Speakers

Gonzalo Bearman is Chair of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Richard P. Wenzel Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Chief Quality and Safety Officer for Research at the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System.
Dr. Bearman’s primary clinical focus includes General Infectious Diseases and HIV care. His areas of administration and research focus on the epidemiology of hospital-acquired infections. Dr. Bearman has various industry grants and has published over 200 peer-reviewed publications, multiple editorships of books, and is the primary editor of 3 medical textbooks.
Dr. Bearman previously served as the chair of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) Guidelines Committee and was a member of the SHEA Board of Trustees.  In 2019 Dr. Bearman received Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) Barry Farr Award for the most influential publication in infection prevention and hospital epidemiology- Presented at ID Week 2019 Annual Meeting.
Most recently, Dr. Bearman has led critical efforts to address the COVID-19 Pandemic on research, clinical, and operational fronts. He has assumed various roles for VCU Health including VCU Medical Center Incident Command Center Infectious Diseases/ Hospital Infection Prevention Program COVID 19 Director, co-Investigator in Remdesevir and Sarilumab Clinical Trials, Primary investigator VCU-VDH COVID 19 Seroprevalence Study, Co/Senior-Investigator VCU COVID 19 Healthcare Worker Seroprevalence Study, Primary media respondent for VCU Health on COVID 19 media requests, member of the Virginia Disaster Management Advisory Committee to Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Services, Infectious Diseases Consultant and Member VCU Public Health Response Committee for University Reopen, Infectious Diseases Medical Advisor to VCU Athletics COVID 19 and Infectious Diseases Medical Advisor to the Atlantic 10 Advisory Committee for NCAA1 Athletics.
Since 2021, Dr. Bearman is Editor in Chief of Antimicrobial Stewardship and Healthcare Epidemiology of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, published by Cambridge University press.

Gabriel Birgand is an Infection Control specialist. He is leading the regional center for infection control in the Pays de la Loire region and the french national center for surveillance and prevention of HAI and AMR in primary care and long term care facilities. Gabriel is honorary research Fellow at the HPRU, NIHR with Prof Alison Holmes, and part time coordinating infection control in the West of France. His research fields are on the development of innovative methods for the diagnosis and prevention of surgical site infection, and the antimicrobial resistance in healthcare settings.

Dr. Boyce served as an infectious diseases specialist and hospital epidemiologist in university-affiliated facilities for many years. He is currently President of J.M. Boyce Consulting LLC, a position he assumed after retiring from his positions as Director of Hospital Epidemiology & Infection Control at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, CT and as Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine.
Dr. Boyce was the lead co-author on the CDC Guideline for Hand Hygiene in Health-Care Settings, and was a contributing author to the WHO Guidelines on Hand Hygiene in Health Care. He has co-authored numerous articles dealing with hand hygiene.

David P. Calfee, MD, MS is a Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Population Health Sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, NY (USA). He is the Chief Hospital Epidemiologist at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center and the Deputy Medical Director of Infection Prevention & Control and the Associate Chief Epidemiologist for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. He is a fellow of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology (ICHE).

Prof. Dr. phil. Lauren Clack is a Professor of Implementation Science in Health Care at the Medical Faculty, University of Zurich. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Zurich and an MSc in Applied Ergonomics (Human Factors Engineering) from the University of Nottingham. From 2011 to 2020, she worked as a researcher and project leader, first at the University Hospitals of Geneva and then at the Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Zurich. She specializes in the application of Implementation Science methodology and human-centered design to improve the systematic integration of evidence-based infection prevention and patient safety interventions into care.

Mandy is an Infection Prevention and Control Technical Officer at World Health Organization. She has close to 20 years’ experience in infection prevention and control. She has worked as a frontline ICP in acute acre and public health as well as work at the provincial level in Canada supporting implementation of IPC in acute care, Long-Term Care and community settings, and contributing the development of IPC resources and guidance. She has had a special interest in supporting LMICs, primary care settings and improvement of reprocessing practices. She is a lecturer for the Centennial College Infection Prevention and Control Program.

Dr. Fucini studied medicine in Florence (Italy) from 2002 to 2008. He started working at the Charité University of Berlin in 2012 and since 2019 he is specialist for anaesthesiology, intensive care and emergency medicine. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the influence of fluid driven stroke-volume optimization on the outcome of patients after percutaneous valve replacement.

Since 2020 he is researcher at the institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at the Charité. His field of studies lies primarily on evidence-based design and infection prevention strategies in hospital design and architecture. In this context, he focuses on measures of water and air control for prevention of hospital related infections in existing and new hospital buildings.

After specialization in hygiene and environmental medicine, Petra Gastmeier worked from 1991 to 2000 as a hospital epidemiologist in Potsdam and the university hospital of the Free University Berlin. During this time, she created the German national surveillance system for healthcare associated infections (KISS) with meanwhile 1200 participating hospitals. From 2001 to 2007, she was Associated Professor of Hospital Epidemiology at Hanover Medical University. Since 2008, she is Full Professor for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at Charité –University Medicine in Berlin. She also established the German national hand hygiene campaign, which is meanwhile running for more than 15 years.

Stefan Hagel, MD, MS graduated 2005 from Jena Medical School. He is specialist in internal medicine, infectious diseases and infection control and currently consultant at the Institute for Infectious Diseases and Infection Control at the Jena University Hospital. His special interest include research in sepsis, including antibiotic therapy, multi-drug resistant organisms and infection control. He got his Master of Science in Clinical Research & Translational Medicine at the University of Leipzig and has peformed several Investigator Initiated Trials as principal investigator in the field of infecition control and antimicobial therapy.

Dr Mark Loeb is a Professor in the Departments of Pathology of Molecular Medicine and Health Research, Evidence, and Impact (formerly Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics) at McMaster University. Dr. Loeb holds the Canada Research Chair in Infectious Diseases and is Co-Director of the McMaster WHO Collaborating Centre on Infectious Diseases, Research Methods and Recommendations. He has 412 peer-reviewed publications, recognitions have included the Gold Medal in Medicine from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada for research, the Jonas Salk award from the March of Dimes for research contributions, and Fellowships in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada.

Dr. Leonard Mermel is Professor of Medicine, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Adjunct Clinical Professor, University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy, Medical Director of the Department of Epidemiology & Infection Prevention, Lifespan Hospital System. He was 2005 Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) President, past recipient of the SHEA Young Investigator Award, Mentor Scholar Award, and Senior Scholarship Award. He has co-authored US guidelines on prevention and management of intravascular catheter infections, as well as over 400 articles, textbook chapters, and abstracts dealing with infection control and infectious diseases.

Dr. Moore led the Global Research on AntiMicrobial resistance (GRAM) project based in the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford. Partnered with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and Tropical Medicine, they analysed global data to estimate the global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Dr Moore is a member of the World Health Organization Advisory Group on Critically Important Antimicrobials (AG CIA) for Human Medicine and is a mentor for Fleming Fund Fellows in Eswatini. Dr. Moore works on studies to improve the use of interventions including antibiotic and diagnostic stewardship in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to reduce the unnecessary prescribing of antibiotics. Now based at St George’s, University of London she is a co-lead on the AMR Data to Inform Country Antibiotic Guidance and Local Action (ADILA) project.

Eli Perencevich, MD MS is an infectious diseases physician and epidemiologist who for 25 years has studied methods to prevent the spread of pathogens in healthcare settings. Previously, he was the hospital epidemiologist the University of Maryland Medical Center. For the past 12 years, he has been Director of the Center for Access and Delivery Research and Evaluation (CADRE) at the Iowa City VA and University of Iowa.

Dr Laure Pittet completed her Medical School (2011) and Paediatrics residency (2017) at the University Hospitals of Geneva and Faculty of Medicine, Switzerland, in parallel of a MD-PhD (2018) on the topic of “Vaccination of immunocompromised individuals”, and a MD (2017) on the bacteria Bordetella holmesii. Her interest in paediatric infectious diseases and vaccinology motivated a 3-years fellowship in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne (Australia) and the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (Melbourne, Australia) focussing her research on off-target effects of vaccines. She came back to the University Hospitals of Geneva in 2021 as a Clinical Scientist, and continues to focus on clinical research projects in vaccinology and paediatric infectious diseases.

Professor Klara M. Posfay-Barbe is a pediatrician and an infectious diseases specialist, Chair of the Division of General Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Geneva. She is also the Deputy Medical Director of the University Hospitals of Geneva, a 2000-beds institution. She is the Director of the Clinical Research Platform in Pediatrics and is the past President of SwissPedNet, the network of all pediatric clinical research centers of Switzerland.
She is an active member of the International Pediatric Transplant Association (IPTA), its infectious diseases group, and of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Group of Switzerland (PIGS). She is interested in infections in immunocompromised host, including nosocomial infections.

Elda Righi is an Infectious Diseases physician currently working as associate professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Department of Diagnostics and Public Health and Infectious Diseases Center for Translational Research (ID-Care) at Verona University, Italy. Dr Righi serves for the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) Ethics Advisory Committee and is involved in research and educational activities related to Infectious Diseases Ethics (IDE) and its applications to research and clinical guidelines. Her main interests include the study of multidrug-resistant bacteria in the nosocomial setting and the management of infections in immunocompromised hosts

Jesús Rodríguez-Baño, MD PhD FESMID, is head of Infectious Diseases division at Virgen Macarena University Hospital; Professor of Medicine at the University of Seville / Biomedicine Institute of Sevilla (IBiS), in Seville, Spain; co-coordinator of the Antimicrobial Resistance programme at CIBERINFEC, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain. Past-President of ESCMID and associate editor of Clinical Microbiology and Infection. He is author of more than 400 peer-reviewed scientific articles, and principal investigator of several national and international research projects. His main areas of interest are control and treatment of antimicrobial resistant bacteria, antimicrobial stewardship, healthcare-associated infections and bloodstream infections.

Jean-Francois Timsit is Head of the Medical and infectious diseases intensive care unit of the university hospital Bichat in Paris. He is Full Professor of intensive care medicine of the University of Paris, France. Dr Timsit studied at the university of Paris, He had a Science thesis in epidemiology and healthcare evaluation and is capability of directing research thesis at the university Paris-Cité. He is the group leader of the infectious diseases in critical care in the research unit U1137 (IAME) in Paris-Cité University. He leads the critical care teaching of the Parisian area.

Dr Timsit is the past chair of the critical care section of the ECCMID (ESGCIP). He serves as editor and deputy editors for international journals. He is the author of 600 indexed papers (web of science H index 80) published in International peer-review journals on severe infectious diseases in critical care, antibiotic resistance, antibiotic therapy and design and conduct of prospective clinical researches. He is the president of the OUTCOME REA research network.
He is the président of the Central infection control comity for assistance publique hôpitaux de Paris (CLIN central APHP).

Dr. Maaike van Mourik is a clinical microbiologist and researcher on the topic of automated surveillance of healthcare-associated infections. In the past years her research has focused on developing methods for surveillance of healthcare-associated infections with special attention on delivering knowledge needed for successful implementation.
She was the project leader for implementation of semi-automated surveillance of surgical site infections and central-line associated bloodstream infections in the UMC Utrecht and she is the initiator and coordinator of the JPIAMR-funded PRAISE network (Providing a Roadmap for Automated Infection Surveillance in Europe). She currently undertakes projects aimed at developing improved methods for automated surveillance and improving knowledge of automated surveillance in the IPC community.

Andreas Widmer, MD,MS,FIDSA,FSHEA is board certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases, trained mainly in Switzerland. We earned a master’s degree in hospital epidemiology at the university of Iowa, USA. He was head of hospital epidemiology at the university hospital in Basel for two decades. He served as associated editor for infection control & hospital epidemiology, as advisor for clinical infectious diseases and many other journals. He was founding member of the National Center for Infection Prevention (www.swissnoso.ch) together with Didier Pittet and Patrick Francioli. He still acts as president of this association, supporting the Federal office of public health for guidelines for acute care hospitals. He is responsible for development of C.difficile surveillance in Switzerland, as co-leader for surveillance of ventilator associated pneumonia. In addition, he wrote the chapter on guideline for surgical hand hygiene for WHO, and was expert for developing WHO guidelines on prevention of surgical site infections. He also acts as executive board member in “roundtable antibiotics” to facilitate development of new antibiotics. He has published more than 430 peer-reviewed papers