Professor Yasmine Belkaid is currently President of the Institut Pasteur. She is a renowned scientist whose research focuses on the relationship between microbes and the immune system. Her varied scientific career, which began at the Institut Pasteur with a PhD in Immunology, has covered fields including parasitology, microbiology, medical entomology, virology, tissue immunity, microbiome and human immunology.

Philippe J. Sansonetti, MS, MD, is a microbiologist, Professor at the Pasteur Institute and the Collège de France in Paris. He is the Director of the Inserm Unit 786 and of the Institut Pasteur laboratory Molecular Microbial Pathogenesis.
Co-creator of Labex IBEID with Prof Cossart, he leaded the project from 2011 to 2019.

Pascale Cossart, is a French biologist, specializing in cellular microbiology, exceptional class professor at the Pasteur Institute since 2006. Member of the Academy of Sciences since 2002 after having been correspondent in 1999, she is honorary perpetual secretary and was permanent secretary for the second section, which covers chemistry, biology and medicine, from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2021.
Co-creator of Labex IBEID with Prof Sansonetti, she coordinated the project from 2011 to 2019.

We use interdisciplinary approaches including theory and experiments to understand how computation is embodied in biological matter. Examples include cognition in single cell protists and morphological computing in animals with no neurons and origins of complex behavior in multi-cellular systems. Broadly, we invent new tools for studying non-model organisms with significant focus on life in the ocean - addressing fundamental questions such as how do cells sense pressure or gravity? Finally, we are dedicated towards inventing and distributing “frugal science” tools to democratize access to science (previous inventions used worldwide: Foldscope, Abuzz), diagnostics of deadly diseases like malaria and convening global citizen science communities to tackle planetary scale environmental challenges such as mosquito surveillance or plankton surveillance by citizen sailors mapping the ocean in the age of Anthropocene.

Dr Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum is the Head of the climate change and health unit at WHO Headquarters. He has worked on the issue for over 20 years, playing key roles in the first quantitative estimates of global health impacts of climate change, resolutions of the World Health Assembly, WHO global conferences, and the expansion of WHO’s climate change and health support to over 30 low and middle-income countries.

Simon Cauchemez joined Institut Pasteur in 2013 to head Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases Unit. The main research objective of his unit is to develop state-of-the-art statistical and mathematical methods to address these challenges, with the aim to increase the understanding of how pathogens spread in human populations as well as the impact of interventions, to support policy making and optimize control strategies. His approach is highly multidisciplinary, looking at infectious diseases through multiple perspectives (statistics, modelling, epidemiology, surveillance, Public Health, policy making, microbiology), multiple scales and multiple data streams. Before joining Institut Pasteur, Simon Cauchemez was working in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London.

Sarah Merkling leads the Insect Immunity & Infection group within the Virology Department and the Insect-Virus Interactions Unit at the Institut Pasteur of Paris. The research group primary focus on understanding interactions between Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and the arboviruses they transmit to humans (i.e. dengue viruses, Zika virus, Chikungunya virus). In particular, they aim to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying natural resistance or susceptibility of field-derived mosquito colonies to dengue viruses, using approaches combing single-cell comics and CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing tools.

Benjamin ROCHE is a Research Director at the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD) and an Associate Professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). After completing his university studies in computer science, biomathematics, evolutionary ecology and biology, and public health, he is currently a department head in the Infectious Diseases and Vectors: Ecology, Genetics, Evolution and Control unit and co-director of the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Research on Cancer.
His research focuses on a cross-disciplinary approach between evolutionary ecology and public health. He studied how host and pathogen diversity can affect the transmission of infectious diseases. He has also studied the interactions between ecological and societal processes in pathogens propagation. Although rooted in fundamental research, his projects also offer operational opportunities that he analyses in order to improve public health strategies, particularly in Europe and southern countries.

Professor Hill is Director of the Jenner Institute, which focuses on designing and developing vaccines for infectious diseases prevalent in developing countries, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. He also heads a group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics which studies genetic susceptibility factors for common bacterial diseases. He is a passionate believer in the power of molecular medicine to design and deliver new health care interventions that will improve the lives of the poorest billion in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. His own vaccine research programme has developed one of the most promising potential vaccines for malaria which is currently in large scale trials in infants in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2014 his group led the first clinical trial of an Ebola virus vaccine targeting the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa.

The Boris Striepen lab study the cell and molecular biology of parasites and how they interact with their mammalian host. In recent years the lab has focused on the apicomplexan Cryptosporidium, a distant cousin to the parasite that cause malaria. Cryptosporidium is an important pathogen for which neither prophylaxis nor effective treatment are available. Cryptosporidium was first recognized in the 1980s as an AIDS-defining opportunistic infection, however, immunocompetent individuals are susceptible, and today Cryptosporidium accounts for 50% of all U.S. waterborne disease outbreaks.

Tineke Cantaert is currently head of the Immunology Unit at Institut Pasteur du Cambodge and HHMI/Wellcome International Research Scholar. She is interested to unravel host immune responses to infectious diseases of high prevalence in South-East Asia. The research Unit mission is to understand the immunopathology of emerging infectious diseases. Their main fields of research are 1/ to provide insight into the mechanisms of a protective adaptive immune response to flavivirus infection for novel vaccine design 2/ to improve vaccination strategies for vaccine-preventable diseases such as rabies 3/ to identify novel biomarkers of severity after dengue virus infection or treatment response in TB/HIV co-infection 4/ to study skin immunity to mosquito saliva and 5/ to understand adaptive immune responses to SARS-CoV-2. The laboratory is equipped with state of the art equipment providing platforms for single cell analysis and monoclonal antibody production.

Cassandra Koh is a vector biologist and geneticist. She joined the Carla Saleh lab in 2019 to study mosquito viruses (those that make you sick and those that don't). Her current research project aims to characterise mosquito viromes to unravel the complex ecology and interactions of viruses and their mosquito host.

Dr. Bali Pulendran is Professor of Pathology and of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford School of Medicine. Previously he was a Charles Howard Candler Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and Director of the Innate Immunity Program, and the NIH U19 Center for Systems Vaccinology, at the Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University in Atlanta. He received his undergraduate degree from Cambridge University, and his Ph.D from the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute, in Melbourne Australia, under the supervision of Sir Gustav Nossal. He then did his post-doctoral work at Immunex Corporation in Seattle. Dr. Pulendran’s work focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which the innate immune system regulates adaptive immunity and harnessing such mechanisms in the design of novel vaccines against global pandemics. More recently, he has begun to apply systems biological approaches to predicting the efficacy of vaccines, and deciphering new correlates of protection against infectious diseases.

Michael Connor received a PhD from the University of Louisville (USA) for this work identifying new cellular processes Y. pestis, a biodefense pathogen, uses to survive within macrophages. In 2017, he joined the Chromatin and Infection group on a Pasteur Foundation fellowship. During his postdoctoral study, he switched fields to investigate Streptococcus pneumoniae mediated chromatin remodeling. As of 2022, he has begun a new project as a staff scientist within the same group. His focus is on how Corynebacterium accolens, a nasal commensal bacterium, both shapes and protects our nasal passages from opportunistic pathogens. For this, he blends chromatin and cellular infection biology with nasal cell culture and organ-on-chip devices to dissect distinct processes triggered by pathogens vs. commensals.

Sara Moutailler, PhD, HDR, ANSES-Animal Health Laboratory, Director of the JRU BIPAR, Scientific Deputy Director of Animal Health Laboratory (ANSES, Maisons-Alfort). She is specialized in Medical Entomology and Virology. Her research focuses mainly on evolution and epidemiology of pathogens vectored by ticks and mosquitoes in Europe. She evaluates the vector competence of different tick species for viruses, studies also co-infections in ticks. And she develops new high-throughput epidemiological surveillance method to identify both major and neglected European vector borne diseases: RNA sequencing and microfluidic PCRs (complementary technics) able to detect known, unknown and new vector-borne pathogens.

Isabelle Louradour obtained her PhD in 2015 in Toulouse focusing on Drosophila immune response to wasp parasitism. She then did a four-year post-doctoral period in the USA, in Dr David Sacks laboratory at the NIH, studying Leishmania parasites and their insect vectors, the Phlebotomine sand flies (Diptera, Psychodidae). In 2021 she joined the Research Unit of Dr Gerald Spaeth in Paris, at the Institut Pasteur, where she is currently continuing her investigations on the complex interactions existing between Leishmania and sand flies. Her main areas of interest are the production of hybrids in Leishmania and the contribution of insect parameters in this process.

Professor Gilbert is Principal Investigator at the Pandemic Sciences Institute at the University of Oxford and Oxford Project Leader for ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, a vaccine against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. This vaccine, tested by the University of Oxford in clinical trials of over 23,000 people in the UK, Brazil and South Africa, is now in use in over 180 countries in the fight against the Covid-19 Pandemic is estimated to have saved more than six million lives.

Dr. Monika Gulia-Nuss is an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). Gulia-Nuss received her MS and PhD in vector biology and medical entomology from India. She was awarded the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute International Postdoc fellowship. She joined the laboratory of Dr. Helen Benes at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to study mosquito transgenics. She subsequently moved to the University of Georgia, where, under the supervision of Drs. Mark Brown and Mike Strand she studied the role of insulin signaling in mosquito reproduction and pathogen development. She moved to Purdue University in 2013 to work with Dr. Catherine Hill, who introduced her to tick research. Monika set up her independent lab at UNR in 2016, and for the last eight years, her lab has been studying multiple aspects of mosquito and tick biology. She has combined her training in vector biology, genetics, and biochemistry to develop genetic tools for tick research. Her lab developed the first embryo injection protocol for ticks and used it to create a CRISPR-Cas9-based knockout. She is a recipient of the 2024 Fulbright US Scholar award to work in Uruguay and develop transgenic methods for cattle fever tick, a major veterinary vector.
In addition to genetic research, Monika's lab works on population genomics and pathogen prevalence in ticks in the Western USA. As a Graduate Director of the Biochemistry program, she strives for diversity and equity in science. When not engaged in research, she enjoys exploring the great outdoors in Reno with her husband and two children and snuggling with her cat, Dotsy.

Jorge Moura de Sousa is a computer scientist by training, who swerved into the evolutionary biology of microbes during his PhD at the Gulbenkian Institute in Portugal. In 2016, he joined the Microbial Evolutionary Genomics group at the Institut Pasteur in Paris with a postdoctoral position. From 2021 until present, Jorge is a Staff Scientist in the same unit, using a mixture of comparative genomics, modelling and experimental approaches to disentangle the role of bacteriophages and their satellites in the ecology and evolution of bacteria.

Rogerio Amino is a group leader at Institut Pasteur, France, since 2015. He started his academic career as a teacher of robotics. He did his early studies at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, under the supervision of Prof. Sergio Schenkman. He later moved to France, at Institut Pasteur, to work with Prof. Freddy Frischknecht, Dr Paul Brey and Dr Robert Menard, where he was one of the pioneers in the intravital microscopy of malaria parasites. Among his discoveries he visualized the fate of sporozoites in the skin, including sporozoites invading blood and lymph vessels as well as skin cells, and together with Prof. Volker Heussler, he discovered the merosomes as they egress from the liver to begin the blood stage of malaria infections. In collaboration with Prof Fidel Zavala, he imaged for the first time T cells eliminating infected hepatocytes as well as, how antibodies neutralize sporozoites in the skin. Rogerio is an extremely versatile scientist whose approach to science is curiosity-driven, and with a point of view of wanting to know how things work and why. He emphasizes this is what makes him interested in studying biology and himself.

The van Sorge lab is committed to clarifying the molecular pathogenesis of bacterial infections across the entire disease process, ranging from pathogen acquisition to systemic disease.
Over the past decade, the lab has focused predominantly on the human pathogens Staphylococcus aureus and Group A Streptococcus (Strep A) as these represent bacterial species of great medical importance; both pathogens have priority status with the World Health Organization for development of new therapeutics and vaccines. In particular, we have studied the role of glycosylated bacterial surface structures and their interaction with innate C-type lectin receptors and (vaccine-induced) antibodies. With this research, research in the van Sorge lab spans the entire spectrum from molecule to organism to patients to identify new (antibody-based) strategies to prevent and combat bacterial infections. Applied techniques include bacterial and host molecular genetics, protein chemistry, glycobiology, immunological models and in vitro and in vivo infection models.

Peter J. Hotez, M.D., Ph.D. is Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine where he is also the Co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics. He is also University Professor at Baylor University, Fellow in Disease and Poverty at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy, Senior Fellow at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, Faculty Fellow with the Hagler Institute for Advanced Studies at Texas A&M University, and Health Policy Scholar in the Baylor Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy. He also holds honorary DSc doctoral degrees from the Elmezzi Graduate School of Molecular Medicine (Northwell Health), Roanoke College, honorary doctoral degrees in both science and humanities by The National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), and City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.