Robert Steffen, Professor Emeritus at the University of Zurich was the Head of the Division of Communicable Diseases in the Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Prevention Institute and Director of a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Traveller's Health. He also is Adjunct Professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

In the 1970’s he started systematic research in morbidity and mortality of illnesses and accidents related to international travel. On the basis of such epidemiological evidence, he concluded on preventive strategies for individual travellers and on measures to be taken out of public health interest. Meanwhile he has (co-)authored over 400 publications, among them many relating to vaccination. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Travel Medicine, of the International Journal of Public Health and Section Editor for Clinical Infectious Diseases. In the 27 years of his tenure at the Zurich University Center for Travel Medicine he supervised over 1 million vaccinations as in that travel clinic there were almost 20,000 consultations per year. Since his retirement from Zurich University his research focus is on adult immunization; he is an advisor of the Adult Immunization Board (AIB).

Robert Steffen presided the Swiss Federal Commission for Influenza; he was Vice-President both of the Federal Commission on Vaccination and of the Swiss Bioterrorism Committee. The WHO often has invited him to advisory boards, such as during the revision of the International Health Regulations (IHR) and on other topics, such as malaria, vaccine preventable diseases, chemical and biological warfare, disinsection of conveyances, or epidemiological preparedness at airports. Repeatedly he served as Chair of the IHR Ebola Emergency Committee until 2020.

I am a seasoned professional specializing in Medical Affairs within the pharmaceutical industry. My experience has taken me from local to global stages, encompassing a wide array of therapeutic segments, including Vaccines, RX, OTX, OTC, and Biologicals.
I have a proven track record of orchestrating successful product development, product launch, robust scientific engagement, and the creation of effective go-to-market strategies.
My expertise extends to collaborating with healthcare professionals, investigators, public health authorities, patient advocacy groups and regulatory agencies, resulting in impactful scientific engagement and medical/patient education programs that address critical unmet medical needs. Throughout my career, I have excelled in clinical research, real-world evidence generation, and team leadership, fostering a culture of excellence among my colleagues.

Key Achievements in Medical Affairs:
• Led the successful launch of SHINGRIX® (herpes zoster recombinant, adjuvanted vaccine)in Spain, Portugal, and Israel, securing vaccine funding in national programs and driving significant revenue growth.
• Cultivated collaborative relationships and partnerships with medical opinion leaders, investigators, and public health authorities.
• Managed relationships and negotiations with health and regulatory authorities across key agencies and institutions.
• Pioneered innovative pharmaco-vigilance and customer information systems, setting new industry standards.
• Formed influential opinion leader boards, elevating product perception and driving exceptional performance in unexplored areas.
• Nurtured high-performance teams, driving professional growth and creating a culture of excellence.
• Oversaw the implementation of Phase III and IV studies, aligning clinical research with Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR).

My commitment to the field of Medical Affairs is unwavering, and I am dedicated to driving growth and innovation within this realm.

Ralph Huits is a Dutch internist and adult infectious disease physician at the Department of Infectious Tropical diseases and Microbiology of the Sacro Cuore Don Calabria hospital in Negrar, Verona, in Italy. He is also affiliated with the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Since September 2021, Ralph is a Co-Principal Investigator (Research lead) of GeoSentinel, the emerging infectious diseases network of the International Society of Travel Medicine and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Ralph has extensive experience working as a consultant in clinical tropical medicine and traveler’s health in different settings, such as the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium and in various low- and middle-income countries (Thailand, Zimbabwe, Aruba, Haiti). Ralph’s research focuses on the epidemiology, clinical presentation, diagnosis, and management of infectious diseases in travelers and endemic populations. He obtained a PhD in biomedical sciences from the KU Leuven in 2019 (thesis title ‘Challenges in diagnosis and management of chikungunya and Zika virus infections’). He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Travel Medicine, and he serves as a regular reviewer for the major journals in infectious diseases.

Lin H. Chen, MD, FACP, FASTMH, FISTM, is Past President of the International Society of Travel Medicine (2019-2021). She is Director of the Travel Medicine Center at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Chen is a graduate of Harvard University and Jefferson Medical College and trained at New England Deaconess Hospital (Internal Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and Yale-New Haven Hospital (Infectious Diseases). She is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians (ACP), the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), and International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM).

She has directed the ISTM Travel Medicine Review and Update Course, served on the Research Committee and the Executive Board as a Counsellor. She served on the ASTMH Certificate Examination Committee, Education Committee, Nomination Committee, and also on Work Groups of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Her editorial roles include the Journal of Travel Medicine, Current Infectious Disease Reports, Travel Medicine and Infectious Diseases, and Infectious Diseases: A Geographic Guide. She has authored chapters in CDC’s Health Information for International Travel (Yellow Book) for over a decade. She served on past scientific program committees of International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases and ISTM Conferences. She is a site director for the GeoSentinel Surveillance Network and Global Travel Epidemiology Network. Her clinical research focuses on travelers’ health, including vector-borne diseases, immunizations, emerging infections, and cross-border healthcare.

Christoph Hatz, Professor emeritus for Tropical and Travel Medicine at Basel and Zurich Universities. Consultant for Travel Medicine and Schistosomiasis at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland.

Dr. Pandey was born in Nepal and obtained her medical degree in New Delhi, India. She did her residency training in Internal Medicine in Boston, USA and returned to Nepal after working for 10
years in the Boston area.

In Nepal, she joined the CIWEC Clinic and Travel Medicine Center, the oldest Travel Medicine Center in a developing country that had a rich tradition of research in travel associated illnesses under the leadership of Dr David R. Shlim. The CIWEC Clinic evolved into a hospital and Dr Pandey became the medical director of CIWEC hospital in 1998.

She was elected a counselor of the International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM) in 2003 and served as the President of the ISTM from 2005-2007. She is the founding President of Nepal Society of Travel Medicine. She opened the first Travel Medicine Center in Pokhara, Nepal in 2014. She served one season at the Himalayan Rescue Association (HRA) aid-post as a volunteer doctor at Pheriche near Everest base camp and currently serves on the medical advisory board of the HRA.

CIWEC Hospital has participated in the global surveillance network called GeoSentinel since 1998 and Dr. Pandey has been the site director or co-site director for this project. Her publications include Traveler's Diarrhea - etiology and resistance, Altitude Illness, Pulmonary Embolism at high altitude, a novel treatment for Frostbite, in addition to other Travel Medicine related topics. 

Christina Coyle, M.D., M.S. is board certified in Infectious Disease and has been practicing for over twenty years. She is the director of the Infectious Disease Service at Jacobi Medical Center and oversees an active Tropical Medicine Clinic there in the Bronx, NY. She is a Professor of Medicine and Pathology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and has extensive experience with tropical medicine, travel medicine, parasitology, and immigrant health. She is widely recognized as an expert on larval tapeworms, neurocysticercosis, and echinococcus, serving on both national and international committees for these pathogens. She currently serves as an Editor for Clinical Infectious Disease (CID).

Committed to comprehensive high-quality care for travellers, Dr. Susan Kuhn is the founder and Medical Director of  Odyssey, which opened its doors in 2000. Trained in pediatrics, infectious diseases, as well as travel and tropical medicine, Dr. Kuhn has a pediatric infectious disease practice at Alberta Children’s Hospital, and sees adults in consultation for tropical infections at Odyssey. Dr. Kuhn is passionate about the health of travellers, immigrants and refugees of all ages.

Dr. Kuhn takes every opportunity to expand her horizons abroad through work, education, and leisure. It may be seeing the jungles of Costa Rica on her knees with a 3 year old; watching a breathtaking sunrise on the summit of Kilimanjaro; teaching residents in the hospitals of Vientiane; learning from local doctors in a malaria research station in Thailand; picking up some WWI history from her son in the Somme; or encountering sea snakes in the Mergui Archipelago of Myanmar. She lives vicariously through her patients to learn as much as she can about the places she hasn’t yet visited.

Stefan Hagmann is Professor of Pediatrics at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell Health, and a pediatric infectious diseases attending physician at the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York where he is the medical director of the Antibiotic Stewardship Program, and the site director for the Northwell GeoSentinel and Global TravEpinet surveillance sites. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the International Society of Travel Medicine.

Dr. Hagmann earned his MD from the University of Hamburg, Germany and his MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. After clinical training in Germany and the United States he settled in New York City. His clinical and research focus has been primarily on pediatric HIV care, and chronic viral hepatitis. Working with a very mobile immigrant population in the Bronx, he developed a special interest in travel- and migration related infectious diseases.

His current work involves community outreach, and the development of an improved access to travel health care in urban under-served immigrant communities. As a pediatrician and the current chair of the International Society of Travel Medicine Pediatric Interest Group, he is dedicated to improve the child traveler-related educational portfolio for community health practitioners, and to help grow the evidence base for pediatric travel medicine recommendations

A/Prof Mike Starr. Prof Starr is a General Pediatrician, Infectious Diseases Physician and Consultant in   Emergency Medicine at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne (RCH). He's head of the RCH Travel Clinic. He's one of the authors of the Manual of Travel Medicine. He's a Fellow of the ISTM and a past Chair of the ISTM Pediatrics Interest Group.

Dr. Mackell completed her undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania. She went south to the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, for medical school, then west to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), for pediatric training.

Dr. Mackell has traveled extensively and has worked as a pediatrician in numerous Latin American and Asian countries. She studied tropical medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, DC, and at Cayetano Heredia Institute of Tropical Medicine in Lima, Peru, and earned a certificate in tropical medicine and clinical travelers’ health. She practiced pediatrics and travel medicine in northern California and then northern Arizona for over 25 years.

She is an active member and Fellow of the International Society of Travel Medicine, director of the virtual Travel Medicine Review and Update course, a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a member of the ASTM&H.

 Dr. Mackell has authored several text chapters and articles on various topics in pediatric travel medicine. In addition, she has lectured extensively on travel medicine and international adoption. In 2022, she started a new chapter, retiring from general pediatric practice, and is now teaching travel medicine and public health and traveling frequently with surgical groups internationally to provide cleft lip and palate care.

Nancy Piper Jenks, MS, CFNP, MFTM RCPS (Glasg), FAANP, is the Director of Research Initiatives and migrant/travel medicine at Sun River Health in Peekskill, NY, an FQHC, with 51 sites in Hudson Valley, NYC and Long Island. She served as deputy PI of the NIH All of Us precision medicine research program at Sun River.  Her international work includes serving as a Peace Corps volunteer for three years in Senegal, West Africa, working at CIWEC Clinic in Kathmandu, Nepal for two years and spending 2 years as a research fellow at the Center of Evaluation of Vaccination: WHO Center for the Prevention and Control of Viral Hepatitis in Antwerp, Belgium. She has published peer-reviewed medical literature on topics that include Hepatitis E in travelers, enteric fever, Lyme disease, strongyloidiasis, Hyper infection syndrome with COVID and MRSA in migrant populations.  She is a board member of the Clinical Directors Network, a national practice-based research network focusing on translational science research to improve care of the underserved.  Ms Piper Jenks has co-authored several chapters in medical textbooks in areas including economics of travel medicine, migrant medicine and hepatitis.  She delivers primary health care to patients in her community which includes a large population of immigrants and migrants mainly from Central and South America.  Her research interests include chronic and infectious diseases among migrant populations, and she has been the site director for the GeoSentinel network, a global sentinel network of travelers and immigrants since 2001. Her most recent initiative is screening prenatal patients for Chagas disease.  Ms. Piper Jenks is a former board member of the International Society of Travel Medicine and regularly presents at ISTM conferences. 

Prof. Dr. Patricia Schlagenhauf, PhD, FISTM, FFTM, RCPSS (Glasg)

Patricia Schlagenhauf-Lawlor is a Professor (Travel Medicine), Head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Travellers’ Health in Zürich and  Scientific Group Leader at the University of Zürich, Switzerland.

She is active in research and leads a team working on a portfolio of grant-driven projects on malaria, infection epidemiology and surveillance, arthropod-borne infections, emerging infections, gender issues in pharmacology and military medicine. Current major projects include ITIT (Illness Tracking in Travellers) an m-Health study using a novel app to allow bottom-up reporting of infections in travellers and ICARUS, a one health project examining the impact of climate change on vectors and arboviral infections. She is the Zürich GeoSentinel Site Director and in 2023 was elected Director of  EuroTravNet. She has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed papers and three books, “Travellers’ Malaria” (Eds 1, 2), “PDQ Handbook of Travellers’ Malaria” and “Infectious Disease – a geographic guide” (Eds 1,2,3)

Patricia has held several editor roles including European Senior Editor for “The Lancet”, Editor-at-Large Bulletin WHO and Editor-in-Chief positions at Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease and since 2022 at New Microbes New Infections. After work, she is a passionate golfer.

Dr. Maria D Mileno completed training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Tufts New England Medical Center and has a long-standing interest in Travel and Tropical Medicine, and in infections in the immunocompromised host. Dr. Mileno is the former longtime director of the Brown Medicine Travel Clinic and continues to play an instrumental role due to her passion for Travel Medicine, an area in which she is considered a thought leader. A Board-certified Internist and Infectious Disease specialist, she regularly sees travelers, inpatients and outpatients as an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brown University.

Dr. Mileno is passionate about teaching. She has created, directed, and lectured on Travel and Tropical Medicine topics to undergraduate students, postgraduate health professionals and Physician Assistants and she has been honored with numerous teaching awards throughout her career. She has an extensive track record of publishing about topics in Travel and Tropical Medicine and presenting at many national and international meetings. She is a long-standing, active member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, IDSA and the International Society of Travel medicine, and she participates in the GeoSentinel and US Chagas networks.

Dr. Mileno is also an accomplished pianist, and she loves Chopin!!

Dr. Obinna Nnedu specializes in infectious disease at Ochsner Health. He received his doctor of medicine from the University of Alabama-Birmingham School of Medicine in 2004. He completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at Tulane University Hospitals in New Orleans followed by an infectious disease fellowship at the University of Washington Hospitals in Seattle. Prior to coming to Ochsner, he worked at Tulane Medical Center in the Infectious Diseases Department specializing in tropical medicine. Dr. Nnedu is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine and ABIM's Infectious Diseases. He is also certified in travel medicine through the International Society of Travel Medicine and is also certified in tropical medicine through the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.