Invited Speakers

PROF Jean-Francois collet

Jean-François Collet made significant discoveries during his PhD (discovery of one of the largest families of phosphotransferases) at UCLouvain and postdoctoral work at Michigan (engineering a novel pathway for disulfide bond formation in the bacterial periplasm). In 2005, he established his research group at the de Duve Institute (Brussels), focusing on envelope protein folding and protection from stress-induced damage. His group's contributions include identifying a periplasmic reducing system, a methionine sulfoxide reductase system, and the function of CnoX as a quality control device for the Hsp60 protein GroEL. Collet's research also uncovered the mechanism of the stress sensor RcsF and identified the BAM complex as a lipoprotein export machinery across the outer membrane. He is the co-director of the de Duve Institute, a full professor at UCLouvain, and a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium. With over 110 publications, including several in top journals like Nature, Cell, and Science, Collet has received numerous awards for his achievements.

Prof Gabriel waksman

Gabriel Waksman obtained his PhD in 1982 from the University of Paris. He joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine (St Louis, USA) in 1993. In 2003, he moved to London (UK) to establish the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at UCL/Birkbeck. He held this position until 2019. He was elected to EMBO in 2007, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2008, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012, a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2013, and a member of Academia Europaea in 2014. He maintains an active research programme in the Structural and Molecular Biology of Bacterial Conjugation funded by awards from the Wellcome Trust and from MRC.

PROF petter brodin

Petter Brodin is Garfield Weston Chair and Professor of pediatric immunology at Imperial College London and professor of Pediatric immunology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. The Brodin lab (https://brodinlab.com/) develops and applies novel experimental and computational methods to describe human immune system variation with a particular interest in the immune systems of children, its development early in life, and its role in health and disease during childhood.

After completing a MD/PhD program at the Karolinska Institute, Brodin joined the Mark M Davis’s laboratory at HHMI, Stanford University School of Medicine as a postdoctoral fellow, investigating the contribution of heritable and non-heritable sources of variation in immune systems of twins (Brodin et al, Cell, 2015). Following this, Brodin returned to Sweden to establish a national facility for immunomonitoring at the Swedish infrastructure hub, Science for Life Laboratory. He also established his own research program applying systems-immunology methods to the study of immune system development early in life. The Brodin lab established a birth cohort and showed differences in early life adaptation between preterm and term infants (Olin et al, Cell, 2018), the global repertoire of maternal antiviral antibodies (Pou et al, Nat. Med, 2019) as well as the imprinting effect of select colonizing microbes such as bifidobacterial early in life (Henrick et al, Cell, 2021). The Brodin lab has also applied its technologies for systems-level immune system analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand COVID-19 in children (Brodin, P, Immunity 2022), the immunology of MIS-C (Consiglio et al, Cell, 2020) and severe COVID-19 (Rodriguez et al, Cell Reports Med, 2020) and are active members of the global COVID-Human Genetic Effort (https://www.covidhge.com/) in which we lead the LongCOVID subgroup (Brodin et al, Nat. Med, 2022).

PROF andreas meinhardt

Prof. Andreas Meinhardt studied Human Biology at Philipps University in Marburg. 
After his postdoctoral stay at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, he returned in 1995 to Marburg. He was appointed as professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany in 2001. His research interest includes reproductive immunology with a focus on the understanding of infection and inflammation of the epididymis and testis as a cause of infertility. Andreas holds two Honorary/Adjunct Professorships with Monash University and the Hudson Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne and is Visiting Professor at the Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences at Beijing Union Medical College in China. He is a recipient of the Fuller W Bazer International Scientist Award of the Society for the Study of Reproduction (2019) and the American Journal of Reproductive Immunology Award of the American Society of Reproductive Immunology (2022).  

PROF clare lloyd

Clare Lloyd is Head of the Respiratory Division at the National Heart & Lung Institute in London. She trained in immunology at Kings College London and undertook Postdoctoral research at Guys Hospital London and Harvard Medical School, Boston. She worked in a Biotech company in Cambridge USA, investigating the functions of type2 molecules in different disease models. She returned to the UK to start her own group, and has been  funded by a serial Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowships. Clare’s research the mechanisms underlying the immune response to inhaled allergens pathogens and pollutants, trying to understand how the immune system senses the inhaled environment, examining how these stimuli influences development of lung inflammation, particularly in very young children. She is Vice Dean for Institutional Affairs in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College, taking leading on EDI and career development. Clare is an elected fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Prof federica sallusto

Federica Sallusto is Professor of Medical Immunology at the ETH Zurich and USI Lugano and group leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona, Switzerland. She is an expert in the field of human cellular immunology. Her research has focused on dendritic cell and T cell traffic, mechanisms of T cell differentiation and immunological memory. Among her contributions are the definition of “central memory” and “effector memory” T cells as memory subsets with distinct migratory capacity and effector function, the discovery of Th22 cells as a distinct subset of skin-homing T cells, the characterization of non-classic Th1 cells induced by bacteria and of two distinct types of Th17 cells with pro-inflammatory and regulatory properties. She also developed methods for the analysis of human naïve and memory T cell repertoires based on high throughput cellular screenings of expanded T cell libraries that has been instrumental to study T cell responses in patients with immunodeficiencies and to identify autoreactive T cells in patients with narcolepsy. She is member of the German National Academy of Science Leopoldina, of EMBO and of the Henry Kunkel Society, international member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and honorary member of the Swiss Society for Allergology and Immunology. In 2022 she was honored with the title of Doctor honoris causa of the Faculty of Science and Medicine of the University of Fribourg. She is currently president of EFIS, the European Federation of Immunological Societies.

Dr erin duffy

Erin Duffy is the Chief of Research & Development at CARB-X. CARB-X is a global biopharmaceutical accelerator for the discovery and early development of products to prevent, diagnose and treat bacterial infections. Most of her professional growth was with Melinta Therapeutics (founded as Rib-X Pharmaceuticals) where ultimately she became EVP, Chief Scientific Officer and R&D site head.  Her entry into the pharmaceutical sector began with Pfizer Central Research.  Erin’s formal training was at Yale University, where she completed a PhD in physical-organic chemistry and an HHMI postdoctoral fellowship in computational structural biology.

A/PROF JOEN LUIRINK

The research focus of my academic group is on protein trafficking pathways in bacteria. After my PhD research on secretion of bacteriocins I worked as a visiting scientist at the EMBL (Heidelberg, Germany) on a novel pathway for targeting of membrane proteins in bacteria, a topic that was continued upon return to Amsterdam.

This pathway partly overlaps with the type V secretion system that is used to secrete virulence factors across the cell envelope of Gram-negative bacteria. We have studied the mechanics of this system but also use it as a tool and target in the development of antimicrobials. For instance, we use it to display antigens on the surface of Outer Membrane Vesicles to serve as vaccine nanocarriers. This technology is exploited by the spin-off company Abera Bioscience.

prof photini sinnis

Photini Sinnis MD is Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and one of the Deputy Directors of the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. Her research interests focus on malaria and in particular, on sporozoites, the infective stage of the parasite. She currently serves on the editorial board of Science Advances and is a member of the NIH grant review panel focused on parasitic infections. She is passionate about mentoring students and junior faculty and served as course director of the Biology of Parasitism course offered at Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole from 2015-2019. 

Prof dena lyras

Professor Dena Lyras is the Deputy Director of the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University. Her laboratory is focussed on enteric pathogens, particularly the clostridia and those involved in antibiotic-associated diarrhoea in humans and animals, and they use genetic approaches to understand how these microbes harness regulatory and virulence factors to interact with the host and cause disease. Antibiotic resistance and DNA mobility are also research areas of focus, in the context of gut pathogens and antibiotic-associated diarrhoeal disease. In collaboration with industry and academic partners, her laboratory is developing immunotherapeutics and small molecules to prevent and treat these infections. She was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship from 2012-2016 and began an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship in 2022.

prof jeff errington

Prof Jeff Errington FRS has focused his research career on resolving fundamental questions about the structure and function of bacterial cells, especially endospore formation, chromosome replication and segregation, cell division and cell morphogenesis. After 25 years at the University of Oxford, he moved to Newcastle University (UK) as scientific founder and Director of the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology, the world’s first major research centre focused specifically on the molecular and cellular biology of bacteria. Last year he moved to the University of Sydney with an ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship, to continue and expand his work on L-form bacteria.

Errington’s contributions to basic science have been recognized by election to various learned societies, including Fellowship of the Royal Society, EMBO, and both the European and American Academies of Microbiology. He has also founded two successful spin-out companies, Prolysis Ltd, and Demuris Ltd, which was recently acquired by US-based Odyssey Therapeutics.

dr tim wells

Dr Timothy Wells is a Senior Research Fellow at the Frazer Institute, The University of Queensland. Dr Wells is a molecular microbiologist whose research focuses on the interactions between the host immune system and Pseudomonas aeruginosa during chronic lung infections.  

Dr Wells’ research investigates antibody-dependent enhancement of bacterial infection. Dr Wells research identified patients that produced a specific antibody that protected their infecting P. aeruginosa from killing by the immune system. These ‘cloaking antibodies’ target lipopolysaccharide on the bacterial surface. Importantly, patients with these antibodies have worse lung function and outcomes then those with normal immune killing. His research uses a mixture of molecular microbiology, immunology and genomic approaches and has directly led to novel treatment of critically ill patients with multi-drug resistant bacteria.

a/prof joanna groom

Associate Professor Joanna Groom is an NHMRC L1 Investigator fellow and laboratory head in the Immunology division of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI). Dr Groom’s research focuses on deciphering how cellular positioning and communication control immune responses, and how this can be leveraged to optimise clearance and protection from infection and cancer. This interest was piqued during her PhD, at the Garvan Institute, investigating the cellular signaling critical to lupus autoimmunity. Her research revealed a novel mechanism of autoantibody production. She performed her postdoctoral research with Prof. Andrew Luster, a leader in chemokine biology at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital (HMS/MGH). Here, she found that directed cell migration into lymphoid niches is intertwined with cell fate and function. Dr Groom’s team has made a series of advancements that enable 3D imaging of intact lymphoid organs and used this to discover the distinct niches that support the differentiation of effector and memory T cells. Her current research combines imaging and transcriptional analysis to dissect the cellular interactions that mediate protection against diverse pathogenic infections and cancer. 

PROF kate seib

Professor Kate Seib is a NHMRC Leadership Fellow and the Associate Director (Research) at the Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University. Prof Seib's expertise is in the field of molecular microbiology, with a focus on characterising virulence mechanisms and developing vaccines for human mucosal pathogens including Neisseria gonorrhoeae. 

Prof Seib’s work includes the discovery, pre-clinical characterisation and clinical evaluation of gonococcal vaccine candidates, as well as the use of mathematical modelling to assess the potential impact of vaccines on gonococcal prevalence. While at Novartis Vaccines she was part of the team that developed the outer membrane vesicle-based Neisseria meningitidis vaccine, 4CMenB. She is now leading two clinical trials to evaluate the ability of 4CMenB to prevent gonorrhoea. 

PROF trevor lithgow

Professor Lithgow is a biologist who studies drug-resistant bacteria, at both the single cell and population level. He led the NHMRC Program in Cellular Microbiology that used the fundamental knowledge of bacterial cell biology to better understand mechanisms of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), as well as the mechanics driving entry of bacteriophage (phage) into bacteria and the mechanisms by which phages then control bacterial populations. He now serves as Director of the inter-faculty Centre to Impact AMR located at Monash University. The Centre brings together engineers, social scientists and anthropologists, molecular and microbiologists, chemists, computational and evolutionary scientists, and clinicians, in order to find sustainable solutions to the growing and global problem of AMR. Professor Lithgow was an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. 

prof heidi drummer

Professor Heidi Drummer is Program Director for Disease Elimination at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Australia. She oversees a cross-disciplinary response to eliminate public health threats using diverse approaches across treatment and prevention, harm reduction in key populations at risk, vaccine and drug development, and diagnostics. For the last 20 years, her work has focussed on developing candidate vaccines for HIV, Hepatitis C and SARS-CoV-2 and has investigated the use of protein, virus-like particle, viral vectored vaccines and more recently mRNA platforms. She is an inventor on seven patent families and has worked extensively with Industry partners in Australia and Internationally.  Since 2021, she has been Scientific Director of the Burnet Diagnostics Initiative where she leads a research and development program to develop new diagnostics for human health.

Prof paul hertzog

Professor Paul Hertzog leads a multidisciplinary research team investigating the Regulation of Innate immune and Interferon Signalling in infection, inflammation, and cancer at the Centre for Innate Immunity & Infectious Diseases at the Hudson Institute of Medical Research. The program includes: structure-function of type I IFNs and their receptors. IFN responses are examined by a systems biology approach. They discovered and are characterising the function of the unique type I IFN epsilon, a constitutive, epithelial regulator of mucosal immunity against infection and cancer in the female reproductive, gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts.  His group made seminal discoveries about IFN’s mechanism of action, published in Nature, Science, Cell and will use their molecular insights for clinical impact..  Prof Hertzog was awarded the prestigious Milstein Award for Excellence in cytokine research by the International Cytokine and Interferon Society. He is a keen supporter of open, collaborative science, proud to have co-founded the VIIN network and the Lorne I&I conference which he co-convened from 2010 until 2021.