Awardees 2015


The 2015 awards went to Carolina Garcia-Vidal, Jason Roberts and Roy Sleator for their outstanding scientific achievements.

 

Carolina Garcia-Vidal, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain

 

Carolina completed her training in Internal Medicine in 2005 at the Hospital Universitari Mútua Terrassa and her fellowship in Infectious Diseases in 2007 at Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge. She achieved her PhD cum laude on the topic of ‘Improving the management of community-acquired pneumonia’, under the guidance of Professor Jordi Carratalà (Universitat de Barcelona) in 2009. She won the best PhD award from the Catalan Society of Internal Medicine as well as the Young Internist of the Year award for research by the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine (2009). She is current employed as a consultant physician in Infectious Diseases at Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge, and is a member of the research group ‘Infections of the respiratory tract and in immunocompromised patients’ at IDIBELL (biomedical research institute).

Her research focuses on respiratory tract infection, especially within the immunocompromised host. Her work is based on clinical research and covers a large range of topics, including pneumonia, fungal infections, bacterial COPD exacerbations, tuberculosis, and infections in patients receiving biological therapies. She has produced more than 80 indexed publications in several prominent journals with more than 1200 citations. Her present Hirsch Index is 20.

Carolina Garcia-Vidal will be presented with her award during the ESCMID Young Investigator Awards Session on 27 April 2015 from 14.30-15.30 in Hall B. During the session, she will give her presentation: ‘Clinical research on respiratory tract infection'.

Jason Roberts, Brisbane, Australia

 

In his roles as professor and consultant clinical pharmacist, Jason has shown a strong interest in addressing the persistently poor outcomes of critically ill infected patients. Improving treatment of infections, including reducing the emergence of resistance, is work that urgently needs to be undertaken for our currently available antibiotics as the time until new antibiotics become available may be lengthy. A better understanding of dose-exposure and exposure-effect relationships for antibiotics using pre-clinical and clinical PK/PD research presents an excellent approach to addressing these problems.

Jason started his research pathway 10 years ago and has worked as a clinician-scientist throughout. In 2012 he was named Australian Clinical Pharmacist of the year by the Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia. He has a strong interest in clinical and research mentoring and enjoys the opportunity to interact with many like-minded people to share ideas on how best to treat infections in difficult-to-treat patients like the critically ill. He contributes to the critical review of guidelines, as an editor with several journals and convening numerous conferences. He has >170 career publications, has been awarded over USD 16 million in grants and supervises 16 higher research degree students.

Jason Roberts will be presented with his award during the ESCMID Young Investigator Awards Session on 27 April 2015 from 14.30-15.30 in Hall B. During the session, he will present his work: ‘Can PK/PD get us better outcomes for infected ICU patients?’

Roy Sleator, Cork, Ireland

 

Roy graduated from University College Cork, Ireland, with a BSc in Microbiology, an MA in Education and a PhD in Molecular Biology, and holds a PG Cert in Bioinformatics from The University of Manchester, UK. In 2006 he was awarded the Society for Applied Microbiology’s WH Pierce Prize for his excellent contributions to the field of bacteriology and was a recipient of an ESCMID Research Fellowship in 2004, 2010 and again in 2011. He is a lecturer at the Department of Biological Sciences at Cork Institute of Technology as well as a Principal Investigator at both CIT’s BioExplore Research Centre and University College Cork's Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre. He is also founding Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Bioengineered, published by Taylor and Francis, New York, USA.

Roy’s work focuses on the development of improved diagnostic approaches and novel therapeutic strategies for the identification and control of new and emerging pathogens; particularly those associated with the human gastrointestinal tract. His lab, which was named Pharmaceutical Laboratory of the Year at the Irish National Laboratory Awards in 2014, not only concentrates on academic excellence, but also on providing effective solutions to real world clinical problems.

Roy Sleator will be presented with his award during the ESCMID Young Investigator Awards Session on 27 April 2015 from 14.30-15.30 in Hall B. During the session, he will give his presentation: 'Following my gut feelings…'.