Keynotes

Daniel Morgan is an infectious diseases physician and professor of epidemiology at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He is president-elect of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA). His research explores how clinical medicine is changing with developments in diagnostics, AI and infection prevention. He has authored over 250 publications, and his work has been featured in the media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

His keynote will draw on his experience as a recipient of an NIH New Innovator Award, exploring clinicians’ understanding of risk in diagnosis and connecting themes from diagnostic excellence, overdiagnosis and diagnostic stewardship with the US CDC’s Core Elements for Diagnostic Excellence.

Direk Limmathurotsakul is Head of Microbiology at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Professor of Epidemiology at Mahidol University, and Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Oxford.

His work spans melioidosis, an infection caused by the environmental Gram-negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, as well as antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) bacterial and fungal infections. He leads AMASS; an open-access tool supporting AMR surveillance in LMIC hospitals and works with Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health to translate evidence into policy. In 2026, he received the UNESCO-Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology.

His keynote will focus on how locally generated data and practical, context-appropriate tools can guide antimicrobial resistance and stewardship efforts in resource-limited settings.

Lisa Ng is Executive Director of ASTAR Infectious Diseases Labs (AIDL) and the Biomedical Research Council in Singapore.

Over the past 25 years, her research has focused on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of emerging infectious diseases, including SARS, influenza H5N1, chikungunya, Zika, COVID-19 and mpox. Her work combines pathogen biology, infection and immunity with a strong focus on translation. She has contributed to the development of diagnostic tools for emerging infections and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, her team developed tools to profile SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses and identify functional memory B cells in vaccine breakthrough infections. Ng has authored more than 220 peer-reviewed publications and received Singapore’s President’s Science Award in 2025.

Her keynote will examine how understanding cellular immune responses and immunopathogenesis in emerging viral infections can inform the development of new therapeutic strategies.

Shyamasurandan Kottilil is vice dean of clinical research and professor of medicine at the University of South Florida Morsani School of Medicine in Tampa, USA, where he is also director of the Center of Liver Diseases and clinical director of the Institute of Translational Virology and Innovations. His research focuses on the pathogenesis of chronic viral infections and translational approaches to their treatment and eradication, with expertise in HIV and hepatitis B and C.

Kottilil has led pivotal studies in viral hepatitis and authored over 400 peer-reviewed publications. He was a founding member of the US National Hepatitis C Treatment Guidance Panel and serves as scientific director of the NIH–District of Columbia Partnership for AIDS Progress.

His keynote will draw on lessons from HIV and hepatitis to examine how immune-based approaches and advances in viral therapeutics can inform responses to emerging infections and future pandemic preparedness.

Gianluca Ianiro is a gastroenterologist at the Digestive Disease Center of the Fondazione Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS and Associate Professor of Gastroenterology at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome, Italy. 

His clinical and translational research focuses on the gut microbiota and faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), with particular interest in the determinants of donor microbiome engraftment and the development of microbiome-based diagnostics and therapeutics. His work spans infectious and non-communicable diseases, including cancer, and aims to translate microbiome science into clinical practice.

 In his keynote, he will explore the future of microbiome-based medicine, from FMT to next-generation therapeutics, and its potential to improve the management and prevention of infectious diseases.

Carmen Buchrieser is professor at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, where she heads a research group studying bacterial pathogenesis. Her research focuses on understanding how bacteria cause disease: what genetic factors confer virulence, how they evolve, the mechanisms by which they subvert host functions and, more broadly, how human pathogens emerge from the environment.

For the past 20 years, her team has studied Legionella, environmental bacteria that parasitise free-living protozoa but are also accidental human pathogens, causing severe pneumonia that can be fatal if not treated promptly. With a changing climate and warming waters, Legionella may become increasingly important in human disease.

Her keynote will explore how intracellular bacteria such as Legionella adapt to the host environment, subvert cellular defences and evolve mechanisms of virulence, and what these interactions can reveal about the emergence and management of infectious diseases.