Dr. Christian L. Althaus is a research group leader in infectious disease modelling at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM) at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He graduated from Biology at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and obtained a Ph.D. in Theoretical Biology at Utrecht University (The Netherlands). He uses mathematical and computational modeling in combination with data analyses to investigate how the population biology of infectious diseases is affected by environmental changes, dynamic patterns of host immunity, or public health interventions. Key areas of his research are STI transmission and interventions, antimicrobial resistance and emerging infectious diseases.

Dr. Balkus is a vaginal health expert and an Assistant Professor in Departments of Epidemiology and Global Health at the University of Washington in Seattle. As an infectious disease epidemiologist, her research spans across the field of reproductive health with a specific focus on questions that interface between the vaginal microbiota and STI & HIV prevention. She has led multi-country studies of period presumptive treatment to modify the vaginal microbiota and is currently leading a prospective study to assess the relationship between the vaginal microbiota, vaginal metabolome and C. trachomatis susceptibility.

Adele Schwartz Benzaken is a MD PhD, graduated in Medicine from the Federal University of Amazon, in 1978, and PhD in Public Health by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ).

She is the currently Director of the Department of STI, HIV/AIDS and Viral Hepatitis of the Ministry of Health of Brazil, Advisor of the Pan American Health Organization since 1995 and member of the EMTCT Validation Committee of HIV and Congenital Syphilis in Latin America and the Caribbean. Co-chair of the WHO expert committee – World Health Organization and also co-chair of the “”Steering committee of the ‘2025 target setting and 2020-2030 resource needs and impact estimation’” at UNAIDS.

She has been working with STI and HIV prevention, control and care since 1983. She was a Program Officer of the UNAIDS Brazil (April/2012-Nov/2013) and member of the Expert Panel on STIs, including HIV, at WHO (Dec/2008 – July/2013).

Associate Professor Catriona Bradshaw [MMBS (Hons), FAChSHM, PhD] is a sexual health consultant and head of the Genital Microbiota and Mycoplasma Group at Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, Alfred Hospital and the Central Clinical School, Monash University. Catriona has a strong track record that translates into changes in policy and practice with >210 publications. Her clinical translational research programme addresses priorities to improve treatment and control of Mycoplasma genitalium and promote antimicrobial stewardship. This programme has provided new drug options and resistance-guided strategies to improve Mycoplasma genitalium cure. Her research on bacterial vaginosis focuses on interventions to improve long term cure and achieve a healthy vaginal microbiota to optimise reproductive health. Her group is currently undertaking a multicentre male partner treatment trial for women with bacterial vaginosis.

 

Rebecca M. Brotman, PhD, MPH is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Institute for Genome Sciences in Baltimore, MD. Her research is focused on the role of the vaginal microbiome in prevention of sexually transmitted infections and the behavioral and biological factors associated with the development of bacterial vaginosis (BV).

Henry de Vries (1967) is dermatologist-venereologist with expertise in sexually transmitted infections and tropical skin diseases. He is currently employed at the Department of Dermatology at the Amsterdam University Hospitals and the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He also works at the Public Health Service, STI outpatient clinic in Amsterdam, the largest outpatient clinic in the Netherlands with over 50,000 new consultations per year. In cooperation with the public health laboratory and research department of the Public Health Service Amsterdam, he leads a research group including 18 PhD students. Main topics of research are the molecular-epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment of bacterial STI’s including antimicrobial multidrug-resistant gonorrhoea, HPV-related anal cancer precursor lesions, and syndemic issues in men who have sex with men. De Vries has 221 registered PubMed publications, including 29 first and 55 last author (as of Nov 2018). He is president-elect of the ISSTDR board and will lead the organisation of the coming ISSTDR-IUSTI joint meeting in Amsterdam in 2021.

Sinead Delany-Moretlwe, MBBCh PhD DTM&H is clinical epidemiologist and Associate Professor and Director: Research at Wits RHI which is part of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. A South African-born medical doctor, her experience is primarily in sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention research in sub-Saharan Africa. She has worked on several phase III trials of new HIV prevention technologies, and is currently protocol chair of a phase III trial of injectable cabotegravir for HIV prevention in women affiliated to the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN). Dr Delany-Moretlwe has also worked on several implementation science studies of oral PrEP delivery for adolescent girls and young women, evaluating strategies to enhance uptake and continuation. She is an advisor to the South African National Department of Health PrEP technical working group.

Patricia J. Dittus, PhD, is a Lead Behavioral Scientist in the Social and Behavioral Research and Evaluation Branch in the Division of STD Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She obtained her doctoral degree in Social Psychology from the University at Albany, State University of New York in 1994. Dr. Dittus began her career at CDC in 1999 as a Health Scientist in the Division of Adolescent and School Health, with a focus on parental influences on adolescent risk behavior and the evaluation of parent-based interventions. Her current research interests include adolescent access to sexual and reproductive health care and the prevention of adolescent STD, HIV, and unintended pregnancy through structural and multilevel interventions.

Dr. Nigel Field is Director of the Centre for Molecular Epidemiology and Translational Research at the UCL Institute for Global Health in London, where he is an infectious disease epidemiologist specialising in large-scale population-based and surveillance studies where molecular data can be linked to epidemiological and clinical data to measure infectious diseases and their transmission. Nigel’s doctoral training was in virology and molecular biology. After clinical training, he held a prestigious NIHR Academic Clinical Lectureship while completing public health speciality training in the UK. Nigel is a co-investigator on the British National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal), which are among the largest and most detailed scientific studies of sexual behaviour in the world, and co-primary investigator of Baby Biome Study, a UK birth cohort study designed to investigate how gut microbiota colonisation in early life affects subsequent health. He is co-author of many international and national guidelines, and an associate editor for the Journal of Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Dr. Fields is an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and is a board-certified pediatrician and adolescent medicine subspecialist. As a physician researcher he has dedicated his career to improving the health and life outcomes of adolescents and emerging adults, with particular attention to vulnerable and marginalized youth, through research, clinical medicine, education and advocacy, affecting change at both the individual and community/population level. He is especially interested in the treatment and prevention of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections in adolescent and young adult populations. His research focuses on using mixed methodologies to understand and reduce racial disparities in HIV among young Black, gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. Dr. Fields is also interested in the provision of evidence-based, culturally competent care of sexual and gender minority youth and is involved in undergraduate, graduate, and continuing medical education in this area.

Dr. Sarah Flicker is a professor and associate dean in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research focuses on engaging youth and other actors in environmental, sexual and reproductive justice. She employs community-based participatory methodologies with a variety of research teams that focus on adolescent sexual health and responding to gender-based violence in Canada and South Africa. Her research has informed policy at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. Sarah and her teams have won a number of prestigious awards for youth engagement in health research. She is an inaugural member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Dr. Patty J. García, is a Professor at the School of Public Health at Cayetano Heredia University (UPCH) in Lima-Peru. She is the former Minister of Health of Peru, former Dean of the School of Public Health at UPCH, and former Chief of the Peruvian National Institute of Health (INS). She is recognized as a leader in Global Health. Has been member of the PAHO Foundation Technical Advisory Group (FTAG), board member of the Consortium of Universities in Global Health and President of the Latin American Association Against STDs (ALACITS). She is affiliate Professor of the Department of Global Health, at University of Washington and of the School of Public Health at Tulane University. She is actively involved in research and training in Global health, Reproductive health, STI/HIV, HPV and medical informatics. She has been recently appointed member of the United States National Academy of Medicine, becoming the first Peruvian professional with such a distinction.

Professor Garland is an internationally recognized clinical microbiologist and sexual health physician, with particular expertise in infectious diseases related to reproductive health and the neonate. Her undergraduate degree was obtained at the University of Melbourne, with postgraduate training in UK public health system and in US Harvard University.

With her team, Prof Garland, has been a leader in patient self-collected genital sampling using molecular techniques (PCR) for diagnosis of reproductive tract infections, [predating diagnostic commercial assays]. She has published extensively on clinical epidemiology of sexually transmitted infections in Australia.

Specifically in HPV research she led phase 3 clinical trials of prophylactic HPV vaccines, findings from which were instrumental in the Australian government adopting a national immunisation program.

She also led the genoprevalence of HPV in Australian women pre-HPV vaccination program in Australia and which has provided baseline data from which post vaccination effectiveness and impact are being defined.

She is a regular Advisor to WHO, and published more than 650 in peer-reviewed journals. She is the Inaugural and Past President of AOGIN (Asian Oceania Research Organization on Genital Infection and Neoplasia).

In 2018 she was awarded the prestigious Officer of the Order of Australia [AO] and also elected Vice president of IPVS.

Dr. Lorenzo Giacani earned a B.S. in Molecular Biology at the University of Bologna in 1998. After a hiatus from research to carry out military service, Dr. Giacani returned to the University of Bologna to pursue a Ph.D. in Medical Biotechnology, defended in 2005. As a graduate student, Dr. Giacani focused primarily on the study of the virulence factors of the syphilis agent, developing an ongoing interest for this disease. In 2002, he accepted a position as an exchange scholar and moved to the University of Washington, in Seattle (WA), USA, where he also stayed for his post-doctoral training. Dr. Giacani is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Washington, in the Departments of Medicine and Global Health, where he keeps studying syphilis pathogenesis and evaluating vaccine candidates for syphilis. Throughout his career, he has received the ASTDA Developmental Award and the Vallesina Award for his scientific achievements. 

Jonathan Gootenberg, Ph.D., is a McGovern Institute Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was formerly advised by Feng Zhang and Aviv Regev at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, where he studied computational and molecular approaches to discover and characterize new biological tools. Dr. Gootenberg’s research focuses on the discovery of new CRISPR proteins for both therapeutic and diagnostic applications, including nucleic acid detection and RNA editing. Dr. Gootenberg earned his Ph.D. in Systems Biology from Harvard University.

Richard Hayes is Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is a statistical epidemiologist, whose main research interest is in the epidemiology of infectious diseases of public health importance in low income countries. Following early work on sickle cell disease, malaria and other tropical infections, his research has focused chiefly on the epidemiology and control of HIV, other sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis. From the late 1980s, he collaborated in research on HIV and related infections with colleagues in Tanzania and helped to establish the Mwanza Intervention Trials Unit there. He has also carried out collaborative research in other parts of Africa, including Uganda, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia and South Africa. For many years, he led the MRC Tropical Epidemiology Group at LSHTM, and has also conducted research on statistical and epidemiological methods, including work on the design and analysis of cluster-randomised trials which resulted in a widely used textbook. He is currently Principal Investigator of the HPTN 071 (PopART) trial, which will measure the impact of universal testing and treatment for HIV on population-level HIV incidence in Zambia and South Africa, and which is the largest HIV prevention trial ever conducted. Richard is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Dr Aseel Hegazi completed her higher specialist training in HIV and Genitourinary Medicine at St George’s University Hospital in London and was appointed as a Consultant in the same trust in 2014. Her employment transferred to Chelsea and Westminster NHS Trust in October 2017 following the take-over of the Integrated Sexual Health service by new providers. She is currently working as a Consultant in HIV and Sexual Health at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust where she has been based since March 2019.

Dr Jane Hocking is an epidemiologist whose research investigates the epidemiology and control of sexually transmitted infections. She is head of the Sexual Health Unit at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. She generated Australia’s first population-based prevalence and incidence estimates of chlamydia, Mycoplasma genitalium and bacterial vaginosis infection among young women and developed the first mathematical model of chlamydia transmission in Australia. Her research has identified several different interventions to increase chlamydia testing and re-testing in primary care. More recently, her research has been investigating STI treatment efficacy. She is leading the first trial of doxycycline versus azithromycin for rectal chlamydia.

Dr Patrick Horner is a consultant senior lecturer at Bristol University and works at Unity Sexual Health. He has long standing research interests in the epidemiology, diagnosis and treatment of Chlamydia trachomatis, Mycoplasma genitalium, and non-gonococcal urethritis and the chronic pelvic pain syndrome in men on which he has published widely. He has a particular interest in azithromycin antimicrobial resistance and the unintended consequences of using azithromycin 1 g to treat bacterial STIs.

Megan J. Huchko, MD, MPH is an Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology and the Duke Global Health Institute, and Director of the Center for Global Reproductive Health at Duke. She completed her residency at Columbia Presbyterian, followed by a joint fellowship in Reproductive Infectious Disease and AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of California, San Francisco. She has been at Duke since 2016, where she practices as an ob/gyn generalist and specializes in cervical cancer prevention through her clinical work and global women’s health research. Dr. Huchko’s research focuses on optimizing the diagnosis and treatment of cervical cancer among vulnerable populations. She has worked extensively on cervical cancer epidemiology and prevention among HIV-infected women. Currently, she is carrying out several large studies in central Uganda and western Kenya to evaluate the optimal implementation strategy for HPV-based cervical cancer screening in rural settings.

Area of Expertise: Dr. Jana has served as National Program Advisor at National AIDS Control Organization, Government of India, from 2007 to 2009.
Dr. Jana served as the Assistant Country Director at CARE India from August 2003 to March 2006 followed by, as Regional HIV Advisor overseeing 15 countries in Asia region under CARE USA till September 2006.

He initiated one of the most successful intervention program among the sex workers of Kolkata, India, which is known as Sonagachi Project, presently owned and managed by the Organization of sex workers called Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, representing 65 thousand sex workers (male, female and trans gender). He worked as a board member of Indian Chapter of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the secretariat member of the Regional Partnership Forum under UNAIDS & UNFPA
He served as a member of the National AIDS Council, chaired by the Prime Minister of India from April 2011-2014. He acted as a member on the National panel constituted by the Supreme Court of India to look into Rights, Rehabilitation and trafficking issues pertaining to sex worker from 2010-2016.
No. of Awards and Citations : Public excellence award in the year 1999.

Chris Kenyon is a South African Infectious Diseases Physician who is currently working as head of the STI Unit at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp. After completing his medical studies at UCT, he read for a degree in politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, a MPH at the LSHTM and a doctorate at the University of Antwerp. He has worked in a range of public health and clinical services. His research interests include: development of new diagnostic tests for the diagnosis of syphilis, development of an in-vitro system to evaluate the pharmacoecologic theory of antimicrobial resistance in N. gonorrhoeae and producing a theory that can explain global variations in STI prevalence between populations.

Christine Khosropour, PhD, MPH is an epidemiologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health in Seattle, Washington, USA. Her work involves both research and applied epidemiology in the field of HIV and STI prevention. She has conducted studies of chlamydia screening and treatment, and recently completed a cohort study to examine if the rectum is a source of persistent/recurrent urogenital chlamydial infection among women. Additionally, she has led studies examining the effectiveness of behavioral strategies to prevent HIV/STI among men who have sex with men (MSM). Dr. Khosropour is also an epidemiologist with the University of Washington Public Health Capacity Building Center, which conducts capacity-building assistance with health departments throughout the U.S. to improve HIV/STI prevention and care activities.

DR. Klausner is an internist and infectious disease specialist, Professor of Medicine and Public Health, University of California Los Angeles. He was former CDC Branch Chief for HIV and TB PEPFAR South Africa and former Deputy Health Officer San Francisco Department of Public Health STD Prevention and Control program. He has a longstanding interest in the use of technology to enhance HIV and STD prevention. He has not cut his hair since the 1-year anniversary of the election of Donald Trump.

Abigail Kroch is the Director of Data and Applied Science at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN). She is responsible for supporting HIV surveillance activities through the Ontario HIV Epidemiology and Surveillance Initiative (OHESI) and is the Principal Investigator and Director of the OHTN Cohort Study (OCS). Her work focuses on translating epidemiological data for use in program planning, policy making and to support community engagement. At the OHTN, she uses surveillance data and the OCS to describe the HIV epidemic in Ontario, and develops products to inform government, community, and clinical stakeholders. She supports the planning, implementation and evaluation of programs and interventions to improve the provincial HIV prevention, engagement and care cascade.

Dr. Ian Lewis is an Assistant Professor and Alberta Innovates Translational Health Chair in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Calgary. Dr. Lewis earned a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and completed his postdoctoral training at Princeton University. He was recruited to Calgary to launch a research program that harnesses state-of-the-art technology to detect and combat infectious diseases. As a part of this program, Dr. Lewis built the Calgary Metabolomics Research Facility (CMRF), an analytical lab that specializes in unraveling the complex host-pathogen metabolic interactions that occur during infections. Recently, Dr. Lewis partnered with Calgary Laboratory Services to launch a suite of new diagnostic tools and treatment practices that may significantly reduce the number of people die from infections.

Dr. Carmen Logie is the Canada Research Chair in Global Health Equity and Social Justice with Marginalized Populations, Associate Professor, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, and an Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation Early Researcher. She is also an Adjunct Scientist at Women’s College Hospital. Dr. Logie has been awarded funding from Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, Grand Challenges Canada, and Canada Foundation for Innovation, to lead global research focused on sexual health and rights. She is particularly interested in understanding and addressing intersectional stigma and its sexual and reproductive health impacts, with a focus on HIV and STI. She is currently conducting mixed-methods and intervention sexual and reproductive health and rights research with: Indigenous and Northern adolescents in Northern Canada; sexual rights movements (HIV-related, LGBTQ, sex worker, abortion rights) in Brazil; and urban refugee adolescents in Uganda.

Margaret M. Madeleine, MPH, PhD, is an Associate Member of the Program in Epidemiology, in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and a Research Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health at the University of Washington (UW). She received her MPH in Epidemiology from Yale in 1991 and PhD from the UW in 1996. She has been an active member of the Seattle HPV research community with a research focus on the epidemiology of HPV related cancers and precancers. Prior studies have focused on the role of immunosuppression and immune genetics in HPV-related cancers. Current projects focus on the role of HPV vaccination to interrupt progression of HSIL and uptake of HPV vaccination in Washington State.

 

Dr Anna McNulty is a sexual health physician and the Director of Sydney Sexual Health Centre, the largest public sexual health clinic in NSW, Australia. She is also a Conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at UNSW. Anna’s research interests are in bacterial sexually transmissible infections, marginalised populations and in innovation in health service delivery. 

 

A statistician and demographer by training, Dr. Cath Mercer is best known for leading Natsal, Britain’s National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, Natsal, one of the world’s largest and most reliable sources of scientific data on sexual behaviour, its drivers and health consequences. The Natsal data have been used to evaluate and inform a number of public health interventions and policy, e.g. HPV vaccination, teenage pregnancy, and sex education. Aside from leading impactful research, Cath’s expertise lies in developing and employing robust methods that advance the scientific study of sexual behaviour as well as sexual health more broadly, including measuring sexual behaviour in a range of hard-to-reach groups in diverse settings, as well as providing the general population perspective. She has a particular interest in developing methods that seek to go beyond the individual perspective to better understand sexual risk as well as sexual well-being more broadly.

 

Dr. Angelica E. Miranda is a professor in the Department of Social Medicine at the Federal University of Espirito Santo, Brazil. Board certified obstetrics and gynecology specialist with a master degree in infectious diseases and a Ph.D. in Public Health. Ex-president of the Brazilian Society of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). She is now the scientific director of the Brazilian Society for STIs. Dr. Miranda’s research focuses upon epidemiology and clinic of infectious diseases and reproductive health.

Dr. Mitchell is a faculty member in the Vincent Center for Reproductive Biology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Mitchell received her undergraduate degree from Harvard college, spent 2 years in the Peace Corps in Southern Africa, then returned to medical school at Harvard. She did her OB/Gyn residency training at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she also received her MPH degree. She spent 7 years on faculty at the UW before returning to Boston and MGH in 2014. Dr. Mitchell spends the majority of her time in the lab doing translational and basic science research, funded by NIH and foundation grants. Her work focuses on the relationship between the vaginal microbiota, mucosal immune responses and reproductive health. Clinically, she is the Director of the Vulvovaginal Disorders Program at the Massachusetts General Hospital main campus.

Dr. Money is the Executive Vice Dean at the UBC Faculty of Medicine at UBC and a Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, associate member in the Department of Medicine and the School of Population and Public Health, and active clinician and researcher in Reproductive Infectious Diseases. She trained with a BSc in Microbiology, then completed her MD followed by her residency in Obstetrics and Gynecology at UBC and a Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of Washington. She is a leader in prevention of HPV associated cancer in women living with HIV, prevention of perinatal transmission of HIV and the study of the vaginal microbiome in health and disease. She has published more than 180 peer reviewed publications and has received more than $24M in peer reviewed funding. She is the past- Vice President, Research at BC Women’s Hospital and Health Centre, Provincial Health Services Authority, past-President of the Infectious Diseases Society of Obstetrics & Gynecology (US). She is actively involved in teaching and established the first fellowships in Infectious Diseases for Obstetrician/Gynecologists in Canada.

Sinead Delany-Moretlwe, MBBCh PhD DTM&H is clinical epidemiologist and Associate Professor and Director: Research at Wits RHI which is part of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. A South African-born medical doctor, her experience is primarily in sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention research in sub-Saharan Africa. She has worked on several phase III trials of new HIV prevention technologies, and is currently protocol chair of a phase III trial of injectable cabotegravir for HIV prevention in women affiliated to the HIV Prevention Trials Network (HPTN). Dr Delany-Moretlwe has also worked on several implementation science studies of oral PrEP delivery for adolescent girls and young women, evaluating strategies to enhance uptake and continuation. She is an advisor to the South African National Department of Health PrEP technical working group.

Manjulaa is a Scientist in the Department of Reproductive Health and Research at WHO. She coordinates WHO’s normative guidance on self-care for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and SRHR of women and girls living with HIV; and strengthening advocacy, research, policy and programmatic linkages between SRHR and HIV interventions. Manjulaa led the development of the 2019 Consolidated Guideline on self-care interventions for SRHR; the 2017 Consolidated Guideline on SRHR of women living with HIV, and has promoted successful, innovative approaches to improving health and well-being of vulnerable populations. She co-convenes the interagency working group on SRHR/HIV linkages

 

Dr. Norris has studied the physiology, structure, and host-pathogen interactions of Treponema pallidum and other spirochetes since 1975. Recently, his laboratory reported the first long-term in vitro culture of T. pallidum subsp. pallidum. T. pallidum cultures have now been maintained for over 600 days with full retention of viability, structure, and infectivity in the rabbit model.

Dr. Catherine Oldenburg is an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Her work focuses on randomized controlled trials to evaluate interventions to reduce infectious morbidity and mortality predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa

 

Dorothy L. Patton, Ph.D., is Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, School of Medicine, and Research Affiliate of the Washington National Primate Research Center at the University of Washington. Dr. Patton developed the female pigtailed macaque (Macaca nemestrina) model to simulate human Chlamydia trachomatis infection (cervicitis, salpingitis, pelvic inflammatory disease), pathogenesis and disease outcome, which has been key to our understanding of human chlamydial pathogenesis and treatment. Dr. Patton expanded the usefulness of this animal model to evaluate the safety and efficacy of disease prevention strategies: multipurpose prevention technology (MPTs) for vaginal or rectal use and vaccine candidates for the prevention of STIs in humans. The model for preclinical MPT safety assessment has been refined to include the impact of sexual activity on topically applied products and on tissue drug levels delivered by the product (pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics assessments). Efforts are underway to expand this model to include Neisseria gonorrhoeae (GC) infection, a model that would be invaluable in developing novel therapies for antibiotic resistant strains of GC that are now commonly reported worldwide.

My research focusses on examining how social and health policies and interventions influence the health and access to services among people who sell sex and/or inject drugs’ and other vulnerable populations. I am an epidemiologist, applying different quantitative techniques to measure the effect of complex social policies, including cohort studies, cluster randomised control trials, surveys and methods to estimate population sizes. I also work closely with sociologists applying qualitative methods alongside quantitative approaches to understand the pathways through which these effects are realised. I am currently leading two mixed method research projects in London, both funded by the NIHR Public Health Research Programme. One seeks to measure the impact of criminalisation and police enforcement practices on sex workers’ experience of violence, sexual health and access to services. The second involves the evaluation of a peer advocacy intervention for people who are homeless that works to increase uptake and retention into health services. I am also collaborating on a project in Myanmar to examine the role of drug production and conflict on drug users’ health.

B.M Ramesh is an Associate Professor at the Department of Community Health Sciences, and Research Associate at the Centre for Global Public Health, Rady Faculty of Community Health Sciences, University of Manitoba (UoM), Canada.

Previously, he was the Project Director for the UoM’s MNCH projects in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka. Under Avahan, he pioneered tools and methods for evidence-based planning including geographical mapping of high risk groups and management information system, and polling booth surveys to measure program outcomes. He was also the Director, Population Research Centre, Dharwad and a faculty at the International Institute for Population Sciences, Bombay.

B.M. Ramesh, a Demographer by training, has a PhD in Demography from Bombay University, and was a recipient of the Population Council Postdoctoral Fellowship. He has a long experience of 32 years of research and program implementation, monitoring and evaluation in the field of MNCH and HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Scott D. Rhodes, Ph.D., MPH, FAAHB, is professor in and chair of the Department of Social Science and Health Policy, Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC. He also directs the Program in Community Engagement within the Wake Forest Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Dr. Rhodes has published more than 180 articles and 30 book chapters on the health of vulnerable populations, including immigrants, Latinos, and sexual and gender minorities. He edited a book titled, Innovations in HIV Prevention Research and Practice through Community Engagement (Springer 2014) and co-edited a book titled, “New and Emerging Issues in Latinx Health (Springer, 2019).

Jonathan Gootenberg, Ph.D., is a McGovern Institute Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was formerly advised by Feng Zhang and Aviv Regev at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, where he studied computational and molecular approaches to discover and characterize new biological tools. Dr. Gootenberg’s research focuses on the discovery of new CRISPR proteins for both therapeutic and diagnostic applications, including nucleic acid detection and RNA editing. Dr. Gootenberg earned his Ph.D. in Systems Biology from Harvard University.

Dr. Shailendra Sawleshwarkar is a Senior Lecturer and Clinical Academic working in HIV, STIs and sexual health at the Western Sydney Sexual Health Centre (WSSHC) and Westmead Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney. Shailendra is currently the Program Director of the Postgraduate Program in Sexual and Reproductive Health at the University of Sydney and has made a significant contribution to the education in sexual health and HIV medicine.

Shailendra’s research interests include management of HIV/STIs in primary care, molecular epidemiology of HIV focusing on HIV non-B subtypes and drug resistance, and STIs/HIV in culturally and linguistically diverse populations. He has developed international collaborations in workforce development with universities and public health institutions in Asia and Africa. Shailendra has more than 20 years of experience in clinical medicine, education and research in diverse settings and is passionate about developing academic partnerships for global health and development.

Dr. Karen Schlanger has served as the project lead for the Strengthening U.S. Response to Resistant Gonorrhea project in CDC’s Division of STD Prevention since 2016. Dr. Schlanger has an MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (’96), a PhD in Public Health from the University of Georgia (’12), and over 20 years of experience developing, managing, and evaluating public health programs and conducting epidemiological investigations.

Dr Axel Jeremias Schmidt is an epidemiologist (MPH) and an HIV/STI clinician (Dr. med.). He was the co-ordinator and lead scientist for the European MSM Internet Survey (EMIS) 2010, working in close collaboration with Sigma Research. Since 2012 he has co-ordinated the EMIS network and related publications. He has twelve years of experience in offline and online sexual health surveys among MSM and worked for the German Robert-Koch-Institute and Social Science Research Centre Berlin, and has repeatedly served as a consultant for the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC). As an epidemiologist his research has focussed on hepatitis C transmission, MSM-populations, and MSM-specific outcomes such as HIV/STI prevalence and incidence. As a clinician he has several years of experience in diagnosis and treatment of HIV and sexually transmitted infections, as well as in sexual health counselling. Since 2012 he is based at the Swiss Federal Office for Public Health (as an epidemiologist). He has worked for four years in German and Swiss gay health centres, and between 2014 and 2017 he led the STI service within the Infectious Diseases Department of the Cantonal Hospital of St.Gallen, Switzerland. In May 2017 he joined Sigma and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as Assistant Professor for Sexual Health and STIs, and is centrally involved in EMIS-2017.

Dr Axel Jeremias Schmidt is an epidemiologist (MPH) and an HIV/STI clinician (Dr. med.). He was the co-ordinator and lead scientist for the European MSM Internet Survey (EMIS) 2010, working in close collaboration with Sigma Research. Since 2012 he has co-ordinated the EMIS network and related publications. He has twelve years of experience in offline and online sexual health surveys among MSM and worked for the German Robert-Koch-Institute and Social Science Research Centre Berlin, and has repeatedly served as a consultant for the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC). As an epidemiologist his research has focussed on hepatitis C transmission, MSM-populations, and MSM-specific outcomes such as HIV/STI prevalence and incidence. As a clinician he has several years of experience in diagnosis and treatment of HIV and sexually transmitted infections, as well as in sexual health counselling. Since 2012 he is based at the Swiss Federal Office for Public Health (as an epidemiologist). He has worked for four years in German and Swiss gay health centres, and between 2014 and 2017 he led the STI service within the Infectious Diseases Department of the Cantonal Hospital of St.Gallen, Switzerland. In May 2017 he joined Sigma and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine as Assistant Professor for Sexual Health and STIs, and is centrally involved in EMIS-2017.

Associate Professor Seib is a Group Leader at The Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University Australia. Her research is focused on understanding the processes involved in bacterial colonization and disease, with the aim to identify therapeutic targets of mucosal pathogens including Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Neisseria meningitidis, Moraxella catarrhalis, and Heamophilus influenzae. A/Prof Seib completed a PhD in microbiology in 2004 and worked briefly as a Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia, followed by 6.5 years at Novartis Vaccines (Siena Italy) as a Postdoctoral fellow and Project Leader. While at Novartis she was part of the team that developed the N. meningitidis serogroup B meningococcal vaccine, Bexsero.
A/Prof Seib is currently using a comprehensive, multifaceted approach to prevent N. gonorrhoeae from establishing itself as an untreatable ‘superbug’, with a set of research objectives that will determine the molecular basis of gonococcal disease and aid development of new therapeutics and a gonococcal vaccine.

Maryam is an Associate Professor of clinical epidemiology and physician at UC. She holds a Faculty position at Africa Health Research Institute in South Africa. Her interest is in developing and evaluating complex community-led interventions for adolescents and youth in the field of HIV and sexual health.

Professor David Templeton is Director and Senior Specialist at RPA Sexual Health, one of the largest public sexual health clinics in Australia. He has been working in the field of Sexual Health Medicine for over two decades and completed his PhD on STI/HIV epidemiology among gay men over 10 years ago. He has published over 130 papers in the scientific literature and been Chief Investigator on competitive grants worth over $4 million in the past 5 years. He was Convenor and Scientific Program Chair of the 2016 and 2017 Australasian Sexual Health Conferences. Professor Templeton has a passion for translational research, working on projects to inform STI & HIV testing and management guidelines. His current research focuses on development of an evidence-based anal cancer screening program for gay men, the “real-world” impact of the roll-out of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, and identification and management of comorbidities among HIV-positive individuals.

Dr. Abigail (Abby) Norris Turner is an infectious disease epidemiologist who has worked in sexual and reproductive health research both domestically and internationally for many years. She received her BS in Biology from Yale University and her PhD from the University of North Carolina. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Divisions of Infectious Diseases (College of Medicine) and Epidemiology (College of Public Health) at Ohio State University. Dr. Turner’s work characterizes the behavioral, clinical and immunological factors driving increased STI and HIV prevalence and incidence, with a focus on analytic and measurement approaches to minimize bias and maximize the validity and precision of observed epidemiological associations. She has led research in diverse high-risk populations, including adolescents, sex workers, family-planning and STD clinic patients, HIV-infected pregnant women, and men who have sex with men.

Janneke van de Wijgert, MD PhD MPH, is a Professor in the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care of the University Medical Centre Utrecht and in the Institute of Infection and Global Health of the University of Liverpool. The current focus of her research is the role of the human microbiome and immunology in reproductive and neonatal health, and in chronic inflammatory conditions.

Ajay Vishwanathan, PhD, is a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, Georgia, within the Division of HIV & AIDS Prevention. Dr. Vishwanathan’s research interests involve non-human primate (NHP) models of HIV susceptibility, and risk modifiers such as mucosal inflammation, menstrual phases, personal lubricants, and sexually transmitted infections like Chlamydia, Trichomonas, and syphilis. Recently, his group at the CDC developed the first NHP model for rectally acquired syphilis.

Dr Janet Wilson is a Consultant in Sexual Health and HIV in Leeds, UK. She is currently the President-Elect of the International Union against Sexually Transmitted Infections having been Secretary General from 2009-2017. She is also a Past President of the British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH). As BASHH President, 2012-2014, she advised the Department of Health and politicians about the likely negative impacts, and unintended consequences on health care, with the planned split of commissioning of STI and HIV services in England.

Having worked in an integrated STI and HIV service until 2015, and split STI and HIV services since, she has personal experience of the obstacles to providing seamless sexual health care without integrated services.

Kim A. Woodrow is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington. She earned her MS and PhD degrees from Stanford in Chemical Engineering, and completed postdoctoral training in Biomedical Engineering at Yale University. Dr. Woodrow’s lab works on the design and synthesis of biomaterials for applications in mucosal infections and mucosal immunity. Dr. Woodrow is an NIH-funded investigator, the recipient of the Creative and Novel Ideas in HIV Research (CNIHR) award from the Office of AIDS Research, a recipient of grants from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and was awarded a 2012 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. She has served on the technical program committee for BMES and the international HIV R4P conference. She has been recognized with the University of Washington Undergraduate Research Mentor Award and as the Science in Medicine New Investigator for the School of Medicine.