Professor Sir Roy M ANDERSON, United Kingdom
Models of Tools for Optimizing Public Health Preparedness: The Case of Pandemic Influenza

Roy Anderson is a Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London, Faculty of Medicine. He has just returned to Imperial from the Ministry of Defence, where he has been Chief Scientific Adviser for the past three years, and will be taking up the position of Rector at Imperial in 2008. His previous positions include the Linacre Professorship and Head of Zoology, University of Oxford (1993-1998), Professor of Parasite Epidemiology and Head of Biology, Imperial College (1984-1993) and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Infectious Disease Epidemiology, University of Oxford (1995-2000).
Roy Anderson is a Fellow of the Royal Society, The Academy of Medical Sciences and a Foreign Associate Member of the Institute of Medicine at the US National Academy of Sciences.
He has published over 450 scientific papers on the epidemiology, population biology, evolution and control of a wide variety of infectious disease agents, including HIV, BSE, Foot and Mouth Virus, vCJD, SARS, dengue virus, parasitic helminths and protozoa, and respiratory tract viral and bacterial infections.
His principal research interests are epidemiology, population biology, evolutionary biology, biomathematics, demography and parasitology. He also has a keen interest in science policy and the public understanding of science. He was knighted in the 2006 Birthday honours list.
He has held a wide variety of advisory and consultancy posts with Government departments, pharmaceutical companies and international aid agencies.

Satoshi OMURA, Japan
Drug Discovery as a Public Health Intervention: The Ivermectin Story

Prof. Satoshi Omura received an M.S. degree in 1963 from Tokyo University of Science, followed by a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences in 1968 from the University of Tokyo, and another in Chemistry from the Tokyo University of Science in 1970. In 1965 he began his career-long association with the Kitasato Institute, initially as a researcher, over the years occupying various posts, culminating in his appointment in 1990 to his current position as President. He was appointed as inaugural Max Tishler Professor of Chemistry at Wesleyan University (US) in 2005.
Commencing with his studies of organic chemistry at the Graduate School of Tokyo University of Science, from 1965, he has performed comprehensive research on bioorganic chemistry, focusing on bioactive substances of microbial origin. He established many original methods for screening for natural bioactive substances. As a result, he has discovered more than 360 novel bioactive compounds. Among them, the globally significant anthelmintic antibiotic avermectins / ivermectin were discovered through collaborative research with Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories, Prof. Omura's group eventually deciphering the entire genome of the producing organism, Streptomyces avermectinius (avermitilis). Other compounds discovered by Prof. Omura are important clinical agents or biological tools, such as the antibiotic leucomycin, the erythromycin derivative motilide, rokitamycin, and the animal-health antimicrobials nanaomycin A and tilmicosin. Several also feature as widely-used enzyme inhibitors, such as staurosporine, cerulenin, lactacystin and atpenin A5, facilitating biological investigations around the world.
Prof. Omura has been widely recognized in the natural-products chemistry field, as evidenced by his numerous awards and honors. Among these are the Robert Koch Gold Medal (Germany), Ernest Guenther Award in the Chemistry of Natural Products (American Chemical Society), the Japan Academy Prize, and Hamao Umezawa Memorial Award (International Society of Chemotherapy). He is a member of the Japan Academy, Leopoldina Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher, and European Academy of Sciences, and is a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Institut de France, Academie des Sciences, and Chinese Academy of Engineering. His honorary memberships include those of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), and the Chemical Society of Japan. Since 1973, he has been a longstanding member of the editorial board of the Journal of Antibiotics, becoming Editor-in-Chief in 2004.

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David HEYMANN, WHO (Switzerland)
Emerging Infections: What Have We Learned After 15 Years?

Dr David L. Heymann is currently Assistant Director-General for Communicable Diseases and the Representative of the Director General for Polio Eradication at the World Health Organization (WHO). Prior to that, from July 1998 until July 2003, Dr Heymann was Executive Director of the WHO Communicable Diseases Cluster which includes WHO's programmes on infectious and tropical diseases, and from which the public health response to SARS was mounted in 2003. From October 1995 to July 1998 Dr Heymann was Director of the WHO Programme on Emerging and other Communicable Diseases, and prior to that was the Chief of research activities in the WHO Global Programme on AIDS.
Before joining WHO, Dr Heymann worked for thirteen years as a medical epidemiologist in sub-Saharan Africa (Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Malawi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo – formerly Zaire) on assignment from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in CDC-supported activities. These activities aimed at strengthening capacity in surveillance of infectious diseases and their control, with special emphasis on the childhood immunizable diseases including measles and polio, African haemorrhagic fevers, poxviruses and malaria. While based in Africa, Dr Heymann participated in the investigation of the first outbreak of Ebola in Yambuku (former Zaire) in 1976, then again investigated the second outbreak of Ebola in 1977 in Tandala, and in 1995 directed the international response to the Ebola outbreak in Kikwit.
Prior to these thirteen years in Africa, Dr Heymann worked two years in India as a medical epidemiologist in the WHO Smallpox Eradication Programme.
Dr Heymann holds a B.A. from the Pennsylvania State University, an M.D. from Wake Forest University, a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and has completed practical epidemiology training in the two year Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) of CDC. He is a recipient of the American Public Health Association Award for Excellence and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Donald MacKay medal, and is a member of the US Institute of Medicine. Dr Heymann has published over 140 scientific articles on infectious diseases and related issues in medical and scientific journals, and authored several chapters on infectious diseases in medical textbooks. He is currently editor of the 18th edition of the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, a joint publication of WHO and American Public Health Association publication.

Bruce BEUTLER, United States
Genetics of Innate Immunity

Dr. Bruce Beutler received his M.D. degree at the University of Chicago and further medical training at the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow and an Assistant Professor at the Rockefeller University. During that period, working independently of other groups associated with pharma, he isolated tumor necrosis factor (TNF) by following an unconventional inflammatory activity associated with that cytokine. He inferred—and was the first to prove—that TNF is endowed with inflammatory activity, mediating many of the effects of endotoxin (LPS). Returning to Dallas in 1986 as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Dallas, he went on to design the first effective recombinant inhibitors of TNF. These IgG:receptor chimeras are now used widely for the treatment of human inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Deeply curious as to how the mammalian host “knows” when it has an infection, Beutler then used a classical genetic approach to determine why mice of certain strains (C3H/HeJ and C57BL/10ScCr) are unresponsive to LPS. Through positional cloning, he showed in 1998 that these mice have mutations affecting the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) locus, at that time known only for its similarity to the Drosophila Toll protein. Beutler was thus the first to understand and to demonstrate that the mammalian TLRs act as receptors for signature molecules that herald infection. His discovery was a fundamental breakthrough in the science of innate immunity, since it told precisely how self and non-self are discriminated during the first minutes following infection. Moving to The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla in 2000, Beutler went on to analyze TLR signaling and innate immunity in general through the use of random germline mutagenesis in mammals. Now a Professor and Chairman of the Department of Genetics at TSRI, he continues to use genetics to decipher fundamental questions about immunity. His work has been recognized by the Robert Koch Prize (2004), the William Coley Prize (2006), the Gran Prix Charles Leopold Mayer (2006), and other honors.

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Julie GERBERDING, United States
21st Century Global Health Protection

Julie Louise Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H. became the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Administrator of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) on July 3, 2002.
Before becoming CDC Director and ATSDR Administrator, Dr. Gerberding was Acting Deputy Director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID), where she played a major role in leading CDC’s response to the anthrax bioterrorism events of 2001. She joined CDC in 1998 as Director of the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, NCID, where she developed CDC’s patient safety initiatives and other programs to prevent infections, antimicrobial resistance, and medical errors in healthcare settings. Prior to coming to CDC, Dr. Gerberding was a University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) faculty member and directed the Prevention Epicenter, a multidisciplinary research, training, and clinical service program that focused on preventing infections in patients and their healthcare providers. Dr. Gerberding is a Clinical Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at Emory University and an Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) at UCSF.
She earned a B.A. magna cum laude in chemistry and biology and an M.D. at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Gerberding then completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at UCSF, where she also served as Chief Medical Resident before completing her fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology and Infectious Diseases at UCSF. She earned an M.P.H. degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1990.

William M. NAUSEEF, United States
The Role of Neutrophils in Infection

After graduating from Hamilton College, Dr. Nauseef obtained his M.D. from SUNY Upstate in Syracuse, New York. He did his medical residency at the University of Wisconsin and infectious disease fellowship at Yale University before joining the faculty in the Department of Medicine at the University of Iowa and the Iowa City Veterans Administration Medical Center. Dr. Nauseef is currently a Professor of Medicine and Microbiology, with additional faculty appointments in interdisciplinary programs in Immunology and Molecular & Cell Biology, and Director of the Inflammation Program at the University of Iowa. Dr. Nauseef is board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and his research expertise is in the molecular and cell biology of human neutrophils, with special interest in myeloperoxidase and the NADPH oxidase, and he has published extensively in those areas. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Infectious Disease, and the Journal of Leukocyte Biology and is President Elect (2006) of the Society of Leukocyte Biology. His research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans’ Administration, and the March of Dimes.

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