Who we are
Dr. Gerald Keusch, MD, (Chair November ‘21-present) is Associate Director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories and a core faculty member of the Center for Emerging Infectious Disease Policy and Research at Boston University, Boston Massachusetts, U.S. His research has focused on pathogenesis and control of emerging bacterial, protozoal and viral diseases through collaborative basic laboratory, field and clinical research. He is the former Director of the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, a fellow of the American Society for Microbiology, the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and recipient of the Society’s Oswald Avery Award for Infectious Disease Research, Maxwell Finland Lectureship Award, and Alexander Fleming Award for major career contributions to knowledge about infectious diseases. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine.
Dr. John Amuasi, MBChB Ph.D, is head of the Global Health Department at the School of Public Health, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and is Group Leader of the Global Health and Infectious Diseases Research Group at the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine in Ghana and the Bernhard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany.
Dr. Danielle Anderson, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory at The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne, Australia. She is a virologist investigating pathogenesis of high consequence emerging viruses.
Dr. Peter Daszak, Ph.D (Chair July ‘20 - November’21) is the President of EcoHealth Alliance, New York, N.Y., in the U.S. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, and chairs its Forum on Microbial Threats. He is an expert in ecology, surveillance, and field research of emerging zoonotic viruses such as SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2.
Prof. Isabella Eckerle, MD, is a clinical virologist, physician scientist at the Centre for Emerging Viral Diseases, a joint institution of the University Hospitals Geneva and University of Geneva, Switzerland. She has led research on endemic human coronaviruses, MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, and is actively involved in clinical research on COVID-19.
https://www.unige.ch/medecine/demed/fr/groupes-de-recherche/993eckerle/
Dr. Hume Field, DVM, Ph.D is Adjunct Professor in the School of Veterinary Science at The University of Queensland, Australia, and a Science and Policy Advisor to the US-based not-for-profit Ecohealth Alliance. He has expertise in outbreak response, epidemiological field studies, and surveillance of numerous bat-origin emerging viruses including Hendra virus (Australia), Nipah virus (Malaysia), Reston virus (Philippines), and SARS CoVs (China). He was a member of the 2003 WHO mission investigating the origins of SARS-CoV and co-leader of a subsequent WHO/FAO mission to identify SARS-CoV research priorities. He continues to provide epidemiologic input into collaborative research of bat-associated EIDs in China and Southeast Asia.
Dr. Marion Koopmans, Ph.D, is head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience and Scientific director of the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. . Her research considers emerging infectious diseases, noroviruses and veterinary medicine. She is director of a WHO collaborating Centre, and member of the National Academy of sciences. She heads an EU wide research consortium aiming to develop risk based prediction and early warning detection tools for emerging infectious disease.
https://www.erasmusmc.nl/en/research/researchers/koopmans-marion
Dr. Dato’ Sai Kit (Ken) Lam, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at the University of Malaya, senior fellow of the Malaysian Academy of Sciences and a leading member of the team that discovered Nipah virus following its initial outbreak in peninsular Malaysia, for which he received the prestigious Merdeka Award.
Prof. Dr. Carlos das Neves, DVM, PhD, PGCert, PH Dipl.ECZM, is the Director for Research and Internationalization at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute, Past-President of the International Wildlife Disease Association, member of the IUCN SSC–Wildlife Health Specialist Group and Chair of the Wildlife Population Health Specialty at the European College of Zoological Medicine. He is a Professor at the Faculty of Health Sciences of the Arctic University of Norway - UiT, and he has served as Hon. Consul of the Portuguese Republic in Norway.
Dr. Malik Peiris, PhD, FRS, is the Professor of Virology at the School of Public Health, at the University of Hong Kong. Dr. Peiris was the first person to isolate SARS-CoV and is a global leader in coronavirus and influenza virus research.
Dr. Stanley Perlman, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Microbiology and Immunology as well as the Mark Stinski Chair of Virology at the University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine. Dr. Perlman conducts research on several respiratory human coronaviruses including SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2.
https://medicine.uiowa.edu/microbiology/profile/stanley-perlman
Dr. Linda J. Saif is a Distinguished University Professor at The Ohio State University (OSU) in the Center for Food Animal Health and College of Veterinary Medicine and co-Director of the Virus and Emerging Pathogens Program. She holds a BA from The College of Wooster and MS/PhD from OSU. Dr. Saif is a virologist and immunologist known internationally for her 4 decades of research on coronavirus infections of livestock, wildlife, and humans (SARS, MERS, SARS-CoV-2) and their zoonotic potential and mechanisms of interspecies transmission. Dr. Saif was an advisor to the WHO and CDC during the 2003 SARS outbreak and her laboratory is a WHO International Reference Lab for animal coronaviruses. She is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors and Argentine Academia Nacional de Agronomía y Veterinaria, an elected Fellow of the AAAS and the American Academy of Microbiology and an American College of Veterinary Microbiologists honorary diplomat.
Dr. Supaporn Wacharapluesadee, Ph.D, is a senior researcher in the Thai Red Cross Emerging Infectious Diseases Clinical Center, Chulalongkorn Hospital, Thailand. Dr. Wacharapluesadee’s team was the first to positively identify a human COVID-19 infection outside of China and works extensively on emerging viral diseases and other public health threats to Southeast Asia. Dr. Wacharapluesadee is a member of the World Health Organization’s Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (WHO SAGO).
Su Yadana, MPH. is a member of EcoHealth Alliance’s EID-SEARCH team studying the spillover of viral pathogens from wildlife to humans. Her special interest is to identify risk factors for spillover of viruses at human-animal interface, epidemiology of emerging infectious diseases including zoonoses, environmental sampling for pathogens, and evidence-based strategies to reduce risk and improve population health.