infectious diseases. She has over 10 years’ research experience in high throughput cell-based assay design and screening.  

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked closely with in-house virologists and immunologists to pioneer and validate a live-virus high throughput microneutralisation assay pipeline for SARS-CoV-2 that went on to support over 25 different serological studies with near real-time reporting on humoral immunity against emerging variants as well as the longitudinal serological profiling of healthy and vulnerable cohorts in response to vaccination and infection. Over the past 4 years, the assay pipeline has generated over 240,000 neutralisation titres published in over 30 manuscripts and provided data for advisory groups such as NERVTAG and JCVI in the UK, and the WHO TAG-CO-VAC.  

To catapult neutralisation data from a reporting tool into the realm of large data and systems vaccinology/immunology, her team has been working to adapt the assay pipeline to accommodate different sample types (antivirals, mucosal samples) and viruses (influenza, RSV, pseudoviruses) to generate a high throughput plug-and-play microneutralisation assay pipeline.