Barry MARSHALL, Australia
Friday, June 16, 09.00 - 09:45hrs, Auditorio I

The organizers are pleased to announce that our list of plenary speakers now includes Nobel Laureate, Dr. Barry J. Marshall, recipient of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Marshall is an Australian physician and Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Western Australia. In 1982, he and colleague, Dr. Robin Warren, performed the initial culture of H. pylori and developed their hypothesis related to the bacterial cause of peptic ulcer and gastric cancer.
Marshall and Warren discovered that a bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, causes of one of the most common and important diseases of mankind, peptic ulcer disease. This disease is now cured by a simple course of antibiotics.
Their work has now been acknowledged as the most significant discovery in the history of gastroenterology and is compared to the development of the polio vaccine and the eradication of smallpox.
Professor Marshall continues research related to H. pylori and runs a molecular biology lab at UWA. His address is titled, "From Social to Infectious Disease,Ulcers and the Discovery of Helicobacter pylori."
Dr.Marshall,along with the five other exciting plenaries highlighted in previous issues of the ISID NEWS, will provide participants with state-of-the-art updates on a topics of special interest.

Bonnie BASSLER, United States
Friday, June 16, 14:30 - 15:15hrs, Auditorio I

Dr. Bassler is a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University. She received a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of California at Davis, and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the Johns Hopkins University.  She performed postdoctoral work in Genetics at the Agouron Institute, and she joined the Princeton faculty in 1994.  The research in her laboratory focuses on the molecular mechanisms that bacteria use for intercellular communication. This process is called quorum sensing. Dr. Bassler is the Director of Graduate Studies in the Molecular Biology Department, and she teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. Dr. Bassler was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2002. She was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2002 and made a fellow of AAAS in 2004. She was given the 2003 Theobald Smith Society Waksman Award and she is the 2006 recipient of the ASM Eli Lilly Investigator Award.  Bassler is an editor for Molecular Microbiology and Annual Reviews of Genetics, and she is an associate editor for the Journal of Bacteriology. She serves on grant, fellowship, and award review panels for the NSF, ASM, AAM, Keck Foundation, and the Damon Runyon Cancer Foundation.

Antoni TORRES, Spain
Saturday, June 17, 09.00 - 09:45hrs, Auditorio I

Antoni Torres graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the Univesidad de Barcelona in 1977 and obtained a doctoral degree from the Universidad de Barcelona in 1983. He worked in the USA (1987-1988) in the Department of Anesthesia of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston (Harvard) in 1987-1988, and received a Master's degree in Hospital Management, from the Universidad de Barcelona in 2001. Currently he holds the position of Chief of Pulmonology and Critical Care Department at the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona since 2000 and is a senior consultant since 2005. He is a physician with a national and international reputations, with expertise in pulmonary infections (pneumonia, COPD, bronchiectasia and in inmunosuppression; withdrawal of mechanical ventilation; non-invasive mechanical ventilation; and acute respiratory distress syndrome). He has been an Associate Professor (Pulmonology), at the Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Barcelona since 1991.
He is the Coordinator of Group 2.8 ("Management and prevention of infectious, interstitial, and tumoural pulmonary diseases") at the IDIBAPS (Institut of Biomedical Research "August Pi i Sunyer"). He is a current or past member of the editorial boards of the main Pulmonology Journals: European Respiratory Journal, Thorax, Chest and Intensive Care Medicine. He received the Edward Shanoff Award for best contribution in pulmonary physiology, Massachusetts General Hospital (USA), 1988; the Josep Trueta Award in 2001 granted by Acadèmia de Ciències Mèdiques de Catalunya i Balears, for the best scientific career; and the Fundación de Ciencias de la Salud 2001 Award for the 10 best biomedical researchers in the last 4 years. He has participated in developing most of the international guidelines on CAP and HAP. He has published 200 original papers and 218 reviews.

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Adel MAHMOUD, United States
Saturday, June 17, 14:30 - 15:15hrs, Auditorio I

Adel A. F. Mahmoud, M.D., Ph.D. has been named Chief Executive, Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise effective September 2006. Previously he served at Merck & Company, Inc. as President of Merck Vaccines and member of Management Committee. His prior academic services at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospital of Cleveland spanned 25 years concluding as Chairman of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief from 1987 to 1998.
Dr. Mahmoud’s academic pursuits focused on investigations of the biology and function of eosinophils particularly in host resistance to helminthic infections as well as the determinants of infection and disease in human schistosomiasis and other infectious agents. At Merck, Dr. Mahmoud led the effort to develop four new vaccines which are being launched 2005-2006, including: combination of Measles, Mumps, Rubella and Varicella; Rota Virus; Shingles and Human Papillomavirus. Dr. Mahmoud’s leadership in setting strategies for Global Health shaped the agenda of the Forum on Microbial Threats of the Institute of Medicine by tackling topical issues including biological threats and bioterrorism; SARS; Pandemic Flu and others. He has been an active contributor to the scientific literature and authored and edited several textbooks and reports.
Dr. Mahmoud received his M.D. degree from the University of Cairo in 1963 and a Ph.D degree from the University of London, School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1971. He was elected to membership of the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1978, the Association of American Physicians in 1980 and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1987. He received the Bailey K. Ashford Award of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in 1983, and the Squibb Award of the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 1984. Dr. Mahmoud is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the Expert Advisory Panel on Parasitic Diseases of the World Health Organization. He served on the National Advisory Allergy and Infectious Diseases Council and is a past-president of the Central Society for Clinical Research and the International Society for Infectious Diseases.

Bernhard SCHWARTLÄNDER, Switzerland
Sunday, June 18, 09.00 - 09:45hrs, Auditorio I

Bernhard Schwartländer is the Director for Strategic Information and Evaluation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. He previously served the World Health Organization as the Director of its HIV/AIDS Program and the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS as the Director for Evaluation and Strategic Information. In 2000 he undertook a special assignment to the World Bank to perform economic analyses on the cost and impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the responses to it. Before joining the UN,Dr. Schwartländer was the program manager of the national AIDS program in Germany and the Director of the Division of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Robert Koch- Institut in Berlin, the central biomedical and infectious disease research and reference laboratory of the German Federal Ministry of Health. Dr. Schwartländer has published widely in scientific journals and books and taught applied epidemiology in Berlin. Dr. Schwartländer is a physician and holds a PhD in epidemiology. He received his education and professional training in Germany and the US at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Edward FEIL, United Kingdom
Sunday, June 18, 14.30 - 15:15hrs, Auditorio I

Dr. Feil has combined molecular and theoretical approaches to understanding the short- and long-term evolution of pathogenic bacteria, with regard to the local and global epidemiological surveillance of disease. In particular, he was involved in the generation of the first Multilocus Sequence Typing (MLST) scheme for Neisseria meningitidis and has developed a number of analytical approaches to interpreting MLST datasets, including a clustering algorithm, eBURST, which provides hypotheses concerning the patterns of descent within clonal complexes. This approach has provided insights into the evolution of virulence and antibiotic resistance in Staphylococcus aureus. He has also carried out detailed phylogenetic analysis of this species and was involved in the analysis of two S. aureus genome sequences generated at the Sanger Centre, UK

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