Advisory Board and Editors Infectious Diseases
Johannie M. Spaan
Dr. Johannie Spaan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific Northwest (Western University of Health Sciences). Her research interests focus on stress physiology, disease ecology, eco-immunology and parasitology.
More specifically, Dr. Spaan's research within the Steinauer lab is focused on a neglected tropical disease, Schistosomiasis, a helminth infection that affects over 200 million people. Research carried out within the lab focuses on uncovering potential mechanisms that can be manipulated to break the life cycle of this pathogen in order to reduce or eliminate schistosome transmission to humans.
In addition to this, Dr. Spaan is also involved in a project investigating the effect of schistosome infections in a mouse model system and the links among parasite infection, behavioral and cognitive changes, microbiome alteration, and systemic inflammation.
Tim Stinear
Professor Tim Stinear is a Senior NHMRC Research Fellow and molecular microbiologist in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, University of Melbourne, Australia. He leads a bacterial pathogenesis research lab that focuses on using comparative and functional genomics to understand how certain bacteria evolve, spread and cause disease. In particular, his team studies pathogenic mycobacteria and hospital superbugs Staphylococcus aureus (Golden Staph) and Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci (VRE). He received his PhD in Microbiology from Monash University in 2001 followed by a 3-year postdoctoral period at the Institut Pasteur, Paris. He is a fellow of the Australian Society for Microbiology.
Xiaotian Tang
Dr. Xiaotian Tang is now an assistant professor (ZJU100 Young Professor) at Zhejiang University. He was a postdoctoral associate at Yale School of Medicine. His research interests include vector-borne diseases of animals and plants, and arthropod-pathogen-host interactions. He is also interested in evolutionary biology of arthropods.
He has over 40 publications in high-quality peer-reviewed journals, including Cell, PLOS Biology, eLife, Cell Reports, and Science Translational Medicine. He has served as academic or review editor for 4 journals and reviewer for over 20 journals.
Marc Tebruegge
Marc trained in Paediatrics and Paediatric Infectious Diseases in the UK (Great Ormond Street Hospital, St Mary's Hospital London), Germany, South Africa (University of Cape Town) and Australia (University of New South Wales). After 4 years of research into improved immunodiagnostics for childhood tuberculosis at the University of Melbourne and the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, he returned to the UK in 2011 as NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Paediatric Infectious Diseases & Immunology.
Cindy Shuan Ju Teh
Associate Professor from the Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. As a microbiologist by training, Dr. Cindy is actively involved in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) research. She has been investigating the resistance mechanisms of multidrug resistance organisms (MDRO), the spread and persistence of MDRO in the hospital and community, as well as the effects of AMR on gut microbiome. More recently, she is also involved in behavioural psychology studies to determine the risk factors that accelerate AMR.
Since 2013, she has been the principal investigator of more than 40 projects funded by national and international funding bodies. She has accumulated more than 100 publications and graduated 18 postgraduate students
Heinz-Jürgen Otto Thiel
Head of the Institute of Virology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany; Member of the Leopoldina (German Academy of Sciences); Member of two study groups of ICTV (International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses); Member of Editorial Board for Veterinary Microbiology
Dominic Thorrington
Dr. Dominic Thorrington is Scientific Project Manager at the French healthcare regulator, La Haute Autorité de Santé.
He is an experienced health economist, infectious disease epidemiologist and mathematician, specialising in the modelling of infectious disease outbreaks and evaluating the cost-effectiveness of vaccination strategies.
Steven YC Tong
Infectious diseases physician at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service, Royal Melbourne Hospital. Co-head Translational and Clinical Research and Co-head Indigenous Health at Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, University of Melbourne. Deputy Chair of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases Clinical Research Network.
Shinya Tsuzuki
Shinya Tsuzuki is a researcher at National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Japan. Currently he leads several research projects related to infectious disease epidemiology, such as disease burden of antimicrobial resistance, COVID-19 epidemics, quantitative evaluation of vaccination policy in Japan, and so forth.
Paul M. Tulkens
Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology (Catholic University of Louvain, Brussels, Belgium) and Emeritus Professor of Human Biochemistry and Biochemical Pathology (University of Mons, Mons, Belgium).
Emeritus since 2010, he maintains active research activities and is currently Section Editor of the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, Editor of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, and Biomed Research International, and a frequent reviewer for many biomedical journals.
Carine Van Lint
After performing her PhD thesis at the National Institutes of Health (NIH, Bethesda, USA) from 1991 to 1994 and a postdoctoral fellowship in New York from 1994 to 1997, Carine Van Lint joined the Faculty of Sciences of the "Université Libre de Bruxelles" as the head of the Laboratory of Molecular Virology. As a biochemist, Carine Van Lint has developed for the last 25 years a specific interest for pathogenic retroviruses. Her laboratory is mainly studying the role played by epigenetic modifications (such as histone acetylation, histone methylation and DNA methylation) and by non-epigenetic regulatory elements in transcriptional latency and reactivation of HIV-1 (Human Immunodeficiency Virus type 1 - the ethiologic agent of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)), BLV (Bovine Leukemia Virus - the etiologic agent of a chronic lymphoproliferative disease termed enzootic bovine leucosis) and HTLV-1 (Human T-cell leukemia virus 1 - the etiologic agent of an aggressive lymphoproliferative disease (Adult T-cell Leukemia/Lymphoma) and a neurological degenerative syndrome (tropical spastic paraparesis/HTLV-1-associated myelopathy (TSP/HAM)).
Shailendra Kumar Verma
Dr. Shailendra Kumar Verma is currently a postdoctoral fellow at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, California, USA. He pursued his Ph.D. from Central Drug Research Institute, India in the field of vaccine immunology. Dr. Verma joined DRDE, and had been a scientist since 2005 to 2021. His major research area focused onto the vaccine and therapeutic development against infectious diseases. He has published more than 25 publications in peer reviewed journals of highly repute. Dr. Verma has more than 15 years of research experience in infection and immunology. His present research at La Jolla institute for Immunology is focused onto the vaccine/therapeutic development against SARS-CoV-2 and ZIKA virus.