Scientific committee

Benno Kreuels, is head of clinical training and research group leader at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine. He is also clinical consultant for Tropical Medicine and Infectious diseases at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. After completing his medical studies, he trained in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, followed by clinical training in Hamburg. He worked for several years as a senior physician in Blantyre, Malawi.

He has been involved in a number of research projects in Ghana, Malawi, Gabon, Nigeria and Vietnam. His findings have been published in over 80 scientific publications. His current work focusses on implementing interventions for clinical care in low-resource settings and the epidemiology and clinical consequences of snakebites and other NTDs.

John AMUASI is based at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, where Heads the Global Health Department of the School of Public Health and Leader of the Global One Health Research Group at the Kumasi Center for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR). He holds a W2 Professorship of Global One Health at the Bernhard Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine and the University of Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany, is an adjunct Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health in the USA, and an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow in Tropical Medicine at the University of Oxford in the UK. For close to 20 years, he has engaged in Tropical Medicine and Global Health research - including in malaria, NTDs, AMR and One Health. He has also consulted for several Global Health-focused organizations and supported civil society organizations with technical expertise on matters related to access to drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, as well as strategic advice related to Global Health research. He further serves as Co-Chair of The Lancet One Health Commission, and as a regular technical advisor/contributor to several Global Health organizations. He is passionate about mentorship and sustainably building health research capacities in Africa.

Anna Bachmann became interested in parasitology during her biology studies at the University of Hamburg and completed her doctorate in molecular parasitology at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) by investigating the “Expression and localization of variant surface antigens in clinical Plasmodium falciparum isolates” in 2010.

Since then, Anna has been particularly interested in host-parasite interactions during the course of human malaria infections. Her research aims to uncover the parasite's strategies for establishing and maintaining the infection, identify pathogenicity factors and contribute to a causal understanding of the different courses of malaria.

Her key areas of expertise are infectious diseases, protozoa, malaria parasites, immune evasion, pathogenicity factors, gene expression and epigenetics.

Due to the access to patient samples at the BNITM, Anna chose Hamburg as her location, but acquired expertise in the analysis of malaria patient samples through several guest research stays and numerous national and international collaborations. Since the beginning of 2018, Anna is heading her own junior research group at the BNITM, which is specialized in transcriptomics of experimental and naturally occurring malaria infections in individuals.

Bassirou holds a DVM and a PhD in epidemiology. He worked between 1995-2000 in West Africa for Vétérinaires Sans Frontières. He went in 2000-2004 for epidemiology postdoctoral fellowship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and Swiss TPH. He led between 2004 and 2008, a research group in Africa and Asia to promote the One Health (OH) approach in health system with a focus on zoonosis and animal source food safety.

Between 2009 and 2018, he was the managing Director of CSRS in the area of transdisciplinary research, research capacity building and science partnerships and diplomacy (www.csrs.ch). After his sabbatical in Rakuno Gakuen University, Japan (2018), he has contributed to expand the One Health approach research to non-communicable diseases with a focus on human lifestyle and behavior change.

Since 2009 to date, he is the Director of Afrique One (www.afriqueone.org) a leading African research capacity building program in One Health funded under the African Institutions Initiative (Wellcome) and DELTAS Africa I&II (SFA, WT, UKAID). He is coordinating the African Research Consortium on Health (ARCH) comprising 14 consortia under the Sciences for Africa initiatives. Bassirou is a guest lecturer on One Health approach at University of Liège (Belgium), University of Oxford, University of Kara and Lomé (Togo), UAC (Benin) and at the veterinary school (Senegal) where he chairs the scientific advisory board. He I also guest scientist and lecturer at Swiss TPH (Switzerland), Rakuno Gakuen University (Japan). He is a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences. He advises ECOWAS in the OH coordination mechanism.

I am currently honorary Professor of Infectious and Tropical diseases, at the University “Paris Sorbonne” in Paris, France, and honorary adjunct professor at the School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Galway, in Galway, Ireland.

I was the chairman of the department of infectious and tropical diseases at the Teaching Hospital “Pitié Salpêtrière” in Paris (2013-2021), and I was until recently consultant in ID at the Hotel-Dieu hospital in Paris. I worked in Nepal (1984-1985) and since 1985, I have lectured in different universities in the tropics (Laos, Thailand, Mauritania, Mali, Cuba…) and I have presented in many national and international conferences.

I am a clinician MD certified in dermatology (1989), and in infectious and tropical diseases (1993), and during my career I did research in both fields (PhD). My research input concerns returned ill travelers, skin infections and STI, imported tropical diseases and Lyme disease. I have published more than 500 articles in those fields and contributed to a dozen textbooks in travel medicine, or tropical diseases.

I have been a member of the Executive Board of the International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM)(2007–2011), and the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Travel Medicine (2012–2019). I am presently the chair of the Scientific Program Committee of the CISTM19 (New Orleans, 11-15th May 2025).

Torsten Feldt is an infectious disease physician and head of the Tropical Medicine Unit at the University Hospital of Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany. He is also the deputy director of the Hirsch Institute of Tropical Medicine in Asella, Ethiopia, and the deputy chairman of the German Society of Tropical Medicine, Travel Medicine and Global Health (DTG).

Over the past 15 years, he has coordinated research and capacity building projects and networks in sub-Saharan Africa. From 2008 to 2011, he has worked as researcher, clinician and lecturer for the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, the School of Medical Sciences and the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana.

Since 2013, he has been conducting research projects in close collaboration with partners at Arsi University in Asella, Ethiopia, focusing on sepsis, the impact of antibiotic resistance (AMR) and the potential of innovative diagnostics including next generation sequencing (NGS) and eHealth solutions. He is part of the COMBAT AMR in Africa Network and co-director of the STAIRS (Sub-Saharan Africa Consortium for the Advancement of Innovative Research and Care in Sepsis) network, a research consortium comprising ten institutions from seven African countries aimed to improve the management and outcomes of patients with life-threatening infections in sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on innovative approaches.

Muñoz-Fontela graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid and obtained his doctoral degree on Microbiology and Parasitology from the same university in 2005. As a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, he contributed to identify biomarkers that modulate the transition between innate and adaptive immunity to emerging RNA viruses such as influenza and Ebola virus. Research at the Muñoz-Fontela laboratory is focused on the immunology of viral hemorrhagic fevers in particular filoviruses such as Ebola virus. Research highlights include the identification of T-cell immune checkpoints and T-cell receptor diversity as biomarkers of fatal Ebola virus disease, the finding that conventional dendritic cells are spared from Ebola virus infection and the discovery that T-cell mediated immunopathology is an important feature of severe Lassa fever. Muñoz-Fontela has contributed to the outbreak response to Ebola virus in Guinea, Lassa fever in Nigeria, Chikungunya virus in the Republic of Congo and Marburg virus in Rwanda. He is a recipient of various awards including the ‘Seymour and Vivian Milstein Young Investigator Award’, the ‘Society needs Science’ award from the Leibniz Association and the ‘Loeffler-Frosch Award’ from the German Society of Virology. He has worked as consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network as part of the ‘WHO Ebola Science Committee’. Currently he is a consultant for the WHO R&D Blueprint.

Daniela Fusco is a molecular biotechnologist with a PhD in Virology and an MSc in International Health. Since 2018, she is working at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine where she leads the research group ‘Control of Poverty Related and Neglected Tropical Diseases’. All projects lead are implemented in close collaboration with local stakeholders and aim at finding sustainable solutions for the control of NTDs through research and capacity strengthening initiatives.

Her professional background is at the intersect of research, health program implementation, and humanitarian response. She has worked in more than ten countries in limited resource settings, from TB programs in the prisons in Ukraine to clinical trials following the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Dr. Raquel González is a medical epidemiologist working as Senior Researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and the Centro de Investigaçao em Saúde de Manhiça (CISM) in Mozambique.

She earned a medical degree and a doctoral degree in Medicine from the Universitat de Barcelona and a Master in Public Health from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She also obtained an HDR diploma from the Université de Paris.

For the past 20 years she has worked as coordinator, project manager and investigator of several clinical and epidemiological studies in Morocco, Mozambique and Kenya, focusing on poverty-related diseases such as malaria, HIV and maternal health.  She has experience in the evaluation of vaccine and drugs, including design, clinical trials and analysis of large implementation science projects. Expertise in control of Infectious diseases in low-income countries (mainly sub-Saharan Africa) and Maternal and Child health. Since 2012, she collaborates with the Global Malaria Program at WHO providing technical inputs and updating the guidelines for prevention of malaria in pregnancy.

Martin Grobusch obtained his medical degree from Bonn University, Germany, and completed his specialisations in internal medicine, infectious diseases and tropical medicine in the UK and at the Charité University Hospital, Berlin, Germany.

Following a period of full-time tropical diseases research at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Tübingen, Germany and the Medical Research Unit (CERMEL) at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon, he was serving as Full Professor (Chair) of Infectious Diseases at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa up from 2005.

In 2010, he took up his current position as Full Professor (Chair) of Tropical Medicine and Travel Medicine and Head of the Centre of Tropical Medicine and Travel Medicine at the Amsterdam University Medical Centres, the Netherlands, where he leads a multi-disciplinary team encompassing clinical care, research and teaching activities. He is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Tübingen, Germany; Clinical Work Group Leader at CERMEL in Lambaréné, Gabon; Adjunct Member and Professor at the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cape Town, South Africa; and Director of the Masanga Medical Research Centre in Masanga, Sierra Leone.

Martin’s main research interests including the development of prophylactic and therapeutic tools are malaria, (drug-resistant) tuberculosis and co-infections, viral haemorrhagic fevers, emerging infectious diseases, travel medicine and general infectious diseases topics as they arise from clinical practice. This includes extensive clinical trial experience (phase 1-4 including malaria drug and vaccine development, DR-TB drug development, Ebola, geohelminth (hookworm) vaccine development as well as SARS-CoV-2 drug and vaccine development.

Naomi Levitt is a diabetologist/endocrinologist and public health scientist. She is the previous Head of the Division of Endocrinology and Diabetes at the University of Cape Town, is currently a Senior Scholar in the Department of Medicine at UCT and Director of the Chronic Disease Initiative for Africa (CDIA).  She has conducted research from the bench to the population and has been involved in many national and international efforts to address clinical practice, research direction and policy relating to diabetes.  Her current research interests are broad-and include understanding the burden of type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes and multimorbidity in an LMIC context as well as developing and testing interventions for these conditions.  She is a Fellow of the University of Cape Town, has authored over 400 peer reviewed publications and 14 chapters in books or monographs. She has supervised 16 PhDs.

Nyuma Mbewe is a specialist in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases (Mmed-ID) with over 10 years of experience in public health at both national and district levels in Zambia. She holds a master's degree from the University of Zambia, School of Medicine, in Lusaka.

Her research work has focused on systems thinking approach to public health threats such as Advanced HIV inpatient admissions due to tuberculosis and cryptococcal meningitis, the influence of climate change and rainfall patterns on malaria incidence, and most recently a correspondence to the Lancet Infectious Diseases documenting the survival analysis of cholera patients admitted in Lusaka at the Heros Stadium.

Nyuma's transition from a clinician to a public health advocate was catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This experience shifted her focus from treating individual patients to preventing large-scale outbreaks. As a Case Management Specialist for the Zambia COVID-19 Health Systems Strengthening and Resiliency Project, she quickly rose to become the National Coordinator of the Cholera Elimination program. She led the response to the largest cholera outbreak in Zambia’s history, with over 20,000 cases and 650 deaths. In this role, she coordinates the National Cholera Taskforce, which involves more than 50 NGOs and 5 Ministries, ensuring both immediate responses and long-term, climate-resilient solutions to outbreaks.

She also continues to serve as a member of the COVID-19 Taskforce and the Case Management lead in Zambia's National Action Plan for Health Security Steering Committee, using lessons from COVID-19 to enhance preparedness for other pandemics.

Ghyslain Mombo-Ngoma has an MD degree from the Medical University of Gabon, a PhD from the Leiden University, Netherlands on “Infectious Diseases during Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes”, and MSc in Clinical trials and Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.

Since 2021, he holds a professorship at the Department of Medicine at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and he leads the Drug Implementation Research Group at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) in Hamburg, Germany. He is the head of Clinical Operations and Principal Investigator at the Centre de Recherches Médicales de Lambaréné (CERMEL) in Gabon.

His team focusses on the treatment and implementation of drugs for poverty related infectious diseases. He is involved in the clinical development of the next-generation antimalarial drugs such as ganaplacide-lumefantrine, cipargamin, cabamaquine, ferroquine and drugs for loaisis and schistosomiasis. One of his team’s goals is the capacity building for clinical research in sub-Saharan Africa.

Tacilta Nhampossa is a Paediatrician with over 20 years of experience as a clinical researcher.

She is currently the Head of the Maternal, Child and Reproductive Health research area and the Clinical Trial Unit at the Manhiça Health Research Center (CISM), after being Chief Medical Officer in Homoine District, in Southern Mozambique during 2004-2006, Head of the Clinical Department during 2006-2009 and HIV research area during 2017-2021 at CISM.

She recently joined the master on Maternal Health of the University of Barcelona and the HIV course at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) as a lecturer.

Her research focus is the identification of preventive strategies and treatments for infectious diseases with a view to improving the health of children and women in Mozambique and other low-income countries.

Lisa Oestereich studied biochemistry in the University Hanover and first became interested in Virology during her diploma thesis in the group of Beate Sodeik. In 2011 she joined the Department of Virology headed by Stephan Günther at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) for her PhD working on animal models and antiviral therapeutics for hemorrhagic fever viruses with a focus on Lassa Virus.

After her PhD, she has continued working on Lassa Virus immunology in humans, mouse models, and the natural host animal Mastomy natalensis, as well as antiviral and host-directed therapeutics against Lassa Fever. Her research combines in vitro models, animal models to model disease or the natural virus-host interaction and investigations of human samples in a biosafety level 4 laboratory.

Since 2019 Lisa is leading her own Leibniz Junior Research Group at BNITM with a focus on Lassa Virus Immunology, focusing on studying the acute and post-acute phases of Lassa Fever in humans. Due to a longstanding collaboration between BNITM and the Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital in Nigeria, several clinical observational cohort studies have been initiated together with the Nigerian colleges in the last years. The studies focus on pathophysiology and immunology in acute disease and during the recovery. These studies allow unique access to patients and patient material from acute Lassa Fever patients and disease survivors. The data from the studies in humans are complemented by in vitro and in vivo analysis.

Dewi Ismajani Puradiredja, – also known as Jani – has a PhD in Demography and an MSc in Health, Population and Society, both from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE). Her BA in Development and Indonesian Studies is from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

For seven years she worked with the HIV Epidemiology and Biostatistics Group in the Research Department of Infection and Population Health at the University College London (UCL) Medical School. She taught demography at the LSE for two years before becoming an ESRC-funded postdoctoral research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). She remains affiliated with LSHTM as a Distance Learning Tutor based at the Faculty of Public Health and Policy.

Since 2017 she is based at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) where - alongside her research - she is the Head of the International Teaching & Capacity Building (iTCB) unit. She is also the tropEd representative for her Institute and currently in the Executive Committee of the tropEd Network for Education in International Health. At the ECTMIH 2025 in Hamburg, she will be coordinating the pre-conference ECTMIH Academy.

Camilla Rothe is a tropical medicine specialist based in Munich, Germany. She is the head of the Tropical and Travel Medicine Outpatient Department at LMU Hospital Centre. She is chairwoman of the Advisory Board of Travel Medicine which issues national recommendations for malaria prophylaxis and travel vaccinations and part of the steering committee for the European Tropical Medicine Clinical Network TropNet. She lived and worked in Malawi for several years. Camilla is editor of the popular textbook "Clinical Cases in Tropical Medicine". In 2020 she was placed on the TIME 100 list of "most influential people of the world" for being the first person to report asymptomatic transmission of COVID19.

Andre Siqueira is an Infectious Diseases Physician and Clinical Researcher with a Msc in Epidemiology and PhD in Tropical Medicine.

He has been conducting epidemiological and clinical trials in acute febrile illnesses in South America for the last 15 years, with focus in dengue, chikungunya, zika, malaria and COVID-19, amongst others, as part of his activities as a researcher at Fundação Oswaldo Cruz (Fiocruz) in Brazil. He has also served as a Consultant for Public Health Emergencies at the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) and acted in a varied number of emergencies.

Andre has acted in several national and international technical advisory committees and is currently the vice-president of the Brazilian Society of Tropical Medicine. In July 2024, Andre has been appointed the Head of Dengue Global Programme at Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi).

Thorkild Tylleskär is a paediatrician and professor in International Health since 2001, trained at Uppsala University and Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden. His focus is on child health, birth care, neonatal care, HIV, nutrition, health informatics and clinical trials in a global perspective. He has a French Master in African Linguistics from Sorbonne University after field work in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire).

His medical PhD thesis in 1994 under the supervision of late Prof Hans Rosling describes the toxico-nutritional causation of ‘konzo’, a paralytic disorder permanently crippling women and children in DR Congo and other pockets in Africa.

He has supervised over 30 PhD candidates, most of them from Africa. Eleven of his former PhD-candidates have been promoted to professors at universities in Africa, USA and Norway. He is teaching global health, global nutrition and clinical trials. He is also the University of Bergen coordinator for the collaboration with Makerere University, Uganda.

He was the Chair of the Scientific Committee for the 12th European Congress on Tropical Medicine and International Health (ECTMIH), virtual from Bergen 28 Sept - 1 Oct 2021.

Jaco J. Verweij earned his PhD degree at Leiden University in the Netherlands on “Molecular tools in the diagnosis of intestinal parasitic infections”. 

His principle areas of interest are infectious diseases, intestinal parasites, soil transmitted helminths, Strongyloides, (molecular) diagnostics, epidemiology, coinfection, zoonotic infections, capacity building, technology transfer, teaching.

For more than 20 years, Jaco worked in the Department of Parasitology of Leiden University Medical Centre on the development, validation and implementation of new diagnostic tools, molecular methods in particular. He has a passion for teaching and is a strong advocate for technology transfer and capacity building in the countries suffering the most from parasitic diseases.

Since 2012, he has held a position as medical molecular microbiologist and parasitologist in the Laboratory for Medical Microbiology and Immunology of the Elisabeth Hospital in Tilburg, the Netherlands.

Andrea Sylvia Winkler, is a neuroscientist, a specialist neurologist, the co(joint)-Director of the Center for Global Health at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, and the Founding Director of the Centre for Global Health at the University of Oslo, where she holds a professorship in Global One Health. She is also a visiting Professor for Global Brain Health at Harvard Medical School, where, together with colleagues, she founded and chairs the Harvard-TUM Global Brain Health Partnership.

Andrea’s special academic interests lies with Global Health, Global Brain Health and One Health and their application to different fields: communicable (neglected tropical diseases; Taenia solium (neuro)cysticercosis/taeniosis), non-communicable (e.g. epilepsy, dementia, cardiovascular diseases), and zoonotic (especially those affecting the central nervous system e.g. neurocysticercosis) diseases with the ensuing One Health concept (for communicable AND non-communicable diseases), including One Health literacy with an emphasis on disease prevention and implementation research in low- and middle income countries. Gender, equity, and a systems approach represent cross-cutting issues in her research.

Over the last almost five years, she was able to integrate research questions around COVID-19 into large Global Brain Health and One Health research platforms, also resulting in relevant policy briefs, such as in support of the international pandemic treaty. She chairs The Lancet One Health Commission together with John Amuasi, KCCR, Ghana.

Jakob Zinsstag graduated with a doctorate in veterinary medicine on salmonella diagnosis from the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Berne in 1986 and holds a PhD in tropical animal production. After his studies, he worked in rural practice and as post‐doctoral fellow on trypanosomiasis research at the Swiss Tropical Institute. From 1990 to 1993, he led a livestock helminthosis project for the University of Berne at the International Trypanotolerance Centre in The Gambia. From 1994 to 1998, he headed the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Since 1998, he has been in charge of a research group at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) in Basel investigating the interface of human and animal health with the focus on the health of nomadic peoples and the control of zoonoses in developing countries under the paradigm of "one health".

He has been Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Basel since 2010 and Deputy Head of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Swiss TPH since 2011. He is a Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Public Health (ECVPH) and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Prince Leopold Institute of Tropical Medicine of Antwerp, Belgium. He is a member of the Transdisciplinary Board of the Swiss Academies of Sciences and President of the International Association of Ecology and Health. His research is partnered with several international networks, such as the EU FP7‐funded network on Integrated Control of Zoonoses in Africa and the Welcome Trust‐funded Africa Capacity Building network.