Scientific committee

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.

Eric Caumes is Professor of Infectious and Tropical diseases, at the University “Paris Sorbonne” since 2001. He is a clinician certified in Dermatology, ID and tropical diseases, with a master in epidemiology.  He has been the head of the ID department at the Teaching Hospital “Pitié Salpêtrière” in Paris from 2014 to 2021. He is now consultant in ID at the Hotel-Dieu hospital in downtown Paris.

His research input concerns skin infections and STI, imported tropical diseases and emerging infections, Lyme disease and long covid. He has published more than 500 articles related to travel medicine, dermatology/STI, and infectious/tropical diseases. He has contributed to a dozen of textbooks in travel medicine, or tropical diseases.

He has 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). He is 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.