Ministry of Science, Energy, Climate Protection and Environment of Saxony-Anhalt

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 12:30

Peter Hinrichs

Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 12:30

Heike Kielstein

Head of German Institute for Global and Area Studies, GIGA

Berlin Office and Professor of Political Science

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His research focuses on social and political development in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is an expert on Cuba​ and has published numerous articles and books on its political, social and economic transformation since 1989. He is member of the scientific councils of the academic journals European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Asian Journal of Latin American Studies.

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 15:30

bert hoffman

Ulm University

Medical Director of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene at the University Hospital

He oversees the diagnosis of microbial infections, infection control and antibiotic stewardship at the University Hospital in Ulm. His special
interest in the medical field are the diagnosis, treatment and management of mycobacterial infections.

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The major scientific findings include the characterization of granulysin as an endogenous antimicrobial peptide, the identification a vitamin D-dependent pathway of macrophage activation and the functional characterization of lipid specific T-lymphocytes. His current focus is the development of new vaccine approaches against tuberculosis and the identification and functional characterization of antimycobacterial peptides. This research was published in high impact journals including Science, Nature Medicine and Journal of Clinical Investigation and rewarded by several prizes including the Robert Koch Award for postdoctoral research and the major prize of the German Society of Hygiene and Microbiology.

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Speaking day: Wednesday, 21 August | 11:40

Steffen Stenger

Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology – Hans Knöll Institute
Vice President of the German Research Foundation

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 12:30

Axel Brakhage

Department of Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence Systems (ISY)

WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, Berlin, Germany

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 13:00

Raquel Medialdea Carrera

Principal Investigator, Full Time Professor and Director of Laboratory of Synthetic and Biomolecular Chemistry at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Havana

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Expert on bioactive peptides and natural products, protein bioconjugation and vaccine development. He is a Titular Member of the Cuban Academy of Science. President of the Cuban Society of Chemistry (2016-2018) and of the Latin American Federation of Chemical Associations (FLAQ, 2018-2021). He has more than 100 scientific publications, H-index 36 and 5 patents.

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Dr. García Rivera is a co-developer of the COVID-19 vaccine SOBERANA02.

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 14:20

Daniel García Rivera

Professor and Head of AG Molecular Genetics of Infectious Diseases at the University Clinic Tübingen

PACE-UP Global Health Centre

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Genetic factors of pathogens as well as those of the hosts decisively influence the phenotype of a disease and the immune response. A particular focus of our work is the characterization of pathogens and human genetic factors.

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He is founder and director of the Vietnamese-German Centre for Medical Research (VG-CARE), in Hanoi, Vietnam (www.vgcare.org). He coordinates distinct projects on clinical trials, genetic epidemiology, surveillance program on anti-microbial resistances, infectious diseases diagnostics supported by funding bodies such as BMBF and DAAD Germany, and support from other international pharmaceutical firms and universities.

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 14:50

Thirumalaisamy P. Velavan

Institute of Virology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin (CUB) and University of Costa Rica (UCR)

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Expert in virology and emerging viruses in Latin America. Has been part of several international pandemic prevention and control missions.

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 10:00

andrés moreira Soto

Project and Communications Manager for GLACIER, Institute of Ecology, UNAM 

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Expert on environmental communication and ethics, narratives and storytelling. She is also a writer, screenwriter and translator.

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 16:00

Esmeralda Osejo Brito

Science Communication Department, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Head of UNAM's Science Journalism Unit

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Expert in science communication and dissemination. He also holds a doctorate in Physics from UNAM. He started doing science journalism in 1994 on daily press and subsequently on radio, TV and Internet. As Head of UNAM's Science Journalism Unit he has combined the practice and teaching of science journalism with research on public science communication.

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 16:30 (Round table)

Javier Crúz Mena

Institute of Ecology, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

Head of Science Communication and Dissemination Unit

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Expert in science communication. 

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Contact

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 16:30 (Round table)

Clementina Equihua Zamora

Wirkstoffradio

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He works at the Leibniz Research Institute for Molecular Pharmacology (FMP) in Berlin, in the "Structural Chemistry and Computational Biophysics" group. As a postdoc at the FMP, he is developing chemoinformatics routines and databases for the design of new compound libraries. He also supports several projects on research data management.

In addition to his scientific work, Bernd is involved with wissenschaftspodcasts.de and "Chaos macht Schule", where he advocates for new communication channels in science and education in order to make knowledge more accessible and understandable for a wider public.

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Contact

X: rupi42ai

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 16:30 (Round table)

Bernd Rupp

Berlin-based digital artist and visual communicator

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Expert on communicating scientific ideas and concepts through animation and illustration.

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 16:30 (Round table)

José Campaña Lewis

University of Gießen​

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Michael Knipper is Professor of Global Health, Migration, and Medical Humanities at the Institute for the History, Theory, and Ethics of Medicine at the University of Giessen. He has long cooperation record with Latin American countries, especially Ecuador, Peri and Colombia regarding social medicine, indigenous and migrant health, and is focal point for Latin America of Lancet Migration (Lancet Commission on Migration and Health). In GLACIER, he collaborates with Prof. Enrique Beldarraín and the Cuban team on the historical and social dimensions of the control of infectious diseases.

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 16:30 (Round table)

Michael Knipper

Subsecretary of Public Health of Bogotá, Colombia

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He is a social epidemiologist with significant experience in research and public health practice in Latin America. He has an advanced training in public health management, epidemiological methods, study design, and
biostatistics. As the former National Director of Epidemiology in Colombia during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, he became an outstanding leader for evidence-based decision-making in public health at the national and regional level in Latin America.

Dr. Fernández Niño also has more than a decade of experience in health inequities research and research on social determinants of physical and mental health among vulnerable populations in low and middle-income countries. Most recently, he has focused on the health outcomes of migrants and refugees.

He was the founder and first coordinator of the Migration and Health Network in Colombia, a network of researchers that was launched in 2018, and was one of the first Colombian researchers to investigate the public health impacts of the Venezuelan crisis on population health of Venezuelans residing in Colombia.

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Speaking day: Tuesday, 20 August | 16:30 (Round table) and Wednesday, 21 August | 9:40

Julián Alfredo Fernández Niño

Department of Medicinal Chemistry, University of Minnesota

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Speaking day: Wednesday, 21 August | 10:40

Courtney Aldrich

Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB)

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Expert on AI drug discovery.

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Speaking day: Wednesday, 21 August | 11:20

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Mehdi Davari

Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry (IPB)

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Expert on health application of natural products.

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 9:00

Robert Rennert

Institute of Microbiology, Center for Infectious Diseases, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover (TiHo)

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His expertise and research interests lie in the area of ​​the molecular basis of pathogen-host interactions, especially in the respiratory tract of pigs. As pathogens, he is primarily interested in streptococci and their pathomechanisms in mono- and co-infections (the latter with other bacterial and viral pathogens in the porcine respiratory tract). In his working group, various in vitro and ex vivo models are used for experiments, e.g. lung precision sections (PCLS) and air-liquid interphase (ALI) systems. In these infection models, corresponding bacterial mutants and recombinant proteins are investigated in order to clarify mechanisms of adherence, invasion and phagocytosis resistance in more detail. The group is also interested in metabolic adaptations of pathogens to host-typical habitats and immune modulations.

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 9:30

Peter Valentin-Weigand

School of Chemistry, Biomedical Sciences Research Complex, University of St Andrews

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The Goss Group are active in the area of elucidating and engineering biosynthesis of natural products, at the chemical and genetic level, and in blending synthetic biology and synthetic chemistry to make new to nature natural products. Specifically, their research focuses on natural products with important medicinal properties, particularly anti-infectives, and in understanding how biosynthetically intriguing motifs within these compounds are assembled. From this vantage point they harness individual enzymes as convenient tools for organic synthesis, and engineer a combination of synthetic chemistry and synthetic biology to harness entire biosynthetic pathways in order to enable expeditious access to libraries of medicinally relevant compounds. These libraries may be used to gain a greater understanding as to how the drug acts at the molecular level within the cell.

The group is particularly noted for their pioneering work in GenoChemetics and precision molecular editing using halogenases in complement with aqueous cross-coupling methodologies that they develop. The Goss group also have active programmes in the complementary areas of natural product and biocatalyst discovery and development. In team with scientists in Chemical Engineering the Goss group have pioneered an Engineered E. coli plug and play platform for biocatalysis.

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Contact

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Speaking day: TBD

Rebecca Goss

Head of the National Influenza and Respiratory Viruses Center at Sheba Medical Center

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Expert in virology. Her laboratory is part of the World Health Organization (WHO) National Influenza Center (NICs) global Network. As a national center, it is involved both in routine diagnostic and epidemiological work and in research and development focusing on pathogenesis and epidemiology of respiratory viruses, and on development and evaluation of laboratory assays, vaccines and anti- viral drugs. Several respiratory viruses are investigated, such as influenza (including the pandemic influenza virus H1N1pdm), hMPV, RSV, with human corona viruses such as: MERS, NL63, OC43, 229E, HKU1 and most importantly SARS-CoV-2.

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 13:40

Michal Mandelboim

Head of the Department of Vaccinology and Applied Microbiology at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and APL professor at the Hannover Medical School

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He is an Argentinian researcher who has been active in the field of Vaccinology since 1989. His work led to the discovery of new adjuvants, the establishment of Salmonella spp. as a delivery system for DNA vaccines and therapeutic molecules, and the development of vaccine candidates against different infectious diseases.

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He is part of the editorial board of Microbial Biotechnology, Bioengineered and Microbial Immunology. He is also review editor of Frontiers in Mucosal Immunology and speaker on “Immune Response and Intervention” of the program “Infection Research” of the Helmholtz Association.

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He has published more than 260 articles in international journals, is co-inventor of numerous international patents and is part of the select group of the "Council of 100" of the Vaccine magazine, which brings together the top vaccine experts.

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 14:10

Carlos A. Guzmán

Full Professor and Researcher | DIFACQUIM research group | Department of Pharmacy of the Institute of Chemistry, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

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He leads the DIFACQUIM research group at UNAM. The group's research focus is on chemoinformatics, molecular modeling and artificial intelligence with applications on epigenetic targets and natural products. In 2017 he was named Fellow of the Royal
Society of Chemistry (UK). He has been Visiting Professor of the University of Montreal at Quebec and The University of Pereira, Colombia.

He has published 300 peer-reviewed papers, 25 book chapters and issued one international patent. He has edited four books and serves as Chief Editor of the section “In Silico Modeling and Artificial Intelligence” of Frontiers in Drug Discovery and is Lead Advisor of the journal F1000Research, Chemical Information Science and is member of the Editorial Board of several journals.

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 11:30

José L. Medina Franco

Head of the ImmunoSurgery/ImmunoTherapy Laboratory at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown of the Champalimaud Foundation

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He is a Medical Doctor with a Ph.D. by the Johannes Guttenberg University of Mainz (Mainz, Germany) with over 2 decades of experience in the immunology field and is an expert in the use of immunotherapy to develop new anti-tumoral treatments. He has been working in several fields, with an emphasis on tuberculosis development of novel treatments and/or prevention, host-pathogen interactions, immunotherapy, and the development of new anti-tumoral treatments. During his career, he has worked in several institutions, including Johannes Guttenberg University of Mainz (Mainz, Germany), University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, USA), Karolinska Institute (Stockholm, Sweden).

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 14:40

Markus Maeurer

Leibniz Research Center Borstel

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Speaking day: Thursday, 22 August | 11:00

Garath Prosser

Finlay Vaccine Institute

Director of Research & Development

Member of National Committee of Innovation of the Ministry of Health. Expert on vaccine development, with several patents and more than 50 papers in the field. She has been awarded 2 Gold Medals of OMPI (2022), 3 Annual Health Awards (2006, 2016, 2018) and 6 Awards of the National Academy of Sciences. She has co-led the development and production of preventive vaccines such pneumococcal conjugate and combined vaccines, and the COVID-19 vaccines SOBERANA02, SOBERANA Plus and SOBERANA01.

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Contact​

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Speaking day: TBD

Dagmar García Rivera