The Faculty

Louis Bont

Louis Bont is a Paediatrician Infectiologist at the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital in the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. His vision is that basic and clinical research are required to improve the health of children. He leads the Utrecht RSV Research Group. He has published more than 150 papers in peer reviewed journals. He is the current chairman of ReSViNET, an international RSV Research Network. He is an active member of various other research networks, including GEN, GOLD, IMPRIND, TAILORED and RESCEU. Dr. Bont has a strong interest in the education of young talented researchers and founded the successful Training of Upcoming Leaders in Pediatric Science (TULIPS) career training program in the Netherlands. Dr. Bont served as advisor of the Europarliament, the World Health Organization (WHO), the The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI) and the European Center of Disease Control (ECDC).

Janet Englund

Janet Englund, MD, Professor of Pediatrics at University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Hospital, studies the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of respiratory viruses.  She has studied new vaccines and prevention measures against respiratory diseases in children, pregnant persons, and immunocompromised patients, as well as antivirals for influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). She has worked collaboratively on large surveillance studies assessing community spread of respiratory viruses in households and vaccine effectiveness.  Her research group has studied prevention of RSV disease in infants using passive monoclonal antibody and maternal immunization.  She is part of the New Vaccine Surveillance Network of the US CDC which assesses the effectiveness of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies in children.

Natasha Halasa

Dr. Halasa is Craig Weaver Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University. She received a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in biology from the University of Akron. She received her M.D. degree from the Medical College of Ohio and completed a residency in pediatrics at Columbus Children’s Hospital. She completed a fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at Vanderbilt and earned an M.P.H. degree during her fellowship training. She joined the faculty in 2004. Dr. Halasa’s research involves determining the burden of diarrheal and respiratory illnesses in young children and specialized populations and finding ways to reduce their burden (e.g. through vaccine, drugs, etc…). Since 2002, Dr. Halasa has been involved in vaccine trials enrolling children from all ages, including young infants and specialized populations such as children with cancer. The vaccine trials that Dr. Halasa has been involved with in the past include influenza vaccines (both the trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine and the cold-adapted influenza vaccine), pertussis vaccines, pneumococcal, and RSV vaccines. In addition, she has the expertise in vaccine protocol development. She was the PI of a respiratory viral surveillance study in Amman, Jordan, which was funded Union Bank of Switzerland. Currently, currently is PI of the Vanderbilt site of the New Vaccine Surveillance Network initially established in 1999 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to predict the impact of potential new vaccines and three NIH grants investigating high dose influenza vaccine versus standard dose influenza vaccine in pediatric and adult stem cell recipients and adult sot recipients.

Asun Mejias

Asunción Mejías is Professor of Pediatrics and Medical Director of Clinical Research at the Department of Infectious Diseases at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN USA. For the past 25 years Dr. Mejías has been studying the pathogenesis of respiratory viral infections in infants and young children, with special emphasis on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).  She has contributed with more than 300 publications including original articles, reviews, editorials and book chapters. She serves as external reviewer for several medical journals as well as professional organizations including NIH, the CDC or Welcome Trust, among others. She is also an active member of national and international professional organizations, holding different leadership positions. These include roles on the Council for the Society for Pediatric Research (SPR), Board of Directors of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, and currently serve as President of the International RSV society (iRSVs).

Harish Nair

Professor Harish Nair is Co-Head of the Centre for Global Health and Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Population Health Research and Training. He  leads the Respiratory Viral Epidemiology research programme at the University of Edinburgh. He has led several large collaborative projects on global child health and infectious diseases. He currently leads (and is the co-ordinator of) the Preparing for RSV Immunisation and Surveillance in Europe (PROMISE), REspiratory Syncytial virus Consortium in EUrope (RESCEU) and the Respiratory Virus Global Epidemiology Network (RSV GEN). He also leads the Infectious Diseases Research Programme in the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Respiratory Health (RESPIRE). He is a co-founder of ReSViNET. In 2019, Professor Nair was awarded the Principal’s Medal for Exceptional Service by the University of Edinburgh; and the Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) Award by the NRI Society of India.

Peter Openshaw

Peter Openshaw MD PhD CBE is Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London, UK. A respiratory physician and mucosal immunologist, his research focuses on how the immune response both protects against viral infection but also causes disease.

He has published widely on vaccinology, the immunopathogenesis of pulmonary viral diseases and lung inflammation, especially in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza and COVID-19 infection. He works on human challenge in volunteers (Google Scholar and https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7220-2555.). He is a Board Member of the Science Media Centre and Director of the HIC-Vac consortium (https://www.hic-vac.org/).

He was the first clinical President of the British Society for Immunology (2013-18) and received prizes for his lifetime contribution to RSV research (Chanock Award, 2012), the European Federation of Immunological Societies Award (2014) and the Per Brandtzaeg Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award in mucosal immunology (2024).

He advised the UK government on pandemics (SAGE, 2009-12; Chair/Vice-Chair of NERVTAG, 2015-2022). He was made a Commander of the British Empire for services to Medicine and Immunology in the 2022 UK New Year’s Honours and received the 2024 Imperial College Medal for his work as a Consul, reforming the university’s Ethos, Values and Behaviours.

Nancy Otieno

Dr. Nancy Awuor Otieno is a Principal Research Scientist at the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) based at the Centre for Global Health Research in Kisumu, since 2005. She leads surveillance and public‑health research initiatives in infectious diseases across Kenya.

Dr. Otieno has a basic science background (Biology and Chemistry), Masters in Project Planning and Management and PhD in Project Monitoring and Evaluation from the University of Nairobi, and post-graduate training in applied Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Emory University.  Her work spans field of epidemiology and clinical surveillance, with a strong focus on respiratory viruses, influenza, RSV, malaria, and maternal vaccine uptake in Kenya.

She is a prolific author with more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, with notable contributions such as:

• Characterizing national influenza epidemics and RSV dynamics in Kenya
• Exploring drivers and barriers to maternal vaccine acceptance among pregnant women

Dr. Otieno’s research integrates rigorous epidemiological methodology with real‑world public health impact, helping inform vaccine policy and implementation in Kenya. She has also contributed to developmental efforts in laboratory capacity building and disease surveillance systems.

In addition to research, Dr. Otieno is active in mentoring emerging scientists, participating in conferences and workshops.

As President of the African Network for Influenza Surveillance and Epidemiology (ANISE), Dr Otieno is dedicated to advance regional collaboration, strengthening research capacity, and advocating for context-specific approaches to respiratory virus surveillance and response.

Dr. Otieno’s leadership positions, scholarly productivity, and sustained public health contributions over two decades reflect a deep commitment to advancing epidemiological science and improving disease prevention and response in Kenya.

Ultan Power

Ultan Power is Professor of Molecular Virology in Queen’s University Belfast. He graduated from University College Cork with a PhD in Microbiology. Following postdoctoral training in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, USA, he moved to the pharma sector in France where he was Head of Virology in the Centre of Immunology Pierre Fabre, the biotech research arm of Institut de Recherche Pierre Fabre. Prof. Power played a central role in the conception, research and development of the first subunit vaccine against respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to enter phase III clinical trials. RSV is a major cause of severe lower respiratory tract disease in infants and the elderly worldwide. In 2004, he established a research group in Queen’s University Belfast. His group established novel in vitro models of respiratory virus infection based on primary human airway epithelium. In response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, his research pivoted to studying the pathophysiology of COVID-19 disease in human airway epithelium and repurposing known drugs as potential therapeutics to treat COVID-19. Prof. Power was Chair of the International Respiratory Syncytial Virus Society (2018-22), a member of the British Society for Immunology Expert Task Force on COVID-19 (2020-present), and principal investigator on multiple research grants, including UKRI-funded. He was an expert witness to the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on the “Science of COVID-19” (2022) and has had numerous media appearances throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.