Rino Rappuoli is Scientific Director of the Biotecnopolo di Siena Foundation, Italy. He is also Honorary Professor of Vaccinology at Imperial College, London, and Senior Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Siena. Prior positions held: Head of External R&D and Chief Scientist at GSK Vaccines, head of Vaccine R&D at Novartis, CSO at Chiron Corporation, head R&D at Sclavo.

He earned his PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Siena, Italy, and was visiting scientist at Rockefeller University and Harvard Medical School.

He is elected member of US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Royal Society of London, and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Awards received: Gold Medal by the Italian President, Albert B Sabin Gold Medal, Canada Gairdner International Award, European Inventor Award for Lifetime Achievement, Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize and the Robert Koch Award. He is President of the International Union of Microbiological Societies. He was nominated third most influential person worldwide in the field of vaccines (Terrapin).   He has published 778 works in peer-reviewed journals and an H-index of 151.

He introduced novel scientific concepts: genetic detoxification; cellular microbiology; reverse vaccinology; pangenome. Developed licensed vaccines: acellular pertussis containing a non-toxic mutant of pertussis toxin; first conjugate vaccine against meningococcus C; MF59-adjuvanted seasonal and pandemic influenza MF59 was the first vaccine adjuvant after aluminum salts; meningococcus B; CRM 197 used as carrier in many conjugate vaccines.

Founder of the GSK Vaccines Institute for Global Health (GVGH). Dr. Rappuoli is among the world scientific leaders dedicated to the sustainability of global health.

Scientific Director, Biotecnopolo di Siena Foundation, Italy

As Chief Medical Officer, Paul Burton oversees medical affairs and safety.

Dr. Burton joined Moderna after spending sixteen years with Johnson & Johnson. Since March 2020, he served as Chief Global Medical Affairs Officer of Janssen Pharmaceuticals where he was responsible for Janssen’s worldwide medical affairs strategy and execution. Previously, he served as Janssen’s Vice President and Head, Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medical Affairs. Dr. Burton also led the Johnson & Johnson collaboration with APPLE for the digital HEARTLINE™ study, and previously led clinical operations for all therapeutic areas across the Americas.

Dr. Burton has an M.D. from the University of London, is board certified in surgery and is a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons with specialist training in cardiothoracic surgery. He holds a Ph.D. in cardiovascular molecular and cellular biology from Imperial College in London and is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology. He has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals.

Chief Medical Officer, Moderna

Thomas Breuer MD, MSc, is GSK’s Chief Global Health Officer, leading the Global Health team, a non-commercial group with a ring-fenced budget and more than 200 people, where success is measured by health impact not financial return. In this role, Thomas is responsible for Global Health R&D, which is developing new medicines and vaccines against high-burden infectious diseases in lower income countries and for Global Health Access & Capability activities, which are pursuing equitable access to GSK’s portfolio and pipeline. Before taking on his current role, Thomas led GSK’s Vaccines Development Organization for a decade and has been instrumental in the development and licensure of many of GSK’s vaccines. More recently, he was the Chief Medical Officer for GSK Vaccines. He began his career in internal medicine and public health. After six years in patient care he worked at the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, before joining the German Public Health Institute (Robert Koch-Institute) as Head of Infectious Disease Epidemiology in Berlin.

Chief Global Health Officer, Global Health Management, GSK

Anuradha Gupta joined the Sabin Vaccine Institute as President of Global Immunization in October 2022. A veteran public health leader, Anuradha has in her previous roles spearheaded a host of successful global initiatives to improve the health of women and children and harness the full power of vaccines. Her work has created profound impact at a global scale, saving and improving millions of lives.

Prior to Sabin, Anuradha spent several years at Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, as its deputy CEO. She is globally acclaimed for her efforts to center Gavi policies, programs, and partnerships around vaccine equity, gender and communities. She also pioneered the concept of zero-dose children – an idea that is both audacious and ambitious for its focus on children who have not received even a single dose of the most basic vaccines. The multi-dimensional impact and importance of reaching these children with vaccines and other essential services was widely embraced and zero-dose children are now front and center of the Global Immunization Agenda 2030 and incorporated into country programs. She was also the guiding force behind Gavi’s $500 million Equity Accelerator Fund which includes an innovative initiative aimed at reaching zero-dose children in conflict zones and drought-afflicted areas in the Sahel region and the Horn of Africa.

Under Anuradha’s leadership, Gavi won many accolades and rolled out a new framework for a country-centric engagement strategy, moving away from a one-size fits all approach and building differentiated, transparent and accountable partnerships with remarkable success. During this period, a record number of vaccine introductions were achieved in low- and middle-income countries, the coverage of key Gavi funded vaccines became higher than that in the rest of the world and vaccine preventable child deaths declined. Those achievements contributed to Gavi receiving the prestigious Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award in 2019 for providing sustained access to childhood vaccines in the world’s poorest countries.

Anuradha’s leadership on gender equity led to Gavi becoming the first institution in global health to accomplish the Equal Salary Employer certification, ensuring women were recruited, remunerated, rewarded and recognized, at par with men. She has worked tirelessly to shine the spotlight on gender barriers that impede access to vaccines and to craft creative and empathetic solutions in partnership with countries and communities.

Prior to Gavi, Anuradha served in the Indian Administrative Service (the IAS as it’s called is India’s preeminent civil service) and held leadership positions in a wide range of sectors including health, education, nutrition and finance. As Mission Director of the National Health Mission of India, she ran the largest – and possibly most complex – public health program in the world, with an annual budget of $3.5 billion. Under her leadership, India went from a country with half of the global polio burden to zero polio cases – the successful eradication of polio in India is still considered an exemplar for global health and a public health feat.

While in India, she pioneered the concept of the integrated Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health (or RMCNH as it’s more commonly called) which shaped global discourse and initiatives including the World Bank’s Global Financing Facility. She was also the architect of a wide range of transformative initiatives that enabled free-of-cost access to health care for millions of women and children including family planning services, all resulting in an impressive reduction in maternal and child deaths as well as fertility rates in India.

Anuradha has contributed towards several important global health initiatives. She served as a member of the Steering Committee for Child Survival Call to Action, co-chaired the Stakeholder Group for the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning and was a member of the Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) Reference Group. Both these watershed initiatives brought renewed momentum to reducing child deaths and expanding access to family planning services. She also played a role in shaping the Global Financing Facility (GFF) and was a long-standing member of the GFF Investors Group. She was the co-chair and board member of the Partnership for Maternal Newborn Child Health (PMNCH), ensuring health of women and children remains an important priority under the Sustainable Development Goals. She was a founder member of the Equity Reference Group and played a pivotal role in advancing the equity agenda. As member of the Immunization Agenda 2030 Partners Council, she was a key influencer in shaping immunization goals and strategies. Anuradha also served on the Global Advisory Committee of the Merck for Mothers Initiative, leveraging her extensive experience to improve the quality of maternal care in countries with the highest maternal deaths.

A strong believer in life-long learning, Gupta holds an MBA from the University of Wollongong in Australia and received executive education from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Stanford Graduate School of Business and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. In 2015, she was named one of “300 Women Leaders in Global Health” by the Global Health Centre of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. She was profiled among the ten most influential women IAS officers in a recently released book.

In recognition of the enormous impact created by her work, in 2021, Anuradha received the University of Wollongong’s Alumni Award for Social Impact. As a testament to her ability to forge strong partnership with countries to save lives, she was conferred the highest civilian award for public service by the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Cross of Labour by the President of Laos for contributions to the health of the people in that country. She was most recently awarded the Advance Global Australian Award, another stellar recognition of the global impact of her many accomplishments.

President, Global Immunization, Sabin Vaccine Institute

Dr. Jay A. Berzofsky was appointed Chief, Vaccine Branch, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, in 2003, after being Chief, Molecular Immunogenetics and Vaccine Research Section, since 1987. He graduated Summa cum Laude from Harvard (1967), and received a Ph.D.-M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM). After interning at Massachusetts General Hospital, he joined NIH in 1974. Dr. Berzofsky's research has focused on antigen processing/presentation, epitope structure, cytokine and regulatory cell control of T cell function and avidity, NKT cells, and translation to the design and clinical trials of vaccines for AIDS, cancer, and viruses causing cancer. He has 521 scientific publications. He was elected President of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (1993-94), a member of the Association of American Physicians, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Distinguished Alumnus of the Year for 2007 by AECOM. He was elected Chair of the Medical Sciences Section of the AAAS for 2007-2008. He received the NIH Director’s Award and the NCI Merit Award in 2008, another NCI Director’s Merit Award in 2011, and a Career Award “for his important contribution to tumor immunotherapy” from the European Academy of Tumor Immunology in 2018.

Chief, Vaccine Branch, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute

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, Center for Autoimmunity and Inflammation, Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research, La Jolla Institute for Immunology

Dr. Ofer Levy was born to and raised by the artist Benjamin Levy and music composer Hannah Levy in New York City, where he graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. After graduating from Yale College (B.S., Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry), Dr. Levy entered the Medical Scientist (MD/PhD) Training Program at New York University School of Medicine. There he earned his PhD under the mentorship of Drs. Peter Elsbach and Jerrold Weiss, characterizing neutrophil-derived antimicrobial proteins and peptides including bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI) and cathelicidins. Inspired by his wife Sharon’s example, he chose Pediatrics and completed both residency and fellowship (Infectious Diseases) at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is currently Professor at Harvard Medical School as well as principal investigator, staff physician and the Director of the Precisions Vaccine Program in the Division of Infectious Diseases, Boston Children’s Hospital. The Precision Vaccines Program is an academic program that fosters international collaboration between academia, government, and industry for development of vaccine formulations optimized to protect vulnerable populations. Dr. Levy’s laboratory is focused on modeling vaccine-induced human immune responses in vitro using a variety of platforms including three-dimensional microphysiologic systems as well as global molecular (“OMIC”) approaches to accelerate and de-risk development of vaccines optimized for populations with distinct immune responses, including those at the extremes of age who suffer the most infections. He currently leads or co-leads multiple NIH/NIAID-supported studies, including (a) an Adjuvant Discovery Program contract, leveraging robotic and immunologic approaches to discover, characterize, and formulate novel small molecule adjuvants that may enhance vaccine responses of vulnerable populations such as infants and older adults; (b) an international Human Immunology Project Consortium effort employing systems biology to define biomarkers of neonatal vaccine immunogenicity and (c) a project on Immune Development in Early Life (IDEAL). Dr. Levy also serves on the U.S. FDA Vaccines and Related Biologic Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and has appeared in major media including CNN, FoxNews, Scientific American, National Geographic, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts along with his wife Dr. Sharon Levy and their three children.

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

Hanneke Schuitemaker, Ph.D., is the Head of Viral Vaccine Discovery and Translational Medicine at Janssen Vaccines & Prevention B.V. She has been in this role since 2010 and oversees Janssen’s viral vaccine programs including investigational vaccine candidates for HIV, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), Ebola, Zika, Influenza and COVID-19. In addition, she is a Professor of Virology at the Amsterdam University Medical Center.

Hanneke Schuitemaker is a medical biologist by training, received her Ph.D. in Medicine in 1992 at the University of Amsterdam and worked for more than 20 years on the pathogenesis of HIV-1 infection, first at Sanquin (1989-2007), the blood supply foundation in the Netherlands, where she was the Chair of the department of Clinical Viro-Immunology (1998-2007), and then at the Amsterdam University Medical Center (2008-2010), where she was the Chair of the Department of Experimental Immunology. From mid-2003 to mid-2004, she worked as a visiting scientist at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. She successfully trained more than 30 Ph.D. students and co-authored more than 340 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

VP, Head of Viral Vaccine Discovery and Translational Medicine, Janssen Vaccines and Prevention B.V.

Dr. Karin Bok is the Director of Pandemic Preparedness and Emergency Response at the Vaccine Research Center, National Institutes of Health. She provides expertise for the preclinical and clinical development of several preparedness and response medical countermeasures, including preventive and therapeutic products against Ebola, Zika, Nipah, Influenza, and Coronavirus. Karin collaborates with government colleagues and external stakeholders to prepare and accelerate the response to an infectious disease emergency and advance the study of preventive measures that target unmet medical needs. She is currently part of H-CORE (former Operation Warp Speed) contributing to accelerating the development and testing of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 in the US. She is also part of the senior team working on the advanced development of broadly neutralizing monoclonal antibodies for HIV, as well as universal influenza and RSV vaccines.

Previously, Dr. Bok was a Senior Vaccine Scientific Advisor at the National Vaccine Program Office, within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. Dr. Bok led the vaccine safety portfolio and advised on vaccine research and development issues. She also directed research and policy studies on vaccines administered to pregnant women. Karin represented NVPO and HHS in several executive scientific advisory committees, such as the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC, FDA), the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV, HRSA), and the Task Force on Research Specific to Pregnant Women and Lactating Women (PRGLAC, NICHD) to name a few.

In addition, Dr. Bok has more than 20 years’ experience working on research and discovery programs, leading her own scientific studies focused on vaccines, antibody products, antivirals, diagnostics, and virus evolution of gastrointestinal viruses.

Her international scientific experience includes managing and conducting research through Argentina’s national gastroenteritis surveillance program, the clinical testing of the rotavirus vaccine, and the reimplementation of the National Smallpox Vaccine Program.

Acting Deputy Director, Director of Pandemic Preparedness and Emergency Response, Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health

Dr. Mary Anne Marovich joined NIAID’s Division of AIDS as the Director of the Vaccine Research Program in 2012 to lead the development, strategic planning and coordination of global clinical testing and preclinical research on HIV vaccines and biologics. The Program has built an increasingly diverse and complex portfolio of vaccine candidates, monoclonal antibodies, and adjuvants for early-stage clinical testing through large scale international efficacy trials to find effective and acceptable protection from HIV infection. More recently, Marovich supported the federal COVID response (formerly Operation Warp Speed) as co-chair of the clinical vaccine development team and lead on anti-viral monoclonal antibodies for prevention.

Marovich comes to NIH from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR)/Military HIV Research Program, where she served as chief of vaccine research and development since 2005. In that position, she led, directed, and developed a global HIV vaccine research program. Additionally, Marovich directed the Dendritic Cell Laboratory and the MHRP’s Rockville Vaccine Assessment Center and led multiple early-stage HIV and non-HIV vaccine clinical trials. She also served as chair of the WRAIR Institutional Review Board.

Marovich earned bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry and chemistry at Illinois State University and a medical degree at Loyola University of Chicago. In 1993, she completed her internal medicine residency, then became chief medical resident, followed by clinical infectious disease training at the University of Colorado. During residency, Marovich earned a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Marovich worked in NIAID’s Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases as a clinical fellow studying immunology from 1995-1998 and as a clinical associate from 1998-99 while she completed her infectious disease fellowship.

A professor of medicine with the Uniformed Services University’s Department of Medicine, Marovich has won several honors for academic research and teaching excellence. She is a member of the American Medical Association, Infectious Disease Society of America, American Society of Tropical Medicine, and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians.

NIH, NIAID, Division of AIDS, Director, Vaccine Research Program

Swati Gupta, DrPH, MPH, leads IAVI’s Emerging Infectious Disease product portfolio and the organization's epidemiology work. She has a particular focus in leveraging IAVI’s recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (rVSV) platform and expertise to expand product development efforts beyond HIV, including leading the vaccine development programs for other emerging infectious diseases such as Lassa Fever, Marburg, and most recently SARS-CoV-2.

Previously, Gupta was an executive director with Merck Vaccines, where she worked on the development of innovative partnership models to address cross-cutting issues related to vaccine science and technology. As part of this role, she worked with key external stakeholders to facilitate accelerated Ebola vaccine development efforts to enhance preparedness for the ongoing public health crisis and for potential future outbreaks.

From 2000 to 2014, Gupta was in the Department of Epidemiology at Merck Research Laboratories where she led a number international, prospective cohort studies in support of vaccine and infectious disease products in development, including research on diseases such as HIV, HPV, influenza, dengue, and C.difficile. From 1998 to 2000, Gupta worked as a scientist in HIV Surveillance at the Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre (British equivalent of the U.S. CDC) in the U.K. She has also worked at the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control at the New York City Department of Health.

Gupta holds a doctorate in epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a Master of Public Health in infectious disease epidemiology from Yale University School of Medicine.

VP, Emerging Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology, IAVI

Dr. Dan Barouch received his Ph.D. in immunology from Oxford University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is currently the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine and Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery. His laboratory focuses on studying the immunology and virology of HIV-1 infection and developing novel vaccine and eradication strategies. His group has also applied their vaccine expertise to preclinical and clinical studies of other infectious diseases of global significance, including Zika virus, tuberculosis, and most recently SARS-CoV-2. His recent work contributed to the development of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, which is now being rolled out in the United States and throughout the world. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020.

William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, Director, Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Weiner directs a translational molecular immunology research team focused on creating novel immunotherapy approaches for disease prevention and treatment using synthetic nucleic acid technology. Accomplishments of the team and collaborators include the first clinical studies of DNA vaccines, with a focus on advances in gene optimization and electroporation (EP)-mediated DNA delivery. Their work has revitalized the field, rapidly and safely moving new advances into human studies. These include the world’s first Zika vaccine, the first MERS vaccine, an advanced Ebola Vaccine, and a novel HIV vaccine, among others. Additionally, the Weiner laboratory has helped to develop immunotherapy approaches that are currently in clinical testing for HPV-associated cancer, prostate and other cancers. The first clinically efficacious therapeutic DNA vaccine for HPV cervical intraepithelial neoplasia CIN) has moved into a licensure trial (REVEAL). Weiner and his lab have received several awards/honors for their accomplishments, including the Vaccine Industry Associations Outstanding Academic Research Laboratory (2015 & 2016), being named one of the Top 20 Translational Research Laboratories of the Year (Nature Biotechnology 2016, 2017 & 2018) and the 2014 Stone family Award for Cancer Research. Weiner was named one of the nation’s top 40 most influential vaccine scientists in 2014, received the 2011 NIH Directors Translational Research Award and is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 2011 and a fellow of the International Society for Vaccines, for which he served as president from 2018 to 2020. Weiner is an avid trainer, advisor and advocate for students, fellows and junior faculty as he is highly committed to developing the careers of young scientists.

Weiner received his B.S. in biology from Stony Brook University, N.Y., and his M.S. in biology from the University of Cincinnati. He then earned a Ph.D. in developmental biology with a focus on molecular immunology from the University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine. Weiner joined the University of Pennsylvania as a research fellow in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, where he rose through the ranks to become Professor. He held a second appointment from The Wistar Institute from 1990 to 1993. At Penn, he served as co-chair of the Tumor Virology Program of the Abramson Cancer Institute and as chair of the Gene Therapy and Vaccine Training Program.

Executive Vice President, The Wistar Institute, Director, Vaccine & Immunotherapy Center

Marco Pravetoni is the Rick L. Seaver Endowed Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, and Director of a Center for Medication Development for Substance Use Disorders and Overdose. Prior to joining the University of Washington, Marco was a Tenured Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, MN. He earned a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Minnesota in 2008. His NIH-funded research program focuses on the pre-clinical and clinical development of vaccines, monoclonal antibodies, and small molecules to treat opioid use disorders and reduce fatal overdoses. Other interests include biologics targeting chemical and biological threats.

Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Washington School of Medicine, Director, Center for Medication Development for Substance Use Disorders and Overdose

IBM Quantum, IBM Research Almaden

Dr. Alex Bukreyev worked at the Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, NIAID, NIH, in 1995 – 2010. In 2010 he accepted a position of Professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in connection with the launch of the Galveston National Laboratory. Dr. Bukreyev expertise includes molecular virology, emerging viral infections, viral immunology, vaccinology.

Dr. Bukreyev served as a member of the NIH Vaccine against Microbial Diseases study section from 2017 to 2021

Professor, Co-Principal Investigator Molecular Mechanisms of the Dysregulated Immune Response to Ebola Virus, Departments of Pathology and Microbiology & Immunology, Galveston National Laboratory, University of Texas Medical Branch

Chief Scientific Officer, ExpreS2ion Biotechnologies

Dr. Hoffman has over 30 years of experience building and managing large, successful research and development programs. From 1987-2001 he was malaria program director, Naval Medical Research Center, where his team were leaders in subunit malaria vaccine development and sequencing the Plasmodium falciparum genome and published the first studies in the world showing DNA vaccines elicited killer T cells in humans. In 2001 he joined Celera Genomics as Sr. VP biologics and created a program to utilize genomics and proteomics to produce biopharmaceuticals, begin the field of personalized (precision) medicine, and sequence the genome of the mosquito, Anopheles gambiae. He has held several professorships, chairs or serves on multiple advisory boards, is past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, authored > 490 scientific publications, and has > 60 patents. He is the most highly cited author in the world for scientific papers on malaria published between 1995 and 2005, was listed as the third most influential person in the world vaccine industry in 2015 when he received the Vaccine Industry Excellence Award for Best Biotech CEO. He received his BA from Penn, MD from Cornell, and Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and did residency training at UC San Diego. He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine in 2004, and received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Weill Cornell Medical College in 2016.

Chief Executive and Scientific Officer, Sanaria Inc.

Dr. Amara is a Charles Howard Candler Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory Vaccine Center, Emory National Primate Research Center of Emory University. He received his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, India and did his postdoctoral fellowship at Emory University. His research is focused on the development of vaccines for infectious diseases such as HIV, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), HCV and Tuberculosis. Amara’s lab has pioneered the heterologous prime/boost vaccination approaches using DNA, modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) and novel protein immunogens for vaccine delivery. A HIV vaccine based on these vectors was shown to be safe in healthy human volunteers and completed phase 2 studies in humans. Newer versions of this vaccine are under development and showed promise in the macaque model. More recently, Amara’s laboratory developed MVA and RBD-trimer based vaccines for COVID-19 and these vaccines showed promise in the NHP model. The MVA-COVID-19 vaccine is being manufactured in India for human testing. In addition, Amara’s lab is developing novel vaccination strategies to induce a strong mucosal antibody response and tissue resident memory CD8 T cells. Amara’s lab is also developing novel therapies for HIV by targeting the PD-1 co-inhibitory pathway combined with therapeutic vaccination. He published more than 130 peer-reviewed manuscripts and received multiple grants from NIH.

Charles Howard Candler Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Associate Director, Vaccine Development, Emory Vaccine Center, Co-Director, Developmental Core, Emory CFAR, Emory National Primate Research Center, Emory University

Dr. Robert O. Dillman, M.D., is Chief Medical Officer of AIVITA Biomedical. Previously, Dr. Dillman served as Vice President of Oncology at Caladrius Biosciences, Inc. (formerly Neostem, Inc.), a leading development and manufacturing partner to the cell therapy industry. From May 2014 to January 6, 2016 he also served as Member of Caladrius’ Melanoma Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Dillman has served as the Executive Medical Director of the Hoag Hospital Institute for Research and Education, in Newport Beach, California, a position he has held since 2011. Prior to this position he served as Executive Medical Director of the Hoag Family Cancer Institute from 2008-2011, and was Medical Director of the Hoag Cancer Center from 1989-2008. He has also served as a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, Irvine (“UCI”) since 1989. He also held the position of Assistant Director of the UCSD Cancer Center and Chief of Hematology/Oncology at the San Diego VA Medical Center, then Director of Experimental Clinical Oncology and Associate Director of the Ida M. Green Cancer Center of Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California.

Dr. Dillman chaired the Cancer Biotherapy Research Group from 1990 to 2002, and is a past President and board Member of the International Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer. He directed a cell biology research laboratory focused on patient-specific cell therapies for more than 20 years, and is an internationally recognized leader in cancer immunotherapy approaches, including monoclonal antibodies, adoptive cell therapies, IL-2, and cancer vaccines. He has authored more than 300 medical publications and is recognized internationally for his work in lung cancer, lymphoma, Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL), melanoma, and kidney cancers. He was the first physician in Orange County, California to be selected as one of the Best Doctors in America in Hematology and/or Oncology. In 2006, Dr. Dillman was named Orange County Physician of the Year by the Orange County Medical Association. In 2008, he received Hoag Hospital’s first endowed chair, the Grace E. Hoag Endowed Chair of Oncology and in 2010, he became one of only five recipients in the world to receive the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer.

Dr. Dillman received his undergraduate degree from Stanford University and medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine. He also completed both his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and served as a Chief Resident. He completed his fellowship in Hematology/Oncology at University of California, San Diego Medical Center.

Chief Medical Officer, AIVITA Biomedical, Inc., Clinical Professor of Medicine, UC Irvine

Chief Scientific Officer, Cellular Technology Limited, Adjunct Associate Professor of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University

Chief Technology Officer, Serimmune

Pharmaceutical Medicine, Infectious Diseases, Member, IDSA: Infectious Diseases Society of America. Shahin Gharakhanian MD Consulting LLC

Dr. He is an endowed Professor at the University of Georgia and the inventor of Blue Lake’s PIV5 platform. He has over 20 years of experience in vaccine research with over 70 peer-reviewed publications.

President & CEO, CyanVac LLC

He previously held professorial positions at the Harvard Medical School, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston) and Cambridge University (UK). He has received awards from the Wellcome Trust (UK), Cancer Research Institute (New York) and the Leukemia/Lymphoma Society (USA) and is an elected Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (2002), the Academy of Medical Sciences (2002) and the Royal Society of Canada (2021). Professor Rudd’s research focus is on uncovering T-cell receptors and signaling mechanisms in immunotherapy and the therapeutic feasibility of novel small molecules in anti-tumor immunity.

Professeur, Faculte de Medicine, Dept de microbiologie, infectiologie et immunologie, Director-Cell Signaling and Immunotherapy Section, Centre de Recherche Hopital Maisonneuve-Rosemont

Prior to being named Chief Scientific Officer at Codiak, Dr. Sathyanarayanan was Senior Vice President, Preclinical Development. In this role, he designed and led the preclinical evaluation of all of Codiak’s development programs in oncology/immuno-oncology, including exoIL-12™ and exoSTING™, and exoASO™-STAT6. Dr. Sathyanarayanan joined Codiak in 2017 as Vice President, Biology and Translational Sciences after spending four years developing biomarker strategies to enable clinical development of novel cancer immunotherapy agents, including JTX-2011 from inception to Phase 2 clinical development, at Jounce Therapeutics as Senior Director, Translational Sciences. He began his career in drug discovery at Merck Research Laboratories where he was responsible for building translational oncology strategy for multiple biologics and small molecule programs including Dalotuzumab and Ridaforolimus. Dr. Sathyanarayanan completed his post-doctoral research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in microbiology and cell biology from the Indian Institute of Science and masters and undergraduate degrees in biochemistry from PSG College.

Chief Scientific Officer, Codiak

Broadly, our focus is on developing novel nanomedicine approaches to meet unmet needs in treating, diagnosing or preventing disease. We strive to use good engineering principles to iteratively design, synthesize, characterize, test and validate next generation nanoparticles and biosensors with the ultimate goal of making a translational impact on improving human health. Developing safer, organic nanoparticles that will allow superior treatment options for cancer therapy is a major research thrust.

SUNY Empire Innovation Associate Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, University of Buffalo

Dr. Connors received his M.D. from Temple University and was trained in pediatrics at Tufts New England Medical Center. He joined the NIAID Laboratory of Infectious Diseases in 1989 to study the immune response to respiratory syncytial virus. He was trained in infectious diseases at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center and at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He joined the Laboratory of Immunoregulation in 1994 to study the human immune response to HIV. Dr. Connors has published a series of discoveries that have laid the framework for current understanding of immunologic control of HIV in some rare patients and loss of immunologic control in the majority of infected patients.

Chief, HIV-Specific Immunity Section, NIAID/LIR

Dr. Blanco obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He pursued his studies in infectious diseases and the host response to infection, first, in a postdoctoral position at NICHD, NIH, and then as a Senior Scientist at USUHS, MD. In 2010, Dr. Blanco co-founded Sigmovir Biosystems Inc. (SBI), a Maryland biotech company focused on the study of viral infections, with emphasis on human respiratory viral infections. Since the beginning of his career, and as independent investigator, he published > 100 peer-reviewed articles in the field of infectious diseases and secured many NIH research grants including RO1s, R21s, SBIRs, and STTRs. Dr. Blanco’s laboratory has particularly interest in studies on viruses that produce the largest impact on human health throughout life: respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza, rhinovirus, and SARS-CoV2. Using the cotton rat model (Sigmodon sp.) due to its permissiveness to non-adapted strains of all these viruses, Dr. Blanco’s laboratory studies innate and adaptive response, explores different inflammatory pathways affecting infection, determines specific pathological outcomes in different populations (different ages, immunological status, or e.g., during pregnancy or immune suppression), and tests vaccines and therapeutics

President and Scientific Director, Sigmovir Biosystems Inc.