Matt entered the research field over 20 years ago as a lab animal technician at the TSI/Mason contract research facility. He has worked at both contract facilities such as TSI and OREAD Biosafety as well in industry at Pharmacia, Pfizer, and Sanofi-Aventis. During that period he ... has performed a variety of surgical procedures including device implantation, transplants, orthopedic defect, ocular and vascular implants, cardiac surgery, and brain and spinal procedures. His experience ranges from mice and rats to non-human primates and livestock. In addition, he holds four patents for novel surgical devices and implants and has been training technicians, scientists, veterinarians, and physicians in surgical techniques and procedures for over 15 years. Outside of the surgical realm, he has been a study director, sonographer, Safety Pharmacology scientist, and manager. Currently Matt supervises a team of technicians and surgeon-technicians at Genzyme who support the Boston hub and perform over 1250 surgical procedures a year. Matt was also on the board of directors for the Academy of Surgical Research for over ten years, serving as their program chair for three of them as well as educational chair for two. Currently he is the program chairman for the New England branch of AALAS.

Dr. K. Leigh Greathouse is an Assistant Professor at Baylor University with appointments in Biology and Nutrition. Her background spands the fields of cancer biology, epidemiology, and nutrition. She recived her Ph.D. from the University of Texas and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center ... and her M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed her postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute in the laboratory of Curtis Harris, where she discovered a novel microbiome-gene interaction in lung cancer. The focus of her laboratory at Baylor is on elucidating the relationship between diet and the microbiome and its impact on cancer etiology and treatment. The goals of the Greathouse lab are focused on 1) delineating the dietary factors that modify the microbiome and its function, 2) developing microbial multi-omic classifiers that improve stratification of patients for cancer treatment, and 3) identify key functional pathways and mechanisms of microbiota-host communication. Dr. Greathouse has received multiple awards for her work, including a Merit Award from the National Insitutes of Health, Excellence in Research Leadership, and Rising Star at Baylor Univeristy. Most recenlty, she was awarded a career development award from Department of Defense to study the relationsihp between diet and the microbiome in colon cancer treatment response and toxicity. Ultimately, the goal of her lab is to discover dietary factors and microbial targets for the development of clinical tools to prevent cancer development, and reduce morbidity and mortality from colon cancer.

Jonas Korlach was appointed Chief Scientific Officer of Pacific Biosciences in July 2012. He was previously a Scientific Fellow, supporting commercial development of the PacBio RS II system and performing research aimed at developing new applications for SMRT technologies. He ... co-invented the SMRT technology with Stephen Turner, Ph.D., Pacific Biosciences Founder and Chief Technology Officer, when the two were graduate students at Cornell University. Dr. Korlach joined Pacific Biosciences as the company's eighth employee in 2004. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Cornell University. Dr. Korlach is the recipient of multiple grants, an inventor on 70 issued U.S. patents and 61 international patents, and an author of over 70 scientific studies on the principles and applications of SMRT technology, including publications in Nature, Science, and PNAS. In 2013, Dr. Korlach was honored by the Obama White House as an Immigrant Innovator "Champion of Change." He received both his Ph.D. and his M.S. degrees in Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology from Cornell, and received M.S. and B.A. degrees in Biological Sciences from Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany.

Stephen S. Morse, Ph.D., is Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, where he also serves as Director of the Infectious Disease Epidemiology certificate and as chair of the Columbia University Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC) ... He was founding Director of the CDC-funded "Center for Public Health Preparedness" (2000-2005). Before coming to Columbia, Dr. Morse was Assistant Professor (virology) in The Rockefeller University (1985-1995), and Program Manager for Biodefense at DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) from 1995 to 2000. He was appointed in 2014 to the U.S. government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). His research interests focus on infectious disease surveillance, and the epidemiology and assessment of emerging infectious diseases, including influenza. He was Chair of the NIH "Conference on Emerging Viruses" (1989), for which he originated the concept of emerging viruses/infections, was founding chair of ProMED (the Program to Monitor Emerging Diseases, best known for originating outbreak reporting on the Internet in 1994); and served on the Institute of Medicine (now National Academy of Medicine) Committee on Emerging Microbial Threats to Health (1990-1992), and chaired its Virology Task Force. His book Emerging Viruses (Oxford University Press, 1993) was selected by American Scientist as one of "The Top 100 Science Books of the [20th] Century". He was a founding member of the National Academies' "Forum on Emerging Infections" (later renamed the "Forum on Microbial Threats"), a founding section editor of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, former Editor-in-Chief of the Pasteur Institute's virology journal, and global co-Director of PREDICT (a USAID project to strengthen global capacity for surveillance and detection of new infectious disease threats) from 2009 to 2014. He is currently an Associate Editor of Disaster Medicine & Public Health Preparedness, and serves on the Editorial Board of several journals, including Health Security and Viral Immunology. He also serves on committees at the National Academies of Sciences and the World Health Organization (WHO), including the WHO Expert Group on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Planning in the Eastern Mediterranean Region. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Academy of Microbiology, the American College of Epidemiology, the New York Academy of Medicine, the New York Academy of Sciences (and was Chair of its Microbiology Section), and other professional societies, and is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He received his Ph.D. (in microbiology) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dorottya earned her MD and PhD in clinical medicine from Semmelweis University of Medicine in Hungary. Holding postdoctoral fellowships at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children's Hospital and Columbia University, she has 10+ years of experience in translational medicine ... pediatrics, gastroenterology, microbiology, and clinical metagenomics. She led cutting-edge clinical trials on fecal microbiome transplantation and developed a multicenter research program to understand the role of the gut-brain axis in the integrative neuroscience field. Currently, Dorottya is the Chief Medical Officer at Biotia, a NYC-based startup focusing on rapid infectious disease diagnostics, surveillance, and prevention of hospital-acquired infections powered by artificial intelligence.

Wendy Mok is an assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at UConn Health. Wendy obtained her PhD in biochemistry from McMaster University and trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University before starting her own group. Her lab's ... research centers on the phenotypic causes of antibiotic treatment failure, specifically focusing on how bacterial persisters in clonal populations recover and resuscitate following treatment with topoisomerase inhibitors. By targeting enzymes that bacteria depend on to withstand this class of drugs and repair antibiotic-induced damage, her group aims to reduce the survival of persisters and resistance development in their progenies. In addition to running her lab, Wendy is also an editorial board member for Communications Biology (Nature Portfolio).

Daisy Leung is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. She earned a BA in Biology from Amherst College (Amherst, MA) and a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from UT Southwestern ... Medical Center (Dallas, TX). Her current research is focused on developing a mechanistic understanding of host-pathogen interactions that contribute to viral pathogenesis through immune evasion. She uses a multidisciplinary approach to characterize select non-segmented, negative sense RNA viruses, including pneumoviruses and filoviruses, to identify critical targets that can be used as a basis to develop therapeutics or vaccine candidates.

Alexis Kaushansky, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington, Adjunct Associate Professor of Global Health. Her research laboratory is part of the Center for Global Infectious Disease Research at Seattle Children's Research Institute. She ... received her BS in chemistry from Harvey Mudd College in 2004, and her PhD in biochemistry from Harvard University in 2010. During her PhD, she trained with Dr. Gavin MacBeath, where she was fortunate to work as part of an interdisciplinary team that included chemists, computer scientists and biologists to develop protein array technology and apply this approach to understanding the molecular changes that occur in cancer. As a postdoctoral scientist, she shifted gears to study host parasite interactions between the malaria-causing parasite Plasmodium and its mammalian host during its time in the liver. In 2015, she started her independent research laboratory. The Kaushansky lab focuses on discovering how pathogens, such as malaria, interact with their human host and using this knowledge to eliminate infection. Outside of work, she enjoys running, cooking, traveling and debating current events.

Megan Stanifer has been working in the field of molecular virology and cell biology for the past 19 years. Throughout her career, she has handled a diverse array of BSL2 and BLS3 pathogens including both enveloped and non-enveloped viruses with DNA and RNA genomes. During this ... time, she has investigated pathogen-host interactions from viral entry to antiviral innate immune modulation. Megan has developed state-of-the art microscopy approaches to investigate virus entry, fusion, and immune stimulation as well as methods to evaluate host responses to viral infection at the single cell level. Her PhD studies focused on understanding how the human polyomaviruses JCV and BKV established infection in human glial and kidney cell cultures. Following her PhD studies, she performed her first post-doctoral position in the laboratory of Dr. Sean Whelan, Harvard Medical school. During this time, she evaluated the entry and fusion of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). After a three-year post-doc at Harvard Medical School, Megan moved to Germany and joined the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Heidelberg. There, she started a second post-doc where she established the use of human, mouse and feline intestinal organoids to evaluate host/pathogen interactions. Using these models, Megan has been able to introduce methods to genetically modify these organoids and evaluate how they respond to a variety of pathogens. By establishing this system, she was uniquely poised to address questions of SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis in primary cell cultures. Throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic she has been actively working with many national and international collaborators to use their human intestinal organoids to address questions of viral pathogenesis and the development of anti-viral strategies. Megan has recently relocated to the University of Florida as Assistant Professor and her lab is continuing to focus on how mucosal surfaces use interferons to combat virus infection.

Emily Hollister is the Director, R&D, Computational Biology for Diversigen. An accomplished microbial ecologist, her microbiome experience ranges from soils and biofuel production systems to the human microbiome and pre-clinical disease models. She leads a team of ... bioinformaticians and data scientists, dedicated to developing novel analytical solutions to support microbiome services and product development in the OraSure family of companies. Emily holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Environmental Plant Sciences from Texas A&M University. She completed her postdoctoral training in Molecular Microbial Ecology at Texas A&M University and has served on the faculty at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Children's Microbiome Center.

Dr. García-Sastre is Professor in the Departments of Microbiology and Medicine and in the Tisch Cancer Center at Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai (ISMMS) in New York,. He is also Director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at ISMMS, and Principal ... Investigator for the Center for Research on Influenza Pathogenesis (CRIP), one of five NIAID Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance (CEIRS). For the past 30 years, his research interest has been focused on the molecular biology, virus-host interactions, innate immunity and pathogenesis of influenza viruses and several other RNA viruses, as well as on the development of new vaccines and antivirals. He has more than 500 peer-reviewed publications in these areas of research. He has been President of the International Society for Vaccines in 2014-2015. He is Editor for the scientific journals PLoS Pathogens, Journal of Virology and Virus Research. In 2017, he has been elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Pharmacy in Spain. In 2019, he was recognized with a Honorary Doctor Degree from the University of Burgos, Spain. Also in 2019, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.