Speaker bios

Professor Mike Levin MBE is Professor of Paediatrics and International Child Health at Imperial College London. He works as a paediatric infectious diseases consultant and has led research focused on the diagnosis and treatment of a range of childhood infections including meningococcal disease, tuberculosis, bacterial sepsis and Kawasaki disease. He has led successive  multi-country EU-funded studies investigating host transcriptomics for diagnosis of infectious and inflammatory diseases.

Professor Aubrey Cunnington is the Head of Section and Professor of Paediatric Infectious Disease at Imperial College London, and also an Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St Mary's Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Together with Prof Halidou Tinto, he leads an NIHR Global Health Research Group on Digital Diagnostics for African Health Systems. This multidisciplinary initiative aims to develop innovative diagnostic tools to tackle malaria and other infectious diseases in Africa. He is also a member of the DIAMONDS Consortium, which is developing novel approaches to the diagnosis of infectious and inflammatory diseases based on the transcriptomic host response.

Dr Myrsini Kaforou is a Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics in the Department of Infectious Disease. Her research focuses on the identification of host biomarkers for infectious diseases from genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic datasets using machine learning techniques and statistical modelling. She is particularly interested in the integration of multiple “-omics” datasets to improve diagnosis and understanding of the host response to infection.

In 2017, she received a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on understanding and diagnosing infectious diseases using multi-level 'omics data, and in 2019 the Emerging Leaders Prize in Antimicrobial Resistance from the Medical Research Foundation to work on improving diagnosis of infectious diseases using patients' blood RNA to reduce antibiotic misuse.

Dr Jethro Herberg is a Clinical Reader in Paediatric Infectious Disease at Imperial College London and honorary consultant at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and the Royal Brompton Hospital. His research focuses on transcriptomic and proteomic biomarkers of febrile illness in children. Through a series of observational studies, he has recruited thousands of children for biomarker discovery and validation, leading to development of diagnostic signatures for a range of childhood bacterial, viral and inflammatory illnesses, and for neonatal encephalopathy. He is working to translate these signatures onto novel platforms that can generate real-time diagnoses, at point-of-care, for use in high and low resource settings, and on AI approaches that can combine clinical, microbiological and biomarker data to improve accuracy of test prediction. As a clinician, he runs specialist clinics to investigate genetic susceptibility in children with severe and unusual infections, and to manage children with Kawasaki disease. He is currently leading a clinical study of a host-transcript based diagnostic device as part of the Horizon 2020-funded DIAMONDS study.

Dr Shea Hamilton is a Research Fellow in Paediatric Infectious Disease. Her research is focused on the identification of host-derived biomarkers of tuberculosis, life-threatening bacterial infections of childhood and the immunopathogenic mechanisms underlying these diseases. She has a broad background in microbiology, transcriptomics and proteomics of infectious diseases in both children and adults. Through a number of academic and industrial collaborations, both in the UK and internationally, she has also been involved and led projects focusing on the screening of mycobacterial antigens for immunogenicity and in the development of multi-biomarker-based, point-of-care, lateral flow blood test for tuberculosis. Most recently, she has led the proteomics work on NIH-funded projects to validate biomarkers of paediatric TB and SARS-CoV-2 related illness.

Dr David Antcliffe is a Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College and an Honorary Consultant in Critical Care at Charing Cross Hospital. His current research interests involve using a range of profiling techniques, including metabonomic, transcriptomic and inflammatory profiling, to identify sub-phenotypes in sepsis that could predict a patient's responsiveness to therapeutic strategies and lead to a personalised approach to sepsis care. This approach has led to the finding that stratifying patients with septic shock based on the way in which their genes are expressed (sepsis response signature (SRS) transcriptomic endotypes) identified groups who respond differently to corticosteroids in this condition. Ongoing work aims to translate this finding to the bedside to use point-of-care tests to identify patients who are most likely to benefit from these interventions.

Dr Andrea Cabibbe is staff scientist at the TB Supranational Reference Laboratory in Ospedale San Raffaele (Milan, Italy), with more than 10 years of experience in TB-related translational research, drug-resistant surveillance and diagnosis, and technical assistance to national TB programmes. In Italy, he gained his master’s degree in Biology Applied to the Biomedical Research, a PhD in Medical Biotechnology and a 2nd level vocational master in Global Health. He is a member of the Global Laboratory Initiative core group of the Stop TB Partnership and Associate Editor for The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease.

Dr Alex Strum leads the Microbiology R&D at Resistell, a Swiss start-up pioneering a rapid antibiotic susceptibility test with nanomotion tech. Previously, he researched non-growing M. tuberculosis at the Broad Institute, focusing on antibiotic tolerance. He investigated dormancy in spores at Columbia University and holds a PhD from ETH Zurich in Salmonella virulence.

Professor J. Mark Sutton leads a dynamic, interdisciplinary research group aiming to develop and evaluate new interventions to address the challenges of antimicrobial resistance, spanning work at UKHSA and more recently at King’s College London. Working with collaborators in some of the UK’s top universities and an array of international collaborators, the groups supports the development of new antibiotics, antifungals and rapid diagnostic systems, to support translation of new discoveries to the clinic.

Dr Leah C. Frenette is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Imperial College London where her research focuses on new nanoparticle systems for catalytic signal enhancement of diagnostic tests and the translation of these tests to market. She is also the CTO of Zyme Dx, an Imperial College spin out. She completed her PhD research at the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York in 2018 where she studied the synthesis of colloidal quantum dots and their photocatalytic activity.

Eva Rennen is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Nostics (B Corp), a medical diagnostics Startup on a mission to bring rapid, AI-powered point-of-care diagnostics for infectious diseases to every corner of the world. She is committed to contributing to the sustainable development goals, bringing women’s health to the forefront of innovation and empowering female leadership. Besides entrepreneurship, she loves spending time in the ocean, surfing.

Dr Tara deBoer is a trained bioinorganic chemist with 15+ years of experience developing unique chemistry-powered solutions to address unmet needs in biology and medicine. Tara is one of the leaders of BioAmp Diagnostics, a startup company focused on commercializing innovative surveillance tools and diagnostic tests designed to support appropriate and judicious use of antibiotics. The underlying technology that powers BioAmp’s products was conceived and developed through a highly collaborative consortium on the University of California, Berkeley campus that brought together public health specialist, medical doctors, chemists, engineers, and microbiologists. As one of the inventors of the core technology that powers the tests and tools BioAmp is developing, Tara led the early research and development activities, clinical feasibility studies, and early commercial design of two of the products she will be sharing in her presentation.  

Professor Tony Cass is Emeritus Professor of Analytical Chemistry and a Senior Research investigator in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London. His research is around the design and application of minimally invasive wearable sensors for continuous measurement of proteins, metabolites and xenobiotics (including therapeutic agents) in dermal interstitial fluid. Professor Cass has held visiting Chairs at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Wuhan Institute of Virology), Universiti Teknologi, Malaysia, the University of Rome La Sapienza and the University of Bari, Italy. He is also Speciality Chief Editor for Medical Diagnostics in the journal Frontiers in Lab on a Chip Technologies. Tony’s research has a strongly translational flavour, and he is co-founder of BioNano Consulting Ltd, and AquAffirm Ltd. His work has been recognised through the co-award of the Royal Society’s Mullard medal, a Royal Society of Chemistry, Chemical Landmark, and the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Sir George Stokes Award. He is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Society of Biology. 

Dr Magdalena Karlikowska is the CEO of Cytecom, a University of Warwick spinout focused on revolutionising medical diagnostics. With a PhD in Microbiology and over a decade of research experience, she leads Cytecom's development of a rapid diagnostic test for antimicrobial-resistant infections. Passionate about advancing healthcare solutions, her work aims to improve patient outcomes globally.

Professor Peter Buckle is an expert in human factors and design safety. His work is primarily within the NIHR funded In-vitro diagnostic co-operative based within the Department of Surgery and Cancer. Peter is a Fellow and Former President of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health. a Fellow of the International Ergonomics Association and is a Principal Research Fellow at Imperial College.

Professor Graham Cooke is Professor of Infectious Diseases at Imperial College and Vice-Dean for Research in the Faculty of Medicine. His research background has mainly focussed on blood borne viruses. He leads the Infection and antimicrobial resistance theme of the Biomedical Research Centre and is interim  Chair of the MHRA.

Dr Mike Romanos is an experienced biotech and pharma leader who joined Imperial College as Associate Dean for Enterprise in Medicine in 2023 to strengthen the ecosystem in biomedical translation and commercialisation. He has deep experience in the science, IP and management of bioscience enterprises in a very wide range of platforms, modalities and therapeutic areas, gained over 35 years in biotech and pharma.

Mike co-founded and led three biotech companies, building the platforms, developing pipelines into clinical development, signing major pharma and academic collaborations, and scaling two of them to over 50 staff and multiple rounds of financing. Microbiotica is a microbiome precision medicine spinout of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, developing novel therapeutics in immuno-oncology and IBD for which he raised $67m in 2022. Crescendo Biologics is a transgenic antibody fragment platform company spun out of the Cambridge Babraham Institute with a clinical pipeline in oncology and inflammation. NK:IO is an NK cell immunotherapy with transformational technology spun out of Imperial College. Prior to that Mike was senior manager in GSK. He was also Board Director of LifeArc for 7 years, Director of the UK’s BioIndustry Association (BIA), and Venture Partner for UK Innovation to Seed (UKI2S) fund focusing on synthetic biology. 

Prior to industry, Mike’s academic work included research in influenza virology (MRC National Institute for Medical Research) and in yeast biotechnology (Leicester Biocentre). He holds a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, a PhD in Molecular Virology from Imperial College, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology.

Dr Christopher Longshaw studied Medical Microbiology at Leeds University, UK, gaining his PhD for work on the colonisation factors of coagulase-negative staphylococci. He joined Cubist Pharmaceuticals in 2001, working on a joint EU-project to find novel ways to prevent spread of antimicrobial resistance via inhibition of conjugative plasmid transfer. After a period with Syngenta BioPharma screening for novel medicinal antimicrobials from agrochemical libraries, he swapped R&D for Medical Affairs, joining Wyeth Pharmaceuticals UK (later Pfizer UK) as Scientific Advisor for their Anti-infective portfolio which included pipericillin-tazobactam and tigecycline.  He joined Astellas Pharmaceuticals Europe in 2010 as Associate Director for Microbiology, working on the development, launch and commercialisation of multiple antimicrobials including telavancin, fidaxomicin, micafungin and isavuconazole and was Country Medical Affairs Manager for Basilea Pharmaceuticals, supporting the commercialisation of isavuconazole and ceftobiprole in the UK. 

Dr Elita Jauneikaite is an Advanced Research Fellow in Bacterial Genomics and Epidemiology. She completed her PhD at the University of Southampton and the Genome Institute of Singapore before moving to Imperial College as a postdoctoral researcher and then a Research Fellow. Currently, Dr Jauneikaite is the Research Lead for the Priority Pathogens theme at the National Institute of Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare Associated Infection and Antimicrobial Resistance at Imperial College London. Elita’s research focuses on evolution, transmission and antimicrobial resistance of vaccine preventable, and healthcare associated bacterial infections. As her major research programme, Elita is investigating the disease-causing Group B Streptococcus (GBS) using large-scale genomic epidemiology in both high- and low-income country settings, bioinformatic analyses and molecular biology techniques to inform on evolution, mother-to-baby transmission, and emergence of antimicrobial resistance patterns of this pathogen. As Research Lead for Priority Pathogens, Elita leads genomics work investigating healthcare-associated infections, as well as outbreaks and pathogenicity of a range of bacterial pathogens including E. coli, K. pneumoniae, carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales, staphylococcal and streptococcal species. Elita co-led the recent Surveillance and Epidemiology of Drug Resistant Infections (SEDRIC) genomic surveillance of AMR working group and is an active member of the JPIAMR B2B2B-AMRdx network. In 2022, Elita was recognised as an Emerging Leader in International Infectious Diseases by International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID) and selected as a participant in the European Talent Academy 2023.

Dr Susan Poutanen is a Medical Microbiologist and Infectious Diseases Physician at Sinai Health & University Health Network in Toronto, Canada and an associate professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology and Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto.  Dr. Poutanen received her Medical Degree from the University of Toronto in 1996 and completed Internal Medicine and Medical Microbiology Residencies at the University of Toronto and an Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Stanford University, California.  She received her Masters of Public Health with a focus on Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002.   Her broad research interests include:  the epidemiology and detection of antimicrobial resistance; the preparedness and detection of emerging infectious disease threats; and the optimization of microbiology laboratory practices using point-of-care tests, rapid diagnostics, automation, and artificial intelligence.

Dr Florence Komurian–Pradel, from Mérieux Foundation, France, has more than 20 years of experience in conducting research on infectious diseases, with a focus on the particular challenges of public health relevance to developing countries. She is currently the head manager of GABRIEL (Global Approach to Biological Research, Infectious diseases and Epidemics in Low income countries), a network of 22 research laboratories located in LMICs. The network aims to support the development of research & innovation capacities for detection, identification, and surveillance of pathogens in the area of lower tract respiratory diseases, antimicrobial resistance and tuberculosis.

Since 2020, she has also been the head of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) research and her current projects focus on One Health surveillance of AMR in different countries of the GABRIEL network (Madagascar, Bangladesh, Brazil ….) and on the genomic diversity of resistant pathogens. She is also in charge of the Fleming Fund scholarship program in Senegal, which aims to strengthen the skills of health professionals who can meaningfully contribute to their national AMR response.

Dr Catherine Kibirige obtained her Masters in Biochemistry from the University of Bath, United Kingdom and PhD in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA.  She has been involved in HIV-1 clinical research alongside large epidemiological cohort studies for over 20 years.  Dr. Kibirige's current projects involve establishing 'The HIVQuant Project'; updating and field-testing an ambient-temperature HIV-1 quantification kit for early infant diagnosis, treatment monitoring and research. The kit is being designed for resource-constrained settings. Dr Kibirige has undertaken an extensive market discovery exercise through the UK Innovate ICURe program and is pursing various partnership and licensing options for the venture.  As well as establishing various collaborative partnerships to field-test the kit in Africa.

Dr Tim Rawson is an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology and an honorary clinical lecturer at Imperial College London. He is Research Lead for the Precision Prescribing Theme at the HPRU in HCAI and AMR. Tim completed his PhD in 2018 working between the departments of Medicine, Bio-engineering, and Chemistry. His research interests surround precision use of antimicrobial agents. His research focuses on biosensor technology, antimicrobial dose optimisation, and machine learning. In 2017, Tim was awarded the British Infection Association (BIA) Barnet Christie Award for Excellence in Original Research. In 2022, he received the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) Young Investigator Award recognising his research achievements.

Dr Daniela Maria Cirillo MD, PhD, is Clinical Microbiologist, Head of the Emerging Bacterial Pathogen Research unit and Deputy Director of the Division of Immunology, Transplant, and Infectious Diseases at IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan. She is Head of TB Supranational reference laboratory. 

Key qualifications: Head of WHO Collaborating Centre- ITA98 and Head of ESCMID Collaborating Centre in the fields of emerging pathogens; Co-Chair of New Diagnostic Working Group of the Stop TB partnership; Member of EUCAST Mycobacteria Committee; President European Society of Mycobacteriology (2018-2023); Professor Master  Global Health, University of Milan; WHO Global TB Program Advisor.

Main domains of research: Dr Cirillo’s research focus is on mechanisms of detection of drug resistance in MDROs of nosocomial origin and mycobacteria, ECOFFs definition for new antibiotics and application of NGS-based technology in clinical microbiology. Areas of expertise: clinical mycobacteriology, next generation sequencing based diagnostic tools, research on new diagnostics for TB Infection and disease, in vivo and in vitro models to study TB/NTMs pathogenesis. 

Professor Branwen Morgan: Over the last twenty years, Professor Morgan has held numerous senior communications, strategy, and project management roles that bridge academic organisations, publicly listed companies, government and NGOs in the UK and Australia. She has a PhD in medicine from UNSW/Garvan Institute of Medical Research and has also worked as a science journalist for mainstream and scientific publishers. Her current role at Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, is as lead of the Minimising Antimicrobial Resistance Mission, an initiative that has been jointly developed with the Commonwealth Government’s Department of Health and Aged Care and Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

Professor Till Bachmann is the Professor of Molecular Diagnostics at the University of Edinburgh, AMR Strategy Lead for Edinburgh Infectious Diseases, Chair of the Edinburgh AMR Forum, and Co-Director of the University of Edinburgh’s Fleming Fund Fellowships Host Institution programme. He is an expert in point of care detection of infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, conducting research at the interface of biomarkers and rapid diagnostics, including as Coordinator of the UK-India project ‘DOSA - Diagnostics for One Health and User Driven Solutions for AMR’, the JPIAMR Networks AMR Dx Global, AMR-Rapid Diagnostic Tests and partner in IMI VALUE-Dx and the JPIAMR network B2B2B AMRDx. Till fulfils a range of industrial and institutional advisory roles worldwide including as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of JPIAMR, panel member of the Longitude Prize on Antibiotics, founding member of the BEAM Alliance Diagnostics Taskforce, and Diagnostics Consultant for the AMR Global AMR R&D Hub. Till is an expert in point of care diagnostics, experienced network coordinator, and strong proponent of transdisciplinary approaches to tackling antimicrobial resistance in a One Health and Global Health context.

Anita Suresh heads the Genomics and Sequencing Unit at FIND, a product development partnership in global health connecting countries and communities, funders, decision makers, laboratories and developers to spur diagnostic innovation and make testing an integral part of health systems. She focuses on enabling genomics for drug-resistant TB diagnosis, evaluating innovative technologies and strengthening laboratory systems for public health priorities including AMR and pandemic preparedness. Her team led the development of the TB Drug Resistance Mutation Catalogues and evidence generation to inform WHO policy on the use of sequencing for drug-resistant TB diagnosis. She has 18 years of experience across the biomedical value chain, including upstream and downstream commercialization of in vitro diagnostics, product development from concept to launch, clinical evaluation, market assessment, R&D and public policy. Anita has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and training in Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology.

Dr Ala (Vathsala) Mohan is a veterinary professional (India) specialising in biotechnology. Ala has worked in different sectors of biotechnology including recombinant DNA technology, NAAT and immuno-diagnostics and reproductive biotechnology. Ala secured her PhD in molecular epidemiology and public health from Massey University, studying the source attribution of Campylobacter jejuni in New Zealand and pursued her career as a post-doctoral scholar in human gut health and nutrition and as a molecular biologist in Food Safety and Preservation (NZ). Ala worked as a senior medical lab scientist predominantly working on SARS-CoV2 diagnostics and micro-molecular diagnostics and quality Assurance Manager for NATA and works at CSIRO in the antimicrobial resistance domain.

Dr Jordi Vila is the Head of the Department of Clinical Microbiology of the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, Full Professor of the School of Medicine, University of Barcelona, and Research Professor in the Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) of Barcelona, Spain. In this last institution, he is leading the Initiative of Antimicrobial Resistance. His main field of interest is the development of new drugs against MDR bacteria and molecular tools for rapid diagnosis of infectious disease. Dr Vila was the Programme Director of EECMID from 2009 to 2014 and he was the president of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC) (2019-2021). In addition, he has received (2023) an Award of the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology for his excellent career in clinical microbiology. He has published 512 articles in peer-reviewed journals, has an H-index of 97 and 38274 citations. He has patented five molecules.

Professor Nick Graves is the deputy director of HSSR and HSRI at Duke NUS Medical School in Singapore. His areas of knowledge include health economics, health services research, decision making and cost-effectiveness. He is interested in projects that show high and low-value care and in the processes around implementing new policies. 

Nishan Sunthares is Executive Director, Diagnostics at the Association of British HealthTech Industries. He is responsible for leading ABHI's early diagnosis strategy to make high quality diagnostic technologies accessible to all who need them so that diseases can be detected and treated earlier. ABHI’s focus on early disease detection aligns with health priorities and the enhanced use of HealthTech to deliver this is significant. He is an Executive Director of the ABHI Board. In his time at ABHI Nishan has held a variety of roles including as Chief Operating Officer to build capability and partnerships to sustain significant organisational growth, and led the Association’s work to advocate for industry-critical policies to raise adoption and spread of innovations. His regular, personal interaction with government Ministers, officials and NHS leaders has been key to increasing the Association’s impact. He has extensive knowledge of the HealthTech industry and health/government policy and serves on a variety of advisory boards to convey industry’s voice on research, innovation programmes and investment. Nishan has worked in the health technology industry for over 20 years, and has held senior leadership roles in the industry across finance, market access and commercial functions.

Dr Chantal Morel is a health economist with over 20 years of experience in economic issues related to antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Her research examines the costs associated with AMR and the use of interventions to reduce the overall economic burden. This includes interventions at the point of prescribing (incentives to improve stewardship) in both human and animal settings. It also looks at the use of new financing and structural arrangements to bolster innovation in the pipeline to produce better products, improve surveillance of resistance, broaden system-wide sustainable use measures, and increase access to antibiotics where there is clinical need currently unmet by supply.

Dr Akhil Bansal is a practising doctor and global health researcher based in London. He has a primary interest in antimicrobial resistance and runs the AMR Funding Circle, a grant-making coalition of philanthropic funders interested in AMR. He has a strong philanthropic background, having previously worked at Schmidt Futures, Charity Entrepreneurship, and done consulting work for Open Philanthropy. One of Dr Bansal’s areas of expertise within AMR is funding mechanisms and structures to support innovation, particularly diagnostics- currently, he is working with the University of Chicago Market Shaping Accelerator on this area.

Dr Leonid Chindelevitch is Lecturer in Infectious Disease Epidemiology within the School of Public Health, Imperial College London. His research programme focuses on the mathematical and computational modeling of antimicrobial resistance in infectious disease, both on the molecular level (using computational and systems biology) as well as on the population level (using epidemiology and population genetics). He is also interested in the application of science to policy towards the goal of improving patient outcomes, especially in low-income or low-resource settings. His methodological research interests focus on computational biology, algorithm development, discrete optimisation, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Dr Ian Newington is Assistant Director, Innovations and actively involved in the NIHR i4i Programme, the AI in Health and Care Award and the OLS Mission Calls. He manages a portfolio of funded projects and support many potential applicants, especially SMEs looking for funding for diagnostics, devices and digital health technologies, signposting them to appropriate support within and outside of NIHR. 

Dr Newington joined NIHR in November 2014 after a career multinational R&D, most recently at GE Healthcare. He is a (co-)inventor on 38 patent applications, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a member of UKRI Peer Review College, the External Advisory Boards for CPI HealthTRIP and the NHSE Cancer Innovation Programme. Dr Newington is a mentor for the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships, NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme and KQ Labs Accelerator.  

Dr Shawon Lahiri, Senior Analyst, JPIAMR secretariat, Swedish Research Council, is a Senior Analyst at the secretariat of the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR) hosted by the Swedish Research Council, Stockholm, Sweden with experience on research management, evaluation and science policies in the field of AMR.Dr Lahiri has a research background in the field of gut microbiome and host physiology. After finishing doctoral studies at the Central Drug Research Institute, India, Dr Lahiri pursued  research interests in the field of gut microbiome and host interactions in the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She further continued her research on how perturbed microbiome alters host metabolism in the Karolinska Institute, Sweden and in 2017 joined the international initiative of JPIAMR that is committed to supporting research and policy in the field of AMR. 

Betsy Wonderly Trainor leads the diagnostics program at CARB-X, a global non-profit dedicated to addressing the health threat of drug-resistant bacteria. Throughout her career, Betsy has focused on the development and commercialization of In-Vitro Diagnostics for viral and bacterial detection, globally. Prior to managing the CARB-X diagnostic portfolio, Betsy led the clinical studies for multiple IVDs throughout Africa, the commercialization of a variety of IVD product lines, globally, and strategic partnerships on behalf of both private and public entities. She has supported the development of target product profiles and global guidelines and negotiated deals with large donor organizations and industry. She has supported development efforts at multiple innovative companies, including Daktari Diagnostics, Aldatu Biosciences, SystemOne, and Dimagi, in addition to leading product validation and implementation efforts at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and the World Health Organization (WHO). With a range of experience in the areas of pandemic response, diagnostic development, and data management, her research and commentary have been published in academic journals, including BMJ Global Health, Journal of Clinical Microbiology, The Lancet, and PLoS One. Betsy currently serves on the Advisory Panel for the Longitude Prize focused on AMR and she represents CARB-X in the ValueDx Consortium. She served as co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences Workshop — Accelerating the Development and Uptake of Rapid Diagnostics to Address Antibiotic Resistance — and is deeply interested in policy changes that may enable a healthier market for AMR-focused diagnostics. Betsy has an interdisciplinary background in behavioral and clinical research and business. She holds a BS in Human Development from Cornell University and has completed executive education training at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.