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Kuster, Stefan (CH)

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University Hospital Zurich

Stefan P. Kuster, MD, MSc, is an infectious diseases physician at the Division of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland. He obtained a masters degree in clinical epidemiology and healthcare research from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2010 and an executive MBA from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 2019. His research focus is on infectious disease epidemiology in the hospital, with special interest in influenza transmission dynamics in hospitalized patients and healthcare workers. He has coauthored >50 peer-reviewed articles in the field and received several research grants. Stefan Kuster is a member of Swissnoso, the Swiss national center for infection control.

Longtin, Yves (CA)

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Jewish General Hospital

 

Dr. Yves Longtin is an infectious diseases specialist, medical microbiologist and a clinician-scientist researcher. He is the chair of the Infection Prevention and Control Unit of the Jewish General Hospital (JGH) in Montreal. He is the president of the Quebec C. difficile surveillance program (SPIN-CD) and a member of Quebec Provincial Infection Control Committee.

Dr. Yves Longtin obtained his MD from Sherbrooke University in 2000 and completed his training in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at Laval University in 2005. From 2006 to 2009, He pursued a fellowship in Infection Control at the Geneva University Hospitals and World Health Organization Reference Center in Patient Safety, Switzerland and obtained a certificate in clinical research from the University of Geneva. He was the head of the infection control unit at the Quebec Heart and Lung institute in Quebec City from 2009 to 2013 as well as a researcher at the Centre de Recherche en Infectiologie at Laval University before moving to the Lady Davis Research Institute and the JGH in 2013.

Sommerstein, Rami (CH)

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Bern University Hospital and Swissnoso

 

Dr. Sommerstein is an internal medicine and infectious diseases specialist at the Department of Infectious Diseases, Bern University Hospital, Bern, Switzerland. His research interests focus on interactions among hosts, pathogens, and the hospital environment.

Kaye, Keith S. (US)

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University of Michigan Medical School

 

Dr. Kaye is a Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at University of Michigan Medical School.  He is the Director of Research for the Division of Infectious Diseases.  Dr. Kaye’s particular academic interests include the prevention and management of healthcare-associated infections including those due to multi-drug resistant pathogens; antimicrobial stewardship; and infections in the older adults.

 

Dr. Kaye received completed his Internal Medicine residency and Infectious Diseases fellowship at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA and earned a Masters in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health.  Dr. Kaye has authored over 250 peer-reviewed articles and 18 book chapters and has presented original research internationally.  He has dedicated his career to infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship and is recognized internationally as an expert in healthcare epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance.  He is currently serving as Past President of the Society for Health Epidemiology of America (SHEA).  He is the PI on 2 NIH-funded trials evaluating the treatment of infections due to multi-drug resistant (MDR) Gram-negative bacteria with polymyxins.  Dr. Kaye also conducts cutting edge research pertaining to infection prevention, and is currently the PI on an AHRQ-funded trial evaluating the impact UV disinfection of patient rooms on the acquisition of infection due to Clostridium difficile and MDR pathogens in hospitals.

Cassini, Alessandro (WHO)

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World Health Organization

 

Alessandro Cassini is a medical doctor specialised in public health and epidemiology. After an MSc in Health Policy Planning and Financing from LSE & LSHTM, he worked as a consultant epidemiologist in London. In 2009 Ale joined the European centre for Disease Prevention and Control. At ECDC he led the Burden of Communicable Diseases in Europe (BCoDE) project with the remit of estimating and expressing the health burden of communicable diseases and related conditions, including exploring ways to bridge the communication and technical gap between risk assessors and managers (knowledge translation) and ultimately enhance informed and evidence-based health policy decision-making. This methodology was subsequently applied to the estimation of the burden of healthcare-associated infections, which were shown to be a top infectious disease priority, and more recently to infections with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The latter resulted in a study involving a multi-disciplinary approach and modelling of several data sources. At ECDC, Alessandro has also been responsible for ECDC country visits to discuss AMR issues, for field work in outbreak response (e.g. Ebola), for EUCAST and supported the development of risk ranking methodologies. In March 2019, Alessandro joined the World Health Organization as Technical Officer in the Infection Prevention and Control Global Unit (Service Delivery and Safety).

Gastmeier, Petra (DE)

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Institute of Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, Charité – University Medicine Berlin

After specialization in hygiene and environmental medicine, Petra Gastmeier worked from 1991 to 2000 as a hospital epidemiologist in Potsdam and the university hospital of the Free University Berlin. During this time, she created the German national surveillance system for healthcare associated infections (KISS) with meanwhile more than 1300 participating hospitals. From 2001 to 2007, she was Associated Professor of Hospital Epidemiology at Hanover Medical University. Since 2008, she is Full Professor for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine at Charité –University Medicine in Berlin.
Her research focuses on the investigation of the epidemiology of healthcare associated infections, multiresistant organisms and antibiotic usage in hospitals and the community. . She also established the German national hand hygiene campaign, which is meanwhile running for more than 10 years, and the outbreak database platform for identifying sources and appropriate intervention measures during outbreaks of nosocomial infections. In 2015, she received the Robert Koch Award for Hospital Epidemiology. Petra Gastmeier is author or co-author of more than 400 articles in the field of hospital epidemiology and infection control.

 

Babcock, Hilary (US)

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Washington University School of Medicine

Dr Hilary Babcock is a Professor of Medicine in the Infectious Diseases division at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis and Medical Director for the Infection Prevention and Epidemiology Consortium of BJC HealthCare, a multi-hospital system in St Louis. She completed a Master’s degree in Public Health from St Louis University. She is also an associate hospital epidemiologist at Barnes Jewish Hospital and the Medical Director for Occupational Health for Infectious Diseases for Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St Louis Children’s Hospitals. She is a fellow of both IDSA and SHEA. She is the current President of SHEA. She is a member of HICPAC (CDC Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee). Her research interests include healthcare associated infections, transmission of pathogens in healthcare settings and protection of healthcare personnel.

Widmer, Andreas (CH)

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University Hospital Basel

 

Prof. Dr. Widmer earned his MD degree in Switzerland, where he completed his fellowship in internal medicine and infectious diseases. He is a core member of the ‘patient safety’ program of the WHO, a past President of the Swiss Society for Hospital Epidemiology, and an editorial advisory board member of the journals ‘Clinical Infectious Diseases’, ‘Clinical Microbiology’, ‘Infection’ and ‘Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology’. Furthermore, he is a former board member of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and a member of the guidelines committee of the Infectious disease society of America. He is co-founder and president of the National Center for Infection Prevention (www.swissnoso.ch) and is leading multicenter pilot project on prevention of surgical site infections, antibiotic stewardship and outbreak investigations. His research interests are the control of multiresistant pathogens such as MRSA, surgical site infections, in particular implant-associated infections, and C. difficile infections. He is chairing the guidelines committee for C.difficile prevention 2018 of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID). His current position is deputy chief of the division of infectious diseases and hospital epidemiology, and head of hospital epidemiology at the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland.