Meet the Speakers
Day 1 - Tuesday 23 June
Jincy Jerry
Michael Klompas
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Dr. Michael Klompas is Professor of Medicine and Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Medical Director of Infection Control at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has published widely on surveillance, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of hospital-acquired pneumonia, ventilator-associated events, respiratory viral infections, and sepsis. He has served on multiple guideline panels including the ATS-IDSA panel on Management of Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia, Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America’s panel on Strategies to Prevent Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia, and the Surviving Sepsis Campaign guideline panel. |
Gemma Winzor
Editor-in-Chief, Infection Prevention in Practice, UK
Martyn Wilkinson
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Hospital Infection, UK
Walter Zingg
Senior Physician, Department of Infectious Diseases and Hospital Epidemiology, Universitätsspital Zürich, Switzerland
Evelina Tacconelli
Evelina Tacconelli is Full Professor of Infectious Diseases and Director of the Infectious Diseases Division at the University of Verona, Italy. She serves as Chief Scientific Officer of the European Clinical Research Alliance on Infectious Diseases (ECRAID) and as Coordinator of the Cohort Coordination Board established by the European Commission to advance cohort research for pandemic preparedness.
Evelina chairs the EUCIC Working Group on guidance in infection control and prevention and the ESCMID guidelines on the prevention of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections in hospitalized patients. She also led the Technical Group that supported the development of the WHO global priority lists of antibiotic-resistant pathogens for R&D of new antibiotics in 2017 and in the 2024 update. She has coordinated and contributed to multiple EU-funded projects on prevention and treatment of antimicrobial resistant infectious and pandemic preparedness.
Colin Brown
Colin is an Infectious Disease & Medical Microbiology consultant working at the UK Health Security Agency on a portfolio of clinical and emerging infection of which he is the Director, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and global health. His time is currently split between treating patients with clinical infections (including high consequence infectious diseases) at the Royal Free Hospital in London, working on domestic infection policy on healthcare-associated infection and antimicrobial resistance activities as Deputy Director of UKHSA responsible for AMR Division, and on global health security as Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference & Research on Antimicrobial Resistance and Healthcare Associated Infections.
He has considerable international policy and outbreak experience, for 5 years supporting several African countries improve their infectious disease diagnostic capabilities and in management of outbreak response including for Ebola Virus Disease and Lassa Fever in West Africa. Within these roles he also has responsibility for leading teams that lead on outbreak management and surveillance of Candida auris infections, for which he managed the national incident response for 3 years.
Eimear Brannigan
Dr Eimear Brannigan is the Clinical Lead for the national Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control (AMRIC) team in the Health Service Executive (HSE), Ireland. Eimear has 18 years of consultant experience in infection prevention and control (IPC) and antimicrobial stewardship, including as deputy DIPC in a large NHS Trust. Eimear continues her clinical practice and teaching in infectious diseases at a large university teaching hospital in Dublin.
As AMRIC Clinical Lead, she works with a multi-professional national team to deliver health actions from Ireland’s one health national action plan on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This includes surveillance of healthcare associated infection, AMR and antimicrobial usage, IPC, and optimising use of antimicrobials. Raising awareness of AMR, education of staff, patients and the public, and advocating for research and quality improvement initiatives are key components of her work.
The team works collaboratively with Ireland’s Chief Clinical Officer and a diverse range of healthcare professionals in IPC and AMS public health and health protection. This national work includes planning and preparedness for infection incidents, outbreak and incident response, guideline development with associated educational resources for staff and patients, and project planning and coordination.
Shona Cairns
Consultant Healthcare Scientist, ARHAI Scotland, UK
Samantha Matthews
HARP Head of Nursing, Public Health Wales, UK
Paul McGurnaghan
Consultant in Public Health, Public Health Agency, UK
Niccolo Buetti
Assistant Physician, Infection Prevention and Control Dept, University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland
Esther van Kleef
Dr Esther van Kleef is a Senior Research Associate in infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Oxford. Her work addresses the burden and key drivers of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the relative contribution of community and healthcare settings to AMR transmission, and the effectiveness of mitigation strategies, drawing on epidemiological modelling alongside genomic, microbiological, environmental and behavioural data. Esther has a keen interest in how genomic data can improve infectious disease surveillance and strengthen infection prevention and control, as well as in the role of the environment in the emergence and spread of AMR, including the effective implementation of low-cost water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions.
She works closely with public health organisations such as the World Health Organization and national public health agencies, across high- and low-income settings to support evidence-based decision making.
Matt Holden
Head of Pathogen Genomics, Public Health Scotland
Day 2 - Wednesday 24 June
Hugh Montgomery
Hugh obtained a 1st class BSc (Cardiorespiratory Physiology/Neuropharmacology) in 1984, his Medical Degree in 1987, & MDRes in 1997. He works as a consultant Intensivist in London & is Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at UCL where he also directs the Centre for Human Health & Performance. He’s published >900 scientific research articles & has won 15 national and international scientific awards.
Hugh chaired the two Lancet Commissions on Human Health & Climate Change, & now co-chairs the 52-country Lancet Countdown on Health & Climate Change. He’s written & lectured extensively on the subject; has briefed policymakers (inter)nationally; & co-leads the UCL MSc module on climate & health. He was appointed London Leader by Greater London Authority’s Sustainable Development Commission; has attended many of the international ‘COP’ negotiations; leads the children’s climate education ‘Project Genie’; & co-led the ITV documentary on Floods and Climate Change (2020).
He was awarded the OBE in 2022 in part for his work on climate change and health. In 2023, he founded non-profit Real Zero to leverage the global health economy as a tool to decarbonize society more generally. In 2025, he was appointed co-chair of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, representing >1m healthcare professionals.
Mahmood Bhutta
Professor Mahmood Bhutta is an NHS surgeon, and Director of the “Green Healthcare Hub”: a national academic centre to decarbonize the NHS, based at Brighton and Sussex Medical School.
He has a longstanding interest in environmental harms and labour rights abuses from medical supply chains, and in particular our excessive reliance on single-use products .
Sarah Walpole
Sarah (she/her) is an infectious diseases registrar in Newcastle in the North East of England. She facilitates the Infection Societies' Sustainability Forum, which brings together infection specialists to collaborate on work to improve sustainability in clinical infection practice and IPC.
She was the National Medical Director's Clinical Leadership Fellow at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence 2021-2022. She was a Trustee of HIS 2023-2026. She is a member of Medact 'health workers for health justice'.
Catrin Moore
Catrin Moore is a Professor in Global Health and Infectious Diseases in the Institute of Infection and Immunity at City St George’s, University of London and is an honorary Senior development biomedical scientist with St. George’s University Hospitals Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and UK HSA. She works with partners across many low- and middle-income countries to influence health policy agenda. She works on defining the global burden of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), first leading the Global Research on AntiMicrobial (GRAM) project in Oxford (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01867-1/fulltext), and is now focussing on the burden in the community where she is co-designing sustainable interventions to reduce the burden of AMR.
Her group in City St George’s work on a number of projects focussed on AMR, these include the Comparison of community and hospital Antibiotic use practices, Susceptibility and resisTance and determinants of care seeking among patients with Urinary Tract Infections (CAST-UTI), based in Kampala, Uganda. The Comprehensive Understanding of Disease and AI Research (CURE) project across City, the University of Leeds and SmartBiotic (an SME). She is passionate about strengthening microbiology and global health capacity across LMICs and until recently was the lead mentor for the Fleming Fund Fellows based in Eswatini and was a member of the consortium working on the Fleming Fund clinical engagement across Asia and Africa.
She also leads the Knocking out AMR project, which has given her the opportunity to attend numerous high-level discussions, including the United Nations high-level meeting on AMR and lead discussions on AMR in British Embassies worldwide.
Emma McGuire
AMS Strategy Lead, University College Hospitals NHS FT, UK
Luke Moore
Infectious Diseases Consultant and Clinical Microbiologist, Chelsea & Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, UK
Aula Abbara
Consultant in Infectious Diseases, Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust, UK