Author: admin_icpic

University of California San Diego

Professor Jack A Gilbert earned his Ph.D. from Unilever and Nottingham University, UK in 2002, and received his postdoctoral training at Queens University, Canada. From 2005-2010 he was a senior scientist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK; and from 2010-2018 he was a Professor of Surgery and Director of The Microbiome Center at University of Chicago. In 2019 he moved to University of California San Diego, where he is a Professor in Pediatrics and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He is also Group Leader for Microbial Ecology at Argonne National Laboratory, and the Yeoh Ghim Seng Visiting Professorship in Surgery at the National University of Singapore. Dr. Gilbert uses molecular analysis to test fundamental hypotheses in microbial ecology. He cofounded the Earth Microbiome Project and American Gut Project. He has authored more than 250 peer reviewed publications and book chapters on microbial ecology. He is the founding Editor in Chief of mSystems journal. In 2014 he was recognized on Crain’s Business Chicago’s 40 Under 40 List, and in 2015 he was listed as one of the 50 most influential scientists by Business Insider, and in the Brilliant Ten by Popular Scientist. In 2016 he won the Altemeier Prize from the Surgical Infection Society, and the WH Pierce Prize from the Society for Applied Microbiology for research excellence. He also co-authored “Dirt is Good” published in 2017, a popular science guide to the microbiome and children’s health.

Michael Behnke is a medical computer scientist. He earned degrees in computer science from Technische Universität Berlin in 1995 and medical computer science in 2000 from Beuth Hochschule für Technik in Berlin. He received his Ph.D. in medical sciences from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin in 2008. His main areas of interest are automatic surveillance of hospital-associated infections and antibiotic use, digital infection epidemiology and network analyses within hospital data.

Since 2001 he works at the Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine and the German National Reference Center for the Surveillance of Nosocomial Infections at Charité – Universitätsmedizin, Berlin. There, he set up the National Electronic Surveillance Platform for the German Hospital Infection Surveillance System (KISS). He currently leads a group of computer scientists and data analysts responsible for projects in the field of digital infection epidemiology and infection surveillance. In collaboration with the Robert Koch Institute as project leader, he participated in the implementation of a national surveillance system for antibiotic use in hospitals.

One of his current projects is the development an automated alarm system for infectious diseases outbreaks in hospitals (Cluster Alarm System, CLAR). For this project, he and his team received the Max Rubner Price of the Charité Foundation in 2014.

Dr. Lauren Clack is a psychologist and health services researcher in the Infection Prevention and Control Group at the University Hospital Zurich. She holds a PhD in Health Psychology from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and an MSc in Human Factors Engineering from the University of Nottingham. Her research explores the central role of human behaviour in promoting infection prevention and patient safety. She applies these insights to improve the application of infection prevention measures – ranging from organisation-wide implementation of evidence-based practices to individual behaviour change techniques.

Kay Currie is Professor of Nursing & Applied Healthcare Research at Glasgow Caledonian University, where she leads the staff & patient perspectives research programme in the ‘Safeguarding Health through Infection Prevention’ (SHIP) Research Group. She is also a member of the SHAIPI Consortium (the Scottish Healthcare Associated Infection Prevention Institute), leading work on patient perspectives of applied infection prevention. Kay has a special interest in improving healthcare quality, specifically person-centred care through effective professional practice. Her current research and teaching focus is on understanding and responding to patient experience, staff behaviours, and organisational contexts in the areas of healthcare associated infection, antimicrobial resistance and stewardship. Kay is also an Honorary Professor with NHS Lanarkshire, where she is a member of the Healthcare Quality Assurance and Improvement Committee.

Institute of Medical Biometry and Statistics, Division Methods in Clinical Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine and Medical Center – University of Freiburg, Germany

Mathematician and epidemiologist

Ermira Tartari is a Research Fellow in the Department of Infection Prevention and Control & WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety at the University of Geneva Hospitals, Faculty of Medicine, and a PhD candidate in Global Health (Biomedical Sicences) at the University of Geneva, Ermira is an Academic at the faculty of Health Science, University of Malta, has previously worked as an infection control practitioner and serves as a board member of the Global Alliance for Infection Prevention and Control (GAPIC).

Valentijn Schweitzer (1987) is part of the research group of prof. Marc Bonten and a resident in Clinical Microbiology at the University Medical Centre Utrecht. He graduated as a Medical Doctor in 2014 and completed a MSc degree in Epidemiology in 2018. Since 2014 he is working as a PhD candidate on the subject of Antimicrobial Stewardship and Community-acquired Pneumonia with a special interest in research design and methodology.

National laboratora for health, environment and food, NLZOH and University of Maribor, Faculty of Medicine, Maribor, Slovenia

Prof. Maja Rupnik is head of Department for microbiological research at National laboratory for health, environment and food (NLZOH) in Maribor, Slovenia. She is also a Professor for Microbiology at Faculty of Medicine, University of Maribor. She is a worldwide recognized expert on Clostridium difficile. Her research interest is focused on molecular epidemiology of Clostridium difficile, molecular typing techniques and gut microbiota. The main interest of her group are the variant C. difficile strains and abiotic reservoirs of C. difficile.
The honors and awards she obtained for her work include Alexander von Huboldt grant, ESCMID/bioMerieux Award for Advances in Clinical Microbiology and national Zois award for exceptional scientific achievements in microbiology. She is also the president of the traditional event ICDS, International C. difficile Symposium (www.icds.si).