Dr. Howard MARKEL, USA
Sunday, 15 February, 11:00 - 11:45
When Germs Travel: Social, Economic, Political and Cultural Aspects of Contagious Crises Across Time

Howard Markel, M.D., Ph.D. is the George E. Wantz Distinguished Professor of the History of Medicine, Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases, Professor of History, Professor of Health Management and Policy, Professor of Psychiatry, and Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. From 2005 to 2006, Professor Markel served as a historical consultant on pandemic influenza preparedness planning for the United States Department of Defense. From 2006 to the present, he serves as the principal historical consultant on pandemic preparedness for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A prolific writer, Dr. Markel is the author, editor, co-editor or co-author of ten books including the award winning Quarantine! East European Jewish Immigrants and the New York City Epidemics of 1892 and the critically acclaimed When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America Since 1900 and the Fears They Have Unleashed.

He has contributed over 200 articles to scholarly publications and popular periodicals, from The New England Journal of Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, and The Lancet to The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and The Wall Street Journal. In May 2007, Dr. Markel was appointed as a contributing writer and columnist for The Journal of the American Medical Association. He has also appeared on many major national radio and television broadcasts as well as served as an expert on documentaries about the history of medicine for PBS, BBC and the History Channel.

Professor Markel's contributions have been recognized by numerous honors and awards, most prominently by his 2008 election as a Member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Science of the United States of America.

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Dr. Hans ROSLING, Sweden
Saturday, 14 February, 11:00 - 11:45
Dynamic Trends in Global Health

Hans Rosling is a professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. When working as a young doctor in Mozambique he discovered a formerly unrecognized paralytic disease that his research team named konzo. His 20 years of research on global health concerned the character of the links between economy and health in Africa, Asia and Latin America. He has been an adviser to WHO and UNICEF, co-founded Médecins sans Frontières in Sweden and started new courses and published a textbook on Global Health. He is member of the International Group of the Swedish Academy of Science and of the Global Agenda Network of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. He also co-founded Gapminder Foundation (www.gapminder.org) with his son and daughter-in-law. Gapminder promotes a fact based world view by converting the international statistics into moving, interactive, understandable and enjoyable graphics. This was first done by developing the Trendalyzer software that Google acquired in 2007.

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Dr. Ilaria Capua, ITALY
Friday, 13 February, 2009, 16:30 - 17:15
Avian Influenza - A Unique Opportunity for Public Health

Dr. Capua is currently Head of the Virology Department at Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, Padova, Italy and Director of the National, FAO and OIE Reference Laboratories for Avian Influenza (AI) and Newcastle disease (ND). She has been involved in managing several AI outbreaks on a global scale, and in particular her group has supported African and Middle Eastern countries affected by the H5N1 crisis. She is involved in 8 EU funded research initiatives and is currently the chairman of OFFLU the OIE/FAO veterinary network of expertise on Avian influenza. In 2006 she ignited an international debate on sharing genetic information and launched the Global Initiative on Sharing avian Influenza Data, endorsed by 70 medical and veterinary virologists and 6 Nobel laureates. In 2008 she was among the winners of the Scientific American 50 prize, for leasdership in policy for promoting sharing of information at an international level. She has been included among the 5 “Revolutionary Minds” of Seed Magazine for 2009. She has over 300 publications including Chapters of books, editorials, review articles, peer reviewed publications and proceedings of conferences.

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Dr. Ian Lipkin, USA
Monday, 16 February, 11:00 - 11:45
New Pathogen Discovery

W. Ian Lipkin is John Snow Professor of Epidemiology, Professor of Neurology and Pathology and Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University. He is also Director of the Northeast Biodefense Center and the WHO Collaborating Centre on Diagnostics, Surveillance and Immunotherapeutics for Emerging Infectious and Zoonotic Diseases. Lipkin has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, MD from Rush Medical College, and pursued postgraduate training at the Queen Square Institute of Neurology in London, UK; Internship in Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh; Residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Washington; Residency in Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco, and Fellowship at The Scripps Research Institute. He joined the faculty of the University of California in 1990 as an Assistant Professor in the departments of Neurology, Anatomy and Neurobiology, and Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and advanced to full professor in 1996 before moving to Columbia in 2001.

Among Dr. Lipkin's contributions include the first description of autoimmune neurologic disease in HIV infection, first demonstration that viral infection can alter behavior without overt pathology, first use of purely molecular methods to identify an infectious agent, identification of West Nile virus as the cause of the encephalitis in North America, invention of MassTag PCR, discovery and implication of a novel, unculturable rhinovirus in pneumonia, establishment of the first comprehensive panmicrobial database and microarray, and first use of high throughput sequencing for pathogen discovery. Lipkin has discovered more than 75 viruses; assisted the US CDC, China CDC, USDA, US Dept of Defense and WHO in outbreaks of respiratory disease, hemorrhagic fever, meningoencephalitis and vaccine safety investigations; and served as an intermediary between the WHO and the Chinese government during the SARS outbreak of 2003, and co-directed SARS research efforts in China with now Minister of Health Chen Zhu. He has trained 13 graduate students, 27 postdoctoral fellows, and under the auspices of the WHO and the NIH trained more than 35 investigators from 18 countries in methods for pathogen surveillance and discovery. As director of the Northeast Biodefense Center he coordinates activities of 28 academic institutions and more than 300 investigators in basic and translational research efforts focused on emerging infectious diseases.

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