Dr. Stanley A. Plotkin is Emeritus Professor of the University of Pennsylvania. Until 1991, he was Professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor of Virology at the Wistar Institute and at the same time, Director of Infectious Diseases and Senior Physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. For seven years he was Medical and Scientific Director of Sanofi Pasteur, based at Marnes-la-Coquette, outside Paris. He is now consultant to vaccine developers and non-profit research organizations.

He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Medicine. His bibliography includes over 800 articles and he has edited several books including a textbook on vaccines. Dr. Plotkin has received honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Rouen and the Complutense University of Madrid, He also has received the French Legion of Honor. Dr. Plotkin developed the rubella vaccine now in standard use throughout the world, is codeveloper of the pentavalent rotavirus vaccine, and has worked extensively on the development and application of other vaccines including anthrax, oral polio, rabies, varicella, and cytomegalovirus

Consultant and Emeritus Professor of the University of Pennsylvania, Vaxconsult, LLP

Paul Offit, M.D.

Director, Vaccine Education Center, Division of Infectious Diseases, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Dr. Kate Broderick is the Chief Innovation Officer at Maravai LifeSciences, leading their Office of Science and Innovation. Dr. Broderick has a broad background in product development in the DNA therapeutic and drug delivery field. Prior to joining Maravai in 2022, Dr. Broderick spent 15 years at Inovio Pharmaceuticals, and has served as a principal investigator for a variety of grants and awards from government agencies and non-profits, including the National Institutes of Health. She received her PhD from the University of Glasgow in Scotland and completed her post-doctoral research at the University of California, San Diego.

Chief Innovation Officer, Maravai LifeSciences

Dr. Alessandro Sette has devoted more than 35 years of study towards understanding the immune response, measuring immune activity, and developing disease intervention strategies against cancer, autoimmunity, allergy, and infectious diseases. Dr. Sette is currently a Member and Head of the La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI) Division of Vaccine Discovery as well as chair of the Institute's Center for Infectious Diseases. Dr. Sette has a doctorate in Biological Sciences from the University of Rome and did postdoctoral work at the National Jewish Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine in Denver, Colorado. In 1988, Dr. Sette joined Howard Grey, M.D. at the newly founded Cytel, in La Jolla, and was also appointed as an adjunct assistant professor at The Scripps Research Institute. He founded Epimmune in 1997, where he served both as Vice President of Research and Chief Scientific Officer until 2002, when he joined LJI.

Dr. Sette is a leader in the field of T cell epitope-MHC interactions, beginning with his contribution to the discovery of the biological function of MHC in the mid 80s to mid 90s. From those studies he and his collaborators further developed the notion that different MHCs have distinct binding specificities that can be used to predict epitopes. The Sette group also discovered and characterized how MHC variants can be grouped according to broad common functional specificities (MHC supertypes), greatly facilitating epitope classification, characterization and understanding the basic rules of epitope-MHC interactions. At the same time, several studies have outlined the fine specificity of different closely related alleles, in some cases clearly associated with predisposition to disease resistance or susceptibility.

The laboratory is defining in chemical terms the specific structures (epitopes) that the immune system recognizes, and uses this knowledge to measure and to define the immune signatures associated with productive/protective immunity versus deficient immunity/immunopathology. The laboratory’s broad disease focus is ranges from HIV, HBV, HCV and emerging diseases to dengue viruses, malaria and tuberculosis.

Furthermore, Dr. Sette’s team has adapted the methods and techniques developed in the context of infectious disease to understand the T cell response to common allergens. These efforts have resulted in the discovery of previously unknown human T cell epitopes that may be key in the initiation of allergic responses, and to the development of biochemical and bioinformatic tools that have been used to map the human T cell response to a large panel of common allergens.

Finally, Dr. Sette has overseen the design and curation efforts of the national Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), a freely available, widely used bioinformatics resource, since its inception in the early 2000s. The IEDB catalogs all epitopes for humans, non-human primates, rodents, and other vertebrates, from allergens, infectious diseases, autoantigens and transplants, and includes epitope prediction tools to accelerate immunology research around the world.

Professor and Member, Co-Director LJI Center for Vaccine Innovation

KATHRYN M. EDWARDS, M.D.

Sarah H. Sell and Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Pediatrics

WALTER A. ORENSTEIN, M.D.

Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Epidemiology, Global Health, and Pediatrics, Emory University.

RICHARD B. KENNEDY, PH.D.

Dr. Kennedy earned his B.S. degree in Microbiology from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. in Immunology from Mayo Clinic with postdoctoral training in immunogenetics and vaccinology. Dr. Kennedy is a Professor of Medicine and the Co-Director of the Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group. He has over 140 peer-reviewed publications in journals including: Lancet Infectious Diseases, the Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Frontiers in Immunology, 8 book chapters, and has participated in well over 100 scientific posters, abstracts, and presentations at national and international vaccine, virology, and immunology meetings. He is the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Vaccine: X and an Associate Editor at Vaccine. He is a member of the American Association of Immunologists and the American Society for Microbiology. He has served as an ad hoc reviewer on dozens of NIH study sections and has participated in multiple international review panels (e.g., Wellcome Trust, Research Councils UK, Science Foundation of Ireland, European Research Council).

Dr. Kennedy has 4 R01 grants from NIH funding his work on viral vaccine immunology. He is also the PI of a CDC contract using single cell technologies to evaluate the T cell response to influenza vaccination and is a site PI for one of three NIAID Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Centers. Dr. Kennedy’s research emphasis is on understanding the factors driving the tremendous diversity in human immune responses to vaccines against viral pathogens including: influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, SARS-CoV-2, smallpox, varicella, and zika. His group focuses on the role of host genetic variation, age and immunosenescence, nutrition, and other factors on the development and maintenance of immunity following vaccination. The laboratory employs systems biology and vaccinomics approaches to better understand the complex interactions that occur during the development of vaccine response with the goal of predicting and controlling vaccine-induced immune responses. Dr. Kennedy also investigates the use of peptide-based vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, vaccinia, Mpox, influenza, and zika virus.

Professor of Medicine, Co-Director, Mayo Clinic Vaccine Research Group

DEREK O' HAGAN, PH.D.

Senior Advisor Vaccines R&D, Senior Fellow at GSK

Ofer-Levy, PH.D.

Staff Physician & Principal Investigator, Director, Precision Vaccines Program, Division of Infectious Diseases, Boston Children's Hospital, Professor, Harvard Medical School

Ralph S. Baric, PH.D.

Ralph S. Baric, PhD is the University of North Carolina William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology in the Gillings School of Global Public Health and Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine. He earned a BS in Zoology and a PhD in Microbiology from North Carolina State University. He performed postdoctoral research in virology and immunology at the University of Southern California before joining the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Baric’s research focuses on the pathogenesis and emergence mechanisms of RNA viruses, focusing on coronaviruses, flaviviruses and noroviruses. His group has made seminal contributions in virus genetics, identifying host susceptibility genes that regulate virus pathogenesis and emergence, and studying mechanisms of virus cross species transmission, pathogenesis, and virulence. His laboratory participated in the development of several antiviral drugs (remdesivir, molnupiravir), therapeutic antibodies and vaccines (Moderna, Janssen) targeting the SARS-CoV2 virus which is responsible for the COVID19 pandemic. He is a member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and American Society for Virology. He is a Harvey Weaver Scholar from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and an Established Investigator from the American Heart Association. He served as chair-elect and subsequently the chair of ASM Division T, RNA viruses. He was a finalist for the World Technology Award, a senior editor for PLoS Pathogens, and member of the Journal of Virology editorial board. He served as a standing member of the NIH VirB study section from 2005-2009 and NIH CMIA study section (2020-2024). He received the Innovation/Inspiration Award for UNC Faculty Research, the Lifetime achievement award from the Triangle Business Journal, Norma Berryhill Distinguished Lecturer, the UNC System’s O. Max Gardner Award recipient and the North Carolina’s Governor’s Award recipient. He is a fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology and elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At the Congressional Biomedical Research Congress in early 2020, Baric updated the House of Representative members and staffs regarding the dangers of the SARS-CoV2 pandemic, including research priorities and strategies to mitigate risk.

University of North Carolina, William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology, Gillings School of Global Public Health and Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine

Alexander Bukreyev, PH.D.

Distinguished Professor of Virology and Vaccinology, University of Texas Medical Branch