Ralf Bartenschlager is Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases, Molecular Virology at Heidelberg University and head of the research division "Virus-Associated Carcinogenesis" at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
His research focusses on the molecular and cellular biology of infections with viruses, primarily hepatitis B and C virus, but also flaviviruses such as Dengue virus and Zika virus and more recently, SARS-CoV-2. The main questions addressed are how viruses reprogram cellular pathways and organelles for efficient viral replication, how viruses activate and counteract the innate antiviral defense and how these insights can be used to develop novel antiviral strategies.

Ralf Bartenschlager is Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases, Molecular Virology at Heidelberg University and head of the research division "Virus-Associated Carcinogenesis" at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg.
His research focusses on the molecular and cellular biology of infections with viruses, primarily hepatitis B and C virus, but also flaviviruses such as Dengue virus and Zika virus and more recently, SARS-CoV-2. The main questions addressed are how viruses reprogram cellular pathways and organelles for efficient viral replication, how viruses activate and counteract the innate antiviral defense and how these insights can be used to develop novel antiviral strategies.

Annalisa Capuano is a medical doctor specialized in Clinical Pharmacology. She plays her research activities as Associate Professor at the Department of Experimental Medicine – University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. She is the responsabile of the Regional Centre of Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacoepidemiology (Campania region – South of Italy). Her research activities are directed to the topics of pharmacology in a broad sense, pharmacovigilance, pharmacoepidemiology and proper use of medicines and vaccines.
Since 2004, she is a member (pharmacologist) of the section of Clinical Pharmacology of Italian Society of Pharmacology. She is also member pharmacologist of two Ethics Committees in the Campania region. She has been collaborating for many years with the National Institute of Health (National Center for Epidemiology, surveillance and health promotion). During her carrier she has obtained national funding for research projects by the Italian Medicine Agency (AIFA) and by the Italian Ministry of Education and University. She is also a member of the Secretariat of Pharmacovigilance at AIFA and component of ENCePP at EMA. Her research activities have led to over 150 publications in international journals.

Annalisa Capuano is a medical doctor specialized in Clinical Pharmacology. She plays her research activities as Associate Professor at the Department of Experimental Medicine – University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. She is the responsabile of the Regional Centre of Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacoepidemiology (Campania region – South of Italy). Her research activities are directed to the topics of pharmacology in a broad sense, pharmacovigilance, pharmacoepidemiology and proper use of medicines and vaccines.
Since 2004, she is a member (pharmacologist) of the section of Clinical Pharmacology of Italian Society of Pharmacology. She is also member pharmacologist of two Ethics Committees in the Campania region. She has been collaborating for many years with the National Institute of Health (National Center for Epidemiology, surveillance and health promotion). During her carrier she has obtained national funding for research projects by the Italian Medicine Agency (AIFA) and by the Italian Ministry of Education and University. She is also a member of the Secretariat of Pharmacovigilance at AIFA and component of ENCePP at EMA. Her research activities have led to over 150 publications in international journals.

Andrea Carfì is Head of Research ModeRNA Therapeutics, where he leads the Infectious Disease Research team to discover and advance mRNA based vaccines and therapeutics against infectious disease targets.

Andrea Carfì is Head of Research ModeRNA Therapeutics, where he leads the Infectious Disease Research team to discover and advance mRNA based vaccines and therapeutics against infectious disease targets.

Eddie Holmes is an ARC Australian Laurate Fellow and Professor at the University of Sydney. Prior to that it was an NHMRC Australia Fellow at the University of Sydney, which he joined in 2012. Eddie received his undergraduate degree from the University of London (1986) and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (1990). Between 1993-2004 he held various positions at the University of Oxford, including University Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology and Fellow of New College. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) in 2015 and of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017. In 2017 he won the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Science and Engineering (Biological Sciences).

Eddie Holmes is an ARC Australian Laurate Fellow and Professor at the University of Sydney. Prior to that it was an NHMRC Australia Fellow at the University of Sydney, which he joined in 2012. Eddie received his undergraduate degree from the University of London (1986) and his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (1990). Between 1993-2004 he held various positions at the University of Oxford, including University Lecturer in Evolutionary Biology and Fellow of New College. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA) in 2015 and of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017. In 2017 he won the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Science and Engineering (Biological Sciences).

Antonio Lanzavecchia is known for his work on antigen presentation, T cell activation, immunological memory and human monoclonal antibodies. Lanzavecchia obtained a medical degree from the University of Pavia, where he specialized in paediatrics and in infectious diseases. Since 1983 he works in Switzerland, first as a scientific member of the Basel Institute for Immunology and since 2000 as the founding director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona. Lanzavecchia has been professor of Immunology at the University of Genova and Siena and at the Swiss Federal Institute of technology, ETH Zürich. He is member of the EMBO, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and is honorary member of the American Society for Immunology, of the Swiss Society of Immunology and of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2016 he has been elected as international member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He received the EMBO gold Medal, the Cloetta prize, the Robert Koch prize, the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur prize and the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. Lanzavecchia is the scientific Founder of Humabs Biomed, now a subsidiary of Vir Biotecnology and is currently senior Research fellow at Vir Biotecnology. His academic research continues at the INGM.

Antonio Lanzavecchia is known for his work on antigen presentation, T cell activation, immunological memory and human monoclonal antibodies. Lanzavecchia obtained a medical degree from the University of Pavia, where he specialized in paediatrics and in infectious diseases. Since 1983 he works in Switzerland, first as a scientific member of the Basel Institute for Immunology and since 2000 as the founding director of the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Bellinzona. Lanzavecchia has been professor of Immunology at the University of Genova and Siena and at the Swiss Federal Institute of technology, ETH Zürich. He is member of the EMBO, fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and is honorary member of the American Society for Immunology, of the Swiss Society of Immunology and of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2016 he has been elected as international member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He received the EMBO gold Medal, the Cloetta prize, the Robert Koch prize, the Sanofi-Institut Pasteur prize and the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine. Lanzavecchia is the scientific Founder of Humabs Biomed, now a subsidiary of Vir Biotecnology and is currently senior Research fellow at Vir Biotecnology. His academic research continues at the INGM.

Johan Neyts is full professor of Virology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He teaches virology at the medical school and at the school of dentistry. The lab has a long-standing expertise in the development of antivirals strategies and drugs against emerging and neglected viral infections such as dengue and other flaviviruses, Chikungunya and other alphaviruses, enteroviruses, noroviruses, HEV and rabies and is intensively involved in the search for antiviral strategies against SARS-CoV2. A second focus of the lab is the development of a novel vaccine technology platform technology based on the yellow fever virus vaccine as a vector; this include among others vaccines against rabies and SARS-CoV2. His team is also developing a technology, the PLLAV (Plasmid Launched Live Attenuated Virus); which allows to rapidly engineer highly thermostable vaccines against multiple viral pathogens. Johan is past-president of the International Society for Antiviral Research (www.isar-icar.com). Four classes of antivirals discovered in his laboratory have been licensed to major pharmaceutical companies (two on HCV, one on dengue and one on rhino/enteroviruses). He published >500 papers in peer reviewed journals and has given ~210 invited lectures and a large number of interviews to lay-press.
www.antivirals.be
https://twitter.com/neyts_johan
www.facebook.com/NeytsLab
www.twitter.com/neytsvirology
ORCID 0000-0002-0033-7514 - Researcher ID : U-8267-2017

Johan Neyts is full professor of Virology at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He teaches virology at the medical school and at the school of dentistry. The lab has a long-standing expertise in the development of antivirals strategies and drugs against emerging and neglected viral infections such as dengue and other flaviviruses, Chikungunya and other alphaviruses, enteroviruses, noroviruses, HEV and rabies and is intensively involved in the search for antiviral strategies against SARS-CoV2. A second focus of the lab is the development of a novel vaccine technology platform technology based on the yellow fever virus vaccine as a vector; this include among others vaccines against rabies and SARS-CoV2. His team is also developing a technology, the PLLAV (Plasmid Launched Live Attenuated Virus); which allows to rapidly engineer highly thermostable vaccines against multiple viral pathogens. Johan is past-president of the International Society for Antiviral Research (www.isar-icar.com). Four classes of antivirals discovered in his laboratory have been licensed to major pharmaceutical companies (two on HCV, one on dengue and one on rhino/enteroviruses). He published >500 papers in peer reviewed journals and has given ~210 invited lectures and a large number of interviews to lay-press.
www.antivirals.be
https://twitter.com/neyts_johan
www.facebook.com/NeytsLab
www.twitter.com/neytsvirology
ORCID 0000-0002-0033-7514 - Researcher ID : U-8267-2017

A native of Germany, Melanie Ott is a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes, as well as a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco (UCSF). She is passionate about using viruses to find fundamental new biology in host cells. Known for her studies of the HIV Tat protein and viral latency, she also discovered a critical role of lipid droplets in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and defined how protein acetylation regulates T cell function. Her research is relevant for efforts to eradicate HIV from patients, to alleviate fatty liver disease in chronic HCV infection, and suppress autoimmunity in patients with Type 1 Diabetes. She recently shifted part of her research efforts to study the new SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.
Prior to joining Gladstone in 2002, Ott started her own research group at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany. She earned an MD from the University of Frankfurt/Main in Germany, and a PhD in Molecular Medicine from the Picower Graduate School in Manhasset, New York. She is a member of the Association of American Physicians and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. She is also a recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Public Service from UCSF for her community student outreach work at Gladstone. Ott also helped establish the PUMAS (Promoting Underrepresented Minorities Advancing in the Sciences) internship program at Gladstone, which seeks to increase diversity in STEM and won the Educator of the Year award from the California Life Science Association.

A native of Germany, Melanie Ott is a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes, as well as a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco (UCSF). She is passionate about using viruses to find fundamental new biology in host cells. Known for her studies of the HIV Tat protein and viral latency, she also discovered a critical role of lipid droplets in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and defined how protein acetylation regulates T cell function. Her research is relevant for efforts to eradicate HIV from patients, to alleviate fatty liver disease in chronic HCV infection, and suppress autoimmunity in patients with Type 1 Diabetes. She recently shifted part of her research efforts to study the new SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.
Prior to joining Gladstone in 2002, Ott started her own research group at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg, Germany. She earned an MD from the University of Frankfurt/Main in Germany, and a PhD in Molecular Medicine from the Picower Graduate School in Manhasset, New York. She is a member of the Association of American Physicians and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. She is also a recipient of the Chancellor's Award for Public Service from UCSF for her community student outreach work at Gladstone. Ott also helped establish the PUMAS (Promoting Underrepresented Minorities Advancing in the Sciences) internship program at Gladstone, which seeks to increase diversity in STEM and won the Educator of the Year award from the California Life Science Association.

Graziano Pesole has since long carried out research activity in the fields of bioinformatics, comparative genomics and molecular evolution. His current research interests are focused on bioinformatics application for the management and analysis of next generation sequencing data, obtained also at single-cell resolution, including: i) genome assembly and annotation; ii) transcriptome profiling of the protein coding and non-coding portion of the genomes (e.g. miRNAs and lincRNAs), including the characterization of novel splicing isoforms, to investigate gene expression in healthy and disease conditions and identify diagnostic and prognostic molecular biomarkers; iii) Detection and functional assessment of disease-causative mutations; iv) ChIP-Seq analysis for the characterization of epigenetic signatures in healthy and disease conditions; v) RNA editing studies; v) Metagenomics analysis to investigate the microbial composition of clinical and environmental samples and their functional role.
He has developed several specialized databases including UTRdb/UTRsite collecting mRNA untranslated sequences and related regulatory motifs involved in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression, ASPicDB and SpliceAID-F, information resources for alternative splicing analysis, ITSoneDB for DNA metabarcoding analysis of eukaryal microbiome, and REDIportal, a comprehensive database of A-to-I RNA editing events in human.
He has also developed widely used analysis software and algorithms which are available as standalone software or through the web including: 1) PatSearch, for the detection or regular expression patterns and structural motifs in nucleotide sequences; 2) CSTminer/GenoMiner, for the blind identification of coding and non coding conserved sequence tags through the pairwise comparison of genome sequences; 3) Weeder, for the discovery of transcription factor binding sites and other regulatory elements, by detecting over-represented nucleotide patterns in nucleotide sequences; 4) RNAprofile, for the discovery of conserved sequence/structural motifs in unaligned RNA sequences; 5) Exalign, for comparative analysis of exon-intron gene structures; 6) ExpEdit and REDITOOLS: for exploring RNA editing from NGS data; 7) WEP and CoVaCS, for the characterization of nucleotide sequence variations through the analysis of whole-exome sequence data; 8) RAP and NGS-Trex, for transcriptome profiling and differential expression analysis from RNA-Seq data; 9) BioMaS, a modular pipeline for Bioinformatic analysis of Metagenomic AmpliconS; 10) MetaShot, an accurate workflow for taxon classification of host-associated microbiome from shotgun metagenomic data; 11) A-Game, for functional metagenomics analyses.
He leads an interdisciplinary research group including molecular biologists, computer scientists and mathematicians.
He coordinated research units in several research projects funded by national (MIUR, CNR, Telethon, AIRC, AISM, ARISLA) and international (EU, NIH) agencies, and has filed several international patents.
He is Section Editor for the journal BMC Bioinformatics and member of the editorial Board of other international journals (Nature Scientific Reports, Nucleic Acids Research – Genomics and Bioinformatics, BMC Genomics, Computational Biology and Chemistry, Briefings in Bioinformatics; Comparative and Functional Genomics), co-author of books on Bioinformatics, Genomics and Molecular Biology published by Italian (Zanichelli, Ambrosiana, Gnocchi) and international (Wiley) editors. He has been one of the founders and past-president of the Italian Society of Bioinformatics and is currently the head of the Italian node of ELIXIR infrastructure for Bioinformatics and member of the Scientific Committee of Cluster Alisei.

Graziano Pesole has since long carried out research activity in the fields of bioinformatics, comparative genomics and molecular evolution. His current research interests are focused on bioinformatics application for the management and analysis of next generation sequencing data, obtained also at single-cell resolution, including: i) genome assembly and annotation; ii) transcriptome profiling of the protein coding and non-coding portion of the genomes (e.g. miRNAs and lincRNAs), including the characterization of novel splicing isoforms, to investigate gene expression in healthy and disease conditions and identify diagnostic and prognostic molecular biomarkers; iii) Detection and functional assessment of disease-causative mutations; iv) ChIP-Seq analysis for the characterization of epigenetic signatures in healthy and disease conditions; v) RNA editing studies; v) Metagenomics analysis to investigate the microbial composition of clinical and environmental samples and their functional role.
He has developed several specialized databases including UTRdb/UTRsite collecting mRNA untranslated sequences and related regulatory motifs involved in the post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression, ASPicDB and SpliceAID-F, information resources for alternative splicing analysis, ITSoneDB for DNA metabarcoding analysis of eukaryal microbiome, and REDIportal, a comprehensive database of A-to-I RNA editing events in human.
He has also developed widely used analysis software and algorithms which are available as standalone software or through the web including: 1) PatSearch, for the detection or regular expression patterns and structural motifs in nucleotide sequences; 2) CSTminer/GenoMiner, for the blind identification of coding and non coding conserved sequence tags through the pairwise comparison of genome sequences; 3) Weeder, for the discovery of transcription factor binding sites and other regulatory elements, by detecting over-represented nucleotide patterns in nucleotide sequences; 4) RNAprofile, for the discovery of conserved sequence/structural motifs in unaligned RNA sequences; 5) Exalign, for comparative analysis of exon-intron gene structures; 6) ExpEdit and REDITOOLS: for exploring RNA editing from NGS data; 7) WEP and CoVaCS, for the characterization of nucleotide sequence variations through the analysis of whole-exome sequence data; 8) RAP and NGS-Trex, for transcriptome profiling and differential expression analysis from RNA-Seq data; 9) BioMaS, a modular pipeline for Bioinformatic analysis of Metagenomic AmpliconS; 10) MetaShot, an accurate workflow for taxon classification of host-associated microbiome from shotgun metagenomic data; 11) A-Game, for functional metagenomics analyses.
He leads an interdisciplinary research group including molecular biologists, computer scientists and mathematicians.
He coordinated research units in several research projects funded by national (MIUR, CNR, Telethon, AIRC, AISM, ARISLA) and international (EU, NIH) agencies, and has filed several international patents.
He is Section Editor for the journal BMC Bioinformatics and member of the editorial Board of other international journals (Nature Scientific Reports, Nucleic Acids Research – Genomics and Bioinformatics, BMC Genomics, Computational Biology and Chemistry, Briefings in Bioinformatics; Comparative and Functional Genomics), co-author of books on Bioinformatics, Genomics and Molecular Biology published by Italian (Zanichelli, Ambrosiana, Gnocchi) and international (Wiley) editors. He has been one of the founders and past-president of the Italian Society of Bioinformatics and is currently the head of the Italian node of ELIXIR infrastructure for Bioinformatics and member of the Scientific Committee of Cluster Alisei.

Dr. Viviana Simon is Professor of Microbiology and Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She is a member of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute and also serves as Director of the Personalized Virology Initiative. Dr. Simon is an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, an Editor for the Journal of Virology and a member of the editorial boards of Elife and Retrovirology.
Dr. Simon’s training as physician scientist has allowed her to tackle problems in medicine, especially infectious diseases. Her research has focused on finding solutions to overcome roadblocks preventing efficient and long-lasting treatment of HIV/AIDS disease. Over past three years, she has spearheaded the Personalized Virology Initiative, a multi-disciplinary program, which permits access to clinical samples from patients with viral infections as well as from healthy participants before and after vaccination (e.g. seasonal influenza vaccines).
During the COVID19 pandemic, Dr. Simon and her team have contributed to developing serological tests to measure immune responses to SARS-CoV2 and shaped our understanding of SARS-CoV2 spread in NYC using precision surveillance. Her integrated research programs support development of new approaches to prevent, treat and cure infectious diseases such as COVID19 by studying the viruses that cause severe disease manifestations. Her team also works on defining the durability and effectiveness of immune responses to SARS-CoV2 in health care workers as well as in the diverse patient populations cared for at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City.

Dr. Viviana Simon is Professor of Microbiology and Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. She is a member of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute and also serves as Director of the Personalized Virology Initiative. Dr. Simon is an Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, an Editor for the Journal of Virology and a member of the editorial boards of Elife and Retrovirology.
Dr. Simon’s training as physician scientist has allowed her to tackle problems in medicine, especially infectious diseases. Her research has focused on finding solutions to overcome roadblocks preventing efficient and long-lasting treatment of HIV/AIDS disease. Over past three years, she has spearheaded the Personalized Virology Initiative, a multi-disciplinary program, which permits access to clinical samples from patients with viral infections as well as from healthy participants before and after vaccination (e.g. seasonal influenza vaccines).
During the COVID19 pandemic, Dr. Simon and her team have contributed to developing serological tests to measure immune responses to SARS-CoV2 and shaped our understanding of SARS-CoV2 spread in NYC using precision surveillance. Her integrated research programs support development of new approaches to prevent, treat and cure infectious diseases such as COVID19 by studying the viruses that cause severe disease manifestations. Her team also works on defining the durability and effectiveness of immune responses to SARS-CoV2 in health care workers as well as in the diverse patient populations cared for at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City.

Martin Walsh is currently Deputy Director of life sciences at Diamond Light Source. He has over 30 years’ experience in the field of macromolecular crystallography with over 190 structures deposited with the Protein Data Bank (PDB). MW has led to the development of new methodologies and instrumentation to advance the capabilities and reach of the method to more complex systems especially in the context of high-throughput. His career experience spans over 20 years at state of the art synchrotron facilities. His main research interest is in host-pathogen interactions and in particular bacterial respiratory pathogens. At Diamond his duties span overseeing activities in X-ray crystallography, Cryo-EM/Cryo-ET scattering, spectroscopy, imaging, as well as Circular Dichroism, and Infra-red microspectroscopy.

Martin Walsh is currently Deputy Director of life sciences at Diamond Light Source. He has over 30 years’ experience in the field of macromolecular crystallography with over 190 structures deposited with the Protein Data Bank (PDB). MW has led to the development of new methodologies and instrumentation to advance the capabilities and reach of the method to more complex systems especially in the context of high-throughput. His career experience spans over 20 years at state of the art synchrotron facilities. His main research interest is in host-pathogen interactions and in particular bacterial respiratory pathogens. At Diamond his duties span overseeing activities in X-ray crystallography, Cryo-EM/Cryo-ET scattering, spectroscopy, imaging, as well as Circular Dichroism, and Infra-red microspectroscopy.

Susan Weiss obtained her PhD in Microbiology from Harvard University working on paramyxoviruses and did postdoctoral training in retroviruses at University of California, San Francisco. She is currently Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Microbiology and Co-director of the Penn Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked on many aspects of coronavirus replication and pathogenesis over the last forty years, making contributions to understanding the basic biology as well as organ tropism and virulence. She has worked with murine coronavirus (MHV), MERS-CoV and most recently SARS-CoV-2. Her work for the last ten years has focused on coronavirus interaction with the host innate immune response and viral innate antagonists of double-stranded RNA induced antiviral pathways. Her other research interests include activation and antagonism of the antiviral oligoadenylate-ribonuclease L (OAS-RNase L) pathway, flavivirus- primarily Zika- virus-host interactions and pathogenic effects of host endogenous dsRNA.

Susan Weiss obtained her PhD in Microbiology from Harvard University working on paramyxoviruses and did postdoctoral training in retroviruses at University of California, San Francisco. She is currently Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Microbiology and Co-director of the Penn Center for Research on Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She has worked on many aspects of coronavirus replication and pathogenesis over the last forty years, making contributions to understanding the basic biology as well as organ tropism and virulence. She has worked with murine coronavirus (MHV), MERS-CoV and most recently SARS-CoV-2. Her work for the last ten years has focused on coronavirus interaction with the host innate immune response and viral innate antagonists of double-stranded RNA induced antiviral pathways. Her other research interests include activation and antagonism of the antiviral oligoadenylate-ribonuclease L (OAS-RNase L) pathway, flavivirus- primarily Zika- virus-host interactions and pathogenic effects of host endogenous dsRNA.