Dr. Bin Wang is the Co-founder, Chairman of Advaccine Biotechnology Co LTD. He is also holding a distinguished professor position at the Fudan University School of Basic Medical Sciences and serves as the chairman for the Nucleic Acid Vaccines branch of the Chinese Vaccine Society. His research area is focused on the effects of therapeutic vaccination to activate T cells and the mechanism of immune regulations. He has developed novel adjuvants and recombinant vaccines, novel DNA vaccine delivery, and led to several developed vaccines being tested in human clinical trials. He received his Ph.D. from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine in 1990. He completed his postdoc training in virology and immunology at the Wistar Institute in 1992 in Philadelphia. He became an instructor and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School from 1993 to 1998. He was a professor and served as the Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology for six years at the College of Biological Sciences, China Agricultural University before he joined Fudan University. He was one of the very early DNA vaccine technology inventors in the 90’s and performed the first-in-human DNA vaccine trials in 1994-1996. He has been involved in several clinical trials of therapeutic vaccines against chronic HBV infections in recent years and invented a novel prophylactic RSV vaccine currently under clinical phase II testing. He has published over 160 peer-review articles and awarded 35 US and 30 Chinese patents. He serves as an editorial board member for several international journals and executive member in several professional societies.

Professor Adrian V. S. Hill FRS is the Director and Founder of the Jenner Institute, and Mital Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University. He is a passionate believer in the power of molecular medicine to address many of the most egregious health care inequities globally. His group have been leaders in the development of adenoviral and other vaccines against infectious diseases and he has tested these in extensively in over eighty clinical trials in Africa and Europe. In partnership with the Serum Institute of India and AstraZeneca the Jenner Institute developed rapidly a ChAdOx1 vector-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine which saved an estimated 6.2 million lives in 2021 alone.

His lab also designed a newly licensed high efficacy malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-MTM, which has recently shown unprecedented high efficacy in a phase III trial in four African countries, again in partnership with the Serum Institute of India and also Novavax Inc. This vaccine promises to make a major impact on reducing the 500,000 childhood deaths from malaria each year. In 2021 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and is a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

George Fu Gao has been a key leader in the public health field, making remarkable contributions to research and discovery through basic research, clinical evaluation and advocacy. He has made many remarkable contributions to the scientific field of control and prevention of emerging infectious diseases. He obtained his DPhil degree from Oxford University, UK and did his postdoc work in both Oxford University and Harvard University (with a brief stay in Calgary University). Gao worked in Beijing Agricultural University (1986-1991), Oxford University (2001-2006), Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy Sciences (2004-2008, Director-General). China CDC (Director-General, 2017-2022), National Science Foundation of China (Vice-President, 2018-2022). Gao is a member (academician) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), an international member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a foreign member of the U.K. Royal Society (RS), a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, a fellow of African Academy of Sciences and a fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS).

Dr. Dan Barouch received his Ph.D. in immunology from Oxford University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is currently the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery.  His laboratory focuses on studying the immunology and pathogenesis of viral infections and developing novel vaccine and treatment strategies.  His group has led the development of vaccine candidates for multiple pathogens of global significance, including HIV, Zika virus, tuberculosis, and most recently SARS-CoV-2.  His work contributed to the development of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine and the evaluation of multiple COVID-19 vaccines and monoclonal antibody therapeutics.  He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020 and received the King Faisal Prize in Medicine in 2023.

Dr. Berlanda Scorza is an accomplished pharmaceutical executive with a strong focus on translating scientific innovations into tangible patient benefits. He currently serves as Vice President of Global Health R&D Vaccines at GSK. Additionally, he is the Chairman of the Board and General Manager of the GSK Vaccines Institute for Global Health, as well as a member of the GSK Country Executive Board in Italy.

Before joining GSK in 2020, Dr. Berlanda Scorza held senior leadership roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and PATH, where he led key programs focused on the development of seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Berlanda Scorza was a senior scientist at Chiron Corporation and Novartis Vaccines, where he contributed to the development of innovative vaccine technologies, including a replicon RNA vaccine, the cell-cultured influenza vaccine Flucelvax, and the bacterial vaccine platform GMMA. Dr. Berlanda Scorza earned his Ph.D. from the University of Milano-Bicocca and completed his post-doctoral research at Imperial College London.

Dr. Hun Kim is the President of Global Business at SK Bioscience. His role is to oversee the company's product and platform portfolio in a comprehensive perspective from R&D to commercialization through global alliance and external innovation.

Dr. Hun Kim started his biopharmaceutical career in 1992 as a researcher at Green Cross Corporation, In 2000, he moved on to Berna Biotech, a part of Crucell at present. In 2008, he joined SK Chemicals,the parent company of SK Bioscience, and lead the company's expansion in vaccine R&D, Quality and manufacturing capabilities.

Under his oversight, the company developed and received approval for cell culture-based influenza vaccines (SKYCellflu/SKYCellflu Quadrivalent), varicella/herpes zoster vaccines (SKYVaricella/SKYZoster),and Pneumococcal Conjugation Vaccines. During the Pandemic, it successfully manufactured and supplied COVID-19 vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and NovaVax. With support from CEPI and BMGF, SK Bioscience also developed its own COVID-19 vaccine (SKYCovione), which became the first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine to be approved in Korea.

Dr. Raman Rao joined as the Chief Executive Officer at Hilleman Laboratories in February 2020. Dr. Rao has more than two decades of experience in research and development, manufacturing and commercialisation of vaccines for infectious diseases in global pharma and biotech companies. Prior to joining Hilleman Laboratories, Dr. Rao served as the Vice President of Global Product Operations with Takeda, Singapore, where he enhanced the global product portfolio while successfully leading an international team across Japan, Singapore and the United States. The teams worked in the areas of dengue, norovirus, zika, polio and other vaccines.

Dr. Rao started his career in 2002 with Shantha Biotechnics Limited, part of Sanofi Aventis Group in India, in Clinical Research and Scientific Affairs. He holds a MD in Medical Microbiology from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research.

He plans to carry forward Dr. Maurice Hilleman’s legacy for providing effective solutions for global health, especially those impacting low- and middle-income countries.

Dr. Berlanda Scorza is an accomplished pharmaceutical executive with a strong focus on translating scientific innovations into tangible patient benefits. He currently serves as Vice President of Global Health R&D Vaccines at GSK. Additionally, he is the Chairman of the Board and General Manager of the GSK Vaccines Institute for Global Health, as well as a member of the GSK Country Executive Board in Italy.

Before joining GSK in 2020, Dr. Berlanda Scorza held senior leadership roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and PATH, where he led key programs focused on the development of seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Berlanda Scorza was a senior scientist at Chiron Corporation and Novartis Vaccines, where he contributed to the development of innovative vaccine technologies, including a replicon RNA vaccine, the cell-cultured influenza vaccine Flucelvax, and the bacterial vaccine platform GMMA. Dr. Berlanda Scorza earned his Ph.D. from the University of Milano-Bicocca and completed his post-doctoral research at Imperial College London.

Dr. Dan Barouch received his Ph.D. in immunology from Oxford University and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He is currently the William Bosworth Castle Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a member of the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, and part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Collaboration for AIDS Vaccine Discovery.  His laboratory focuses on studying the immunology and pathogenesis of viral infections and developing novel vaccine and treatment strategies.  His group has led the development of vaccine candidates for multiple pathogens of global significance, including HIV, Zika virus, tuberculosis, and most recently SARS-CoV-2.  His work contributed to the development of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine and the evaluation of multiple COVID-19 vaccines and monoclonal antibody therapeutics.  He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020 and received the King Faisal Prize in Medicine in 2023.

Dr. Linfa Wang is a professor of the Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School, and the inaugural executive director of PREPARE, Ministry of Health, Singapore. He is an international leader in the field of emerging zoonotic viruses and virus-host interaction. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he has served and is serving on multiple WHO committees for COVID-19, including the WHO IHR Emergency Committee. Prof. Wang has more than 500 scientific publications. He was the Editor-in-Chief for the Virology Journal from 2112-2022. Prof. Wang was elected to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2010, the American Academy of Microbiology in 2021 and the Australian Academy of Sciences in 2023. He received the Singapore President Science Award in 2021

Dr. Chen is a prominent scientist specializing in human vaccine research and antiviral therapies. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer at RuenHuei Biopharmaceuticals Inc., where he oversees the development and production of new vaccine candidates. Dr. Chen joined RH Biopharma in August 2018, bringing over a decade of practical industry experience in vaccine development. Before his role at RH Biopharma, Dr. Chen held several key positions at Adimmune Corporation, including the Director and Manager of the R&D Department. At Adimmune, he was instrumental in developing the EV71 vaccine and advancing a cell culture-based production process for influenza vaccines. Dr. Chen's academic background includes a Ph.D. from National Yang-Ming University in Taipei, Taiwan, where he specialized in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He also completed postdoctoral fellowships at the Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, and the Vollum Institute at Oregon Health and Science University in the United States. His research has significantly contributed to the field of vaccine development, particularly in creating more effective influenza vaccines and understanding the immune responses to viral infections. He is currently also special technical expert at the Department of Pharmacy at National Taiwan University and an associate professor at the Department of Chemistry at National Chung Hsing University

Professor Liang is dedicated to the development of large molecular drugs in the field of recombinant protein. He has been engaged in the research of drug action mechanism-related structural biology and physicochemical analysis for many years, leading the development of multiple innovative monoclonal antibody drugs and subunit vaccines. Through the transformation of achievements and cooperation with enterprises, he has promoted the approval of clinical trials or market launch by the US FDA and China NMPA.

-17+ Years in Vaccine Clinical Development 

-Former Director, Guangxi CDC Vaccine Clinical Research Institute (2010-2022), managing nearly 300 clinical trials and serving as PI for 70+ vaccine trials, including large-scale, multi-center efficacy studies. 

-CDE and national vaccine task force expert, contributing to national vaccine trial regulations, guidelines, and major drug innovation projects. 

-Led groundbreaking trials: world’s first EV71 inactivated vaccine, China’s first mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, HPV, rotavirus, rabies, IPV, bOPV, influenza, pneumococcal, and meningococcal vaccines. 

-Published 30+ SCI; editor for Vaccinology (7th Edition) and Preventive Vaccine Clinical Trial Design and Implementation. 

-Former roles in national industry committees: NMPA Drug Review Committee, State Council Vaccine R&D Task Force, National Immunization Program, and GCP inspector.

Dr. Tan is responsible for drug discovery, preclinical development, translation research and external collaboration in China. Dr. Tan got his Ph.D. in Molecular Medicine from UT Health Science Center San Antonio and received his Postdoctoral training with Dr. Michael Karin at UC San Diego. Dr. Tan worked in Pfizer and Novartis for 9 years, specialized in drug discovery and translational research, bridging preclinical research to early clinical trials. Dr. Tan worked at Biosion Biotech and Coherent Biopharma before he joined Clover. Dr. Tan was selected as Jiangsu Innovation and Entrepreneur Talent and Suzhou Innovation and Entrepreneur Leading Talent.

Dr. David Weiner directs a translational research laboratory at The Wistar Institute in the area of Molecular Immunology. His group is one of the pioneering research teams in establishing the field of DNA vaccines and immunotherapies. Important reports from his lab include the first DNA vaccine studied for HIV as well as for cancer immunotherapy, the early development of DNA encoded genetic adjuvants including the particularly relevant IL-12, advances in gene optimization, and advances in electroporation (EP) technologies resulting in improved gene delivery among others. His group worked with collaborators to become the first to move DNA technology into human study. His laboratory’s work helped revitalize the field through advancement of new synthetic DNA design and modification of EP delivery approaches resulting in potent immune induction as well as the first successful Phase IIb DNA efficacy study (for HPV immunotherapy) in humans. Dr. Weiner is the recipient of numerous honors including election as a fellow to both the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2011 and the International Society for Vaccines in 2012. He is the recipient of the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award and received the Vaccine Industry Excellence Award for Best Academic Research Team in 2015 at the World Vaccine Congress. Weiner was honored with the prestigious Hilleman Lectureship in 2015 at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Grand Rounds session and received a Stone Family Award from Abramson Cancer Center for his groundbreaking work on DNA vaccines for cancer immunotherapy. In 2019, Dr. Weiner was honored with the Scientific Achievement Award from Life Sciences PA (LSPA). Dr. Weiner returned to Wistar in 2016 from his position at The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. From 1990 to 1993, Weiner held a joint position as assistant professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at The Wistar Institute and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Dr. Weiner is a co-founder of Inovio Pharmaceuticals and is a member of the Board of Directors. Dr. Weiner graduated with a B.S. in biology from SUNY at Stony Brook, N.Y., a M.S. in biology from the University of Cincinnati and a Ph.D. in developmental biology from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine.

Ruben Rizzi, physician by training, SVP of Global Regulatory Affairs at BioNTech. I joined the company in December 2019 just before the pandemic, and I have been the global regulatory lead for BioNTech for our COVID-19 development. Currently, I am still supporting the lifecycle of our COVID-19 vaccine, and I am co-leading the Global Regulatory Affairs department at BioNTech and working closely with the teams that are responsible for the development of BioNTech´s pipeline, post-approval activities and labelling

Dr. Bo Ying has dedicated over a decade of his career to the technology research into nucleic acid -based therapeutics and the development of transformative drugs. He founded Abogen, a biotechnology company with a mission of curing otherwise untreatable diseases through mRNA science and technology. 

As the founder, Dr Ying also has served as Chairman of the board and CEO of Abogen. Under his leadership, the company has established its own proprietary mRNA platform and delivery technology that allowed the development of the therapeutics and vaccines for infectious diseases, cancer, and rare diseases. Most recently, Abogen’s mRNA platform capabilities have come together to allow the authorized use and approval of first China made mRNA vaccine against the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Prior to founding Abogen, Dr Ying had held several roles at numerous leading biopharmaceutical and biotechnologies companies in the US, mainly responsible for leading drug formulation, process development, technology transfer and manufacturing. Across his career, he takes pride in a broad array of innovative drug developing experiences in siRNA, mRNA-based therapies for tumor immunotherapy、cancer vaccines and gene-editing drug product candidates. 

Dr. Ying received his bachelor’s degree in life sciences from Fudan University, Shanghai, and Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences from Northeastern University. He is credited as the inventor of a dozen issued patents and patent applications, and his work appears in journals such as Cell and Lancet. 

Over the years, Dr. Ying has held several positions in influential organizations. From 2018 to 2019, he served as the president of the Chinese-American BioMedical Association (CABA) in Boston, where he made contributions to the advancement of science and technological innovation with great potential to improve human health.

Dr. Lu earned his Ph.D. in Genetics from George Washington University.

With 16 years of pioneering experience in biomedical product development, Dr. Lu has led multidisciplinary teams in advancing both therapeutic and prophylactic vaccine platforms. His groundbreaking work encompasses immunotherapy vaccines targeting metabolic disorders (e.g., hypercholesterolemia) and neurodegenerative pathologies, as well as next-generation vaccines against emerging infectious diseases such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), pandemic influenza, and Ebola.

Dr. Lu's scientific leadership encompasses the full spectrum of vaccine development, from target validation and rational design to adjuvant development, preclinical modeling (animal studies and pharmacodynamics), biomarker-guided clinical trials (Phases I-III), and regulatory-aligned virological and safety/efficacy evaluations.

Doctor Hu is the founder, chairman and full-time CEO of Anda Biology. She was a former researcher of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, visiting scholar of the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Germany, and visiting scholar of the Cambridge Molecular Biology Laboratory in the UK. She independently undertook key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and 863 projects as the project leader, participated in the Super 973 projects, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Leading Special Research on Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, and the National Twelfth Five Year Plan Major Special Projects. Expert in the Second Review of Outstanding Youth Fund, Outstanding Youth Fund, and Key Projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and expert in risk assessment of the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2013.

She has been engaged in molecular genetics research of diseases for a long time and has established a series of genetic analysis techniques that can be applied to stem cell clinical transformation research such as stem cell quality control, in vivo genetic tracing, stem cell maintenance, and cell phenotype transformation, laying the foundation for stem cell based disease diagnosis and treatment. Dr Hu has published more than 70 SCI papers and won the first prize for scientific and technological progress in Shanghai (second place completion).

She has participated as the leader of the innovation team in 2018 in the first Shenzhen Women's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition. After winning the award, she founded Anda Biology Medicine Development (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd and she is serving as its full-time CEO. In the past four years, she has led the company's employees to develop personalized immunotherapy vaccine for pancreatic cancer, universal cancer vaccines, cell therapy and other products. Among which, PCNAT-1, a therapeutic personalized vaccine for pancreatic cancer, has won the FDA orphan drug qualification certification.

Dr. Bin Wang is the Co-founder, Chairman of Advaccine Biotechnology Co LTD. He is also holding a distinguished professor position at the Fudan University School of Basic Medical Sciences and serves as the chairman for the Nucleic Acid Vaccines branch of the Chinese Vaccine Society. His research area is focused on the effects of therapeutic vaccination to activate T cells and the mechanism of immune regulations. He has developed novel adjuvants and recombinant vaccines, novel DNA vaccine delivery, and led to several developed vaccines being tested in human clinical trials. He received his Ph.D. from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine in 1990. He completed his postdoc training in virology and immunology at the Wistar Institute in 1992 in Philadelphia. He became an instructor and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School from 1993 to 1998. He was a professor and served as the Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology for six years at the College of Biological Sciences, China Agricultural University before he joined Fudan University. He was one of the very early DNA vaccine technology inventors in the 90’s and performed the first-in-human DNA vaccine trials in 1994-1996. He has been involved in several clinical trials of therapeutic vaccines against chronic HBV infections in recent years and invented a novel prophylactic RSV vaccine currently under clinical phase II testing. He has published over 160 peer-review articles and awarded 35 US and 30 Chinese patents. He serves as an editorial board member for several international journals and executive member in several professional societies.

Melanie Saville, MBBS, is PATH’s Chief Scientific Officer. She leads PATH’s product development division, which includes a global team dedicated to the development, introduction, and scale of vaccines, medical devices, and diagnostics.

Dr. Saville is a distinguished physician specializing in virology with more than two decades of experience developing and licensing vaccines for global use. Her contributions over the past 20 years have included the development of vaccines for seasonal and pandemic influenza, as well as pediatric combinations and vaccines against rabies, Japanese encephalitis, dengue, Ebola, and SARS-CoV-2.

Before joining PATH, Dr. Saville worked with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), where she served as the Executive Director of Vaccine Research and Development, leading technical teams supporting vaccine development. She also served as the R&D and manufacturing workstream leader for COVAX, part of a global collaboration to speed development, production, and equitable access to COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines.

Dr. Saville holds a medical degree, a master’s degree in medical virology, and a Bachelor of Science in molecular biology from University College, London.

Ms. Yuan Yuan is country representative in the PATH China representative office in Shanghai. She manages the relationships with partners in China and oversees management and business development for PATH China office. Ms. Yuan joined PATH in January 2007 and has been in multiple roles including Finance & Administration Officer, Project Manager and Alliance Manager. In her 18 years at PATH, her projects include Japanese Encephalitis vaccine WHO prequalification, Rotavirus vaccine development, Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine development, Oral Polio Vaccine international clinical trial, Sabin IPV D antigen international standardization and HPV vaccine prequalification. She is familiar with the life cycle of vaccines including manufacturing, quality, clinical, regulatory, pharmacovigilance, biosafety and biosecurity. In January 2023, Ms. Yuan was elected as the Secretary General of the Council for the Promotion of International Vaccine Cooperation (CPIVC) under the Chinese Association for Vaccines (CAV). Prior to joining PATH, she worked as a project manager with Integrity Metals in Singapore and Indonesia. Ms. Yuan obtained her B.A., MBA, and MPH from Peking University.

Zhang Qian, Director General of International BU of Shenzhen Kangtai Biological Products Co., Ltd.,, member of Council for the Promotion of International Vaccine Cooperation, graduated from School of Economics & Management, Tongji University and ESSEC business school. She is in charge of international business development, regulatory affairs and cooperation. Several core vaccine manufacturing technologies including human diploid cell rabies vaccine and inactivated polio vaccine etc have been successfully introduced by her. In addition, she leads the international registration and export and expand the business in multiple emerging market countries, and has exported finished products and intermediate products to Southeast Asia and South Asia and Middle East countries. Finished product registration, bulk export and technology transfer in Southeast Asia, Middle East, Latin America, CIS and Africa etc is being implemented. She is also responsible for communication and cooperation with embassies and consulates in China, multinational companies, international research institutes and organizations.

Ms Adel Sattarova holds Specialist Degree in Pharmacy. She has been working at the Saint Petersburg Scientific Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums (FSUE SPbSRIVS FMBA of Russia) since 2016 and currently holds a Head of Project Management Department position. Ms Adel Sattarova has an experience in regulatory affairs, leads the projects, one of which is the WHO prequalification of the influenza vaccine FLU-M® – the product developed and produced by FSUE SPbSRIVS FMBA of Russia with a production site in Saint Petersburg, Russia and Managua, Nicaragua.

Dr. Hun Kim is the President of Global Business at SK Bioscience. His role is to oversee the company's product and platform portfolio in a comprehensive perspective from R&D to commercialization through global alliance and external innovation.

Dr. Hun Kim started his biopharmaceutical career in 1992 as a researcher at Green Cross Corporation, In 2000, he moved on to Berna Biotech, a part of Crucell at present. In 2008, he joined SK Chemicals,the parent company of SK Bioscience, and lead the company's expansion in vaccine R&D, Quality and manufacturing capabilities.

Under his oversight, the company developed and received approval for cell culture-based influenza vaccines (SKYCellflu/SKYCellflu Quadrivalent), varicella/herpes zoster vaccines (SKYVaricella/SKYZoster),and Pneumococcal Conjugation Vaccines. During the Pandemic, it successfully manufactured and supplied COVID-19 vaccines developed by AstraZeneca and NovaVax. With support from CEPI and BMGF, SK Bioscience also developed its own COVID-19 vaccine (SKYCovione), which became the first domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine to be approved in Korea.

Peter Dull is the deputy director for Integrated Clinical Vaccine Development within the Global Health Division. In this role, he provides technical and strategic guidance on clinical development to the foundation’s program strategy teams, including Pneumonia and Enteric and Diarrheal Diseases, and external partners. In addition, he leads the foundation’s vaccine development activities for HPV vaccines, including efforts with reduced dose schedules.

Peter joined the foundation in 2014 after 10 years at Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics where he was the clinical franchise head for Meningitis and Sepsis Vaccines. During that time, he led the clinical development and global licensure for a quadrivalent meningococcal glycoconjugate vaccine (Menveo; MenACWY-CRM) as well as a protein-based serogroup B meningococcal vaccine (Bexsero; 4CMenB). His work also included early clinical development of Group B strep glycoconjugate and Staph aureus vaccines. Prior to joining Novartis, he was an epidemic intelligence service officer in the Meningitis and Special Pathogens Branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and completed subspecialty training in infectious diseases at Emory University.

He received his medical degree at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Internal Medicine training at Oregon Health Sciences University.

Rita Carsetti trained in Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynecology at La Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) before discovering her passion for science during her postdoctoral training in the United States, at the M.D. Anderson Hospital in Houston (Texas). She followed this with a second postdoc at the Max-Plank Institute for Immunobiology in Freiburg (Germany), in the department of Georges Koehler, who had received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of monoclonal antibodies. At the Max-Planck she also became responsible for the flow cytometry core facility and later worked in the departments of Michael Reth and Thomas Boehm. After 13 years in Germany, she returned to Italy (Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital, Rome) with a strong background in basic immunology of murine B cells. At this point she turned her attention to human B cells for a more patient-orientated research approach. The close contact with clinicians and her role as head of the Diagnostic Immunology Unit gave her the possibility to learn how human B cells change with age, immunodeficiency, infection, transplantation, and vaccination. The COVID-19 pandemic and the global vaccination campaign gave her the possibility to learn more about the development, function, and persistence of human memory B cells after vaccination in healthy subjects and patients with primary or secondary immunodeficiencies. Throughout her career, Rita Carsetti has made a number of discoveries regarding the development of human and murine B cell populations and the effect changes in such populations have on infection and immunodeficiencies in humans. Her recent work on SARS-CoV-2 and RNA vaccination has been vital in demonstrating how human memory B cells aid immune protection and how mucosal immunity is induced in neonates born to SARS-CoV-2 infected mothers. Altogether, Rita Carsetti’s work is extremely relevant to both basic and clinical immunologists.

Ph.D. in Molecular Virology from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. Formerly served as a researcher at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac) in Canada, the Australian National University, and the University of Amsterdam, focusing on the molecular pathogenesis of influenza virus, respiratory syncytial virus, and baculovirus, as well as vaccine development for respiratory diseases. Currently employed at CanSino Biologics Inc. as a Senior Scientist in the R&D Center. Leading and driving major R&D projects and international collaborations within the company. As a project leader, working on the development of an inhaled adenovirus-vectored tuberculosis vaccine and dedicated to advancing mucosal vaccines and novel vaccine delivery technologies.

Dr. Yan graduated and earned his B.S. and Ph.D at Wuhan University. He continued to work as a teaching staff member in College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University until 1998. From 1998 to 2002, he worked with Prof. Michael E. Lamm as a Research Associate in Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio and conducted scientific research on mucosal immune functions of IgA in relation to virus infections. He returned to Wuhan University in autumn 2002 and joined in the newly established Modern Virology Research Center, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University as an associate professor. In 2006, he moved to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he was appointed as a professor and group leader to set up an independent research lab named Mucosal Immunity Research Group. His lab is a group member of the State Key Laboratory of Virology in China. He has continued his research on the mucosal IgA functions against virus infections and focused more on the intra-epithelial activities of IgA against viral non-surface and non-structure components, which helps to reveal novel anti-viral mechanisms of IgA antibodies. His lab demonstrated that measles virus (MV) non-surface protein such as matrix protein (M), non-structural protein such as phosphoprotein (P) specific IgA can interact with viral newly synthesized proteins during IgA transport through the viral infected epithelial cells, and inhibit viral replication intracellularly. He also extended his study in developing optimized recombinant flagellin as mucosal adjuvant for designing novel subunit mucosal vaccines. He obtains 3 patents issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and 4 patents issued by the State Intellectual Property Office of the PRC related to novel flagellin adjuvants as well as anti-caries vaccine and anti-RSV vaccine. His research is mostly funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China.

Hua Peng, Ph.D., Principal Investigator at the Guangzhou National laboratory (GNL). Dr. Hua Peng graduated from Peking University, Health Science Center with a bachelor's degree, and completed his doctoral and postdoctoral training in virology at the State University of New York at Buffalo and the National Institutes of Health (LVD/NIAID/NIH). Prior to joining GNL, Dr. Peng held positions as associate Prof./Prof./PI at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on 1) Investigating host immune response to virus infection, viral pathogenic mechanism, and virus-associated malignancy; and 2) Developing innovative preventive and therapeutic vaccines against viral infections and immune based anti-cancer drugs. Dr. Hua Peng has made important scientific and translational achievements, publishing in prestigious journals including Gut, Cell Res., Sci Immun., JEM, JCI, Gastro, Nat Commun., PNAS, Nat Med, Nat Immun., Hepatology, Clin Can Res, JI, JBC, and JV. Prof. Peng’s team invented a new-generation SARS-CoV-2 recombinant vaccine, leading to the approval of the vaccine product V-01 and its iterative vaccine BV-01-QX for emergency use in collaboration with Livzon Bio.

Xiawei Wei, Professor, Changjiang Distinguished Professor, supported by National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars, graduated from the Department of Pharmaceutics of Zhejiang University in 2010 with a bachelor's degree, and graduated from the School of Pharmacy in Sichuan University with a doctor's degree. Currently, she is the director of the International office of West China Hospital, Sichuan University. She is the deputy director of the National Clinical Medical Center for Geriatric Diseases, and the director of Laboratory of Aging Research and Cancer Drug Target in West China Hospital. She is a committee member of ASGCT - American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy and the youth president of the Asia-Pacific Alliance for Gene and Cell Therapy. Her main research interests are development of recombinant protein vaccines and adjuvants, intranasal vaccine and mucosal delivery, and pulmonary inflammatory diseases and tumor immune microenvironment, as well as the translational research of small molecule anti-tumor drugs. She has published more than 110 papers in Nature, Nature Communications, EMBO Molecular Medicine, Advanced Science, Molecular Cancer, ACS Nano etc.(H-index=56). She has served as the Editorial Board Member or deputy editor of four SCI journals, and won the 2018 Yao Ming Kang De Scholar Award.

Dr. Chen has been a Professor at the State Key Lab of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Medical University since 2013. Dr. Chen received a medical degree from Shanghai Medical College in 1984. He obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Chen completed his postdoctoral training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School.  From 1997-2001, Dr. Chen served as a Senior Research Fellow at Merck Research Laboratories, where he was the first inventor of Merck's Ad5-based AIDS vaccine that entered clinical trials worldwide. Dr. Chen served as Vice President of R&D for GlaxoSmithKline in 2009-2011 and as Vice President at Sanofi Pasteur in 2012. Dr. Chen has over 200 publications in infectious diseases, vaccine research, and cancer research. His current research is focused on vaccine and antibody research on adenovirus, influenza virus, and emerging viruses. Since 2020, Dr. Chen has been working on developing user-friendly intranasal vaccines and mucosal immunity.

Dr Norbert Pardi holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry and genetics. He has been working at the University of Pennsylvania since 2011 and currently holds an Assistant Professor position at the Department of Microbiology of the Perelman School of Medicine. His research interest is the development of mRNA-based therapeutics with particular focus on new generation infectious disease vaccines. He explored the development of a novel vaccine platform using nucleoside-modified mRNA in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and used it to generate highly effective vaccines targeting various pathogens (influenza virus, coronaviruses, malaria and others). Dr. Pardi is a pioneer of the nucleoside-modified mRNA vaccine technology and published milestone papers in the field.

Heinrich Haas， Department of Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz Mainz, Germany. Ph.D. in the group of Prof. Dr. Helmuth Möhwald at Johannes-Gutenberg Universität Mainz. Researched lipid membranes and organized bio-molecular systems. In pharmaceutical industry (Munich Biotech, Medigene, BioNTech) developed different types of nanoparticle products to clinical stage. Focus on advanced approaches for nanoparticle development and control.

Dr. Yafei Li graduated from HKU Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine and is awarded of Nanshan Leading Talent. She mainly focuses on the research and development of nanomedicines and process development. She has published 6 papers in internationally renowned academic journals such as Cell Discovery, Small, and Nano Research, and has applied for more than 10 related patents. Currently, she works at Rhegen Biotech, where she is responsible for the formulation development. She led the establishment of the mRNA-LNP freeze-drying process platform and completed the development of the first domestic freeze-dried mRNA-LNP process that received an IND approval.

Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Biology by Oswaldo Cruz Foundation and the AIDS Vaccine Research Lab (UW-Madison-USA). Currently, she manages the RNA Vaccine Development Partner Center for PAHO/WHO at Bio-Manguinhos-FIOCRUZ, focusing on the development and manufacturing of RNA-based vaccines and therapies in Brazil. This initiative aims for regional self-sufficiency in vaccine R&D and production, democratizing the RNA platform for Latin America and the Caribbean. Awarded by Women in Science of PDA Brazil (2021) and SIBEN-Argentina (2022), she has 18 years of experience in Immunology, Vaccine and Biotherapeuticals Development, Public Health, and Equity.

Ruben Rizzi, physician by training, SVP of Global Regulatory Affairs at BioNTech. I joined the company in December 2019 just before the pandemic, and I have been the global regulatory lead for BioNTech for our COVID-19 development. Currently, I am still supporting the lifecycle of our COVID-19 vaccine, and I am co-leading the Global Regulatory Affairs department at BioNTech and working closely with the teams that are responsible for the development of BioNTech´s pipeline, post-approval activities and labelling

Na Wang, graduated from China Agricultural University and currently serves as an Application Engineer at NanoFCM Inc. Her responsibilities include application development and pre-sales technical support for nano-flow cytometry technology. She possesses a solid theoretical foundation and extensive characterization experience in the field of novel vaccine delivery systems.

Kaiyao Wei earned his bachelor's degree from China Pharmaceutical University and completed his master's and Ph.D. at Université Grenoble Alpes, France, specializing in Virology, Microbiology, and Immunology.

During his doctoral research, he focused on validating novel drug targets for anti-infective therapies, with expertise in high-throughput screening optimization and structural biology studies.

Since transitioning into the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Wei has contributed to the early-stage development of six mRNA vaccines and therapeutics, including RSV (IND approved by the FDA), influenza, and acne vaccines. Currently, he is engaged in quality research and control for RNA-based therapeutics and delivery systems, with comprehensive experience spanning R&D to manufacturing quality management.

His professional focus includes analytical method development, lifecycle management, and product quality control, ensuring robust and regulatory-compliant analytical strategies.

Dr. Yuhong Cao is a scientist and principal investigator at the National Center of Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, China. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Linfield College in Oregon, USA, and her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University, California. Under the mentorship of Professor Nicholas Melosh, her doctoral research focused on developing a nondestructive nanostraw system for longitudinal living cell sampling. Following her Ph.D., Dr. Cao pursued postdoctoral training in T cell engineering by applying CRISPR-Cas technology. She worked with Professor Peidong Yang, in partnership with Professor Jennifer Doudna at the University of California, Berkeley. She then returned to Stanford University for a second postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Steven Chu, focusing on in vivo single-molecule tracking. At the National Center of Nanoscience and Technology, Dr. Cao leads a research group specializing in Nanomaterials and Plant Cell Surface Interfaces. Her work aims to develop universal intracellular delivery systems for natural plants to accelerate plant breeding. By exploring nanomaterials to facilitate effective gene editing using CRISPR technology, her lab addresses the critical need for efficient delivery systems in plants. This research has the potential to significantly shorten plant breeding cycles, enabling ultra-fast breeding and advancing agricultural innovation.

George Fu Gao has been a key leader in the public health field, making remarkable contributions to research and discovery through basic research, clinical evaluation and advocacy. He has made many remarkable contributions to the scientific field of control and prevention of emerging infectious diseases. He obtained his DPhil degree from Oxford University, UK and did his postdoc work in both Oxford University and Harvard University (with a brief stay in Calgary University). Gao worked in Beijing Agricultural University (1986-1991), Oxford University (2001-2006), Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy Sciences (2004-2008, Director-General). China CDC (Director-General, 2017-2022), National Science Foundation of China (Vice-President, 2018-2022). Gao is a member (academician) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), an international member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a foreign member of the U.K. Royal Society (RS), a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, a fellow of African Academy of Sciences and a fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS).

Longlong Si is a professor in the Institute of Synthetic Biology at Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and the associated director of State Key Laboratory of Quantitative Synthetic Biology. Before joining SIAT, he was a Wyss Technology Development Fellow and postdoctoral research fellow in the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Biology from Peking University and his bachelor’s degree in Pharmacy from West China School of Pharmacy, Sichuan University. Si Lab’s research interests lie at the interface of synthetic biology and virology/vaccinology/biomedical engineering, and they have focused on Synthetic Biology-Inspired Virus Engineering for Medical Innovation, Human Organ-on-a-Chip Technology Development and Applications, as well as Translating the Innovations into Commercial Products. He has authored about 50 publications and his representative accomplishments have been published in Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Microbiology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Chemical Biology, Science Advances, Nature Communications etc. He has filed more than 20 patents, including antiviral drugs that are under testing in Phase II clinical trial. Part of the findings and technologies were awarded “Top 10 Scientific Progress of China in 2017”, “International Society for Vaccines (ISV)-Paper of the Year”, and “Wyss Technology Development Fellowship”. In 2024, he was included in "World's Top 2% Scientist List" released by Standford University and Elsevier.  

Yoshimasa Takahashi, PhD, graduated from University of Tokyo. He received his postdoctoral training at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, where he worked on understanding the basic mechanisms for humoral immune memory and antibody responses. He joined the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID) in Japan, and became Director at the Department of Immunology. He was appointed to Director of the Research Center for Drug and Vaccine Development, NIID in 2021. He also holds the position of Guest Professor at seven universities. In this role, he trains graduate students in Immunology and Vaccinology.

Dr. Takahashi's research focuses on comprehending lymphocyte biology to unravel the humoral and cellular immune responses that underly vaccine effectiveness. By implementing high-throughput approach for human antibody analysis and isolation, he has identified novel classes of broadly protective antibodies against influenza, SARS-CoV-2, and other viruses. Multiple R & D for next-generation of vaccines and antibody therapeutics are on-going based on these findings.

Professor Adrian V. S. Hill FRS is the Director and Founder of the Jenner Institute, and Mital Professor of Vaccinology at Oxford University. He is a passionate believer in the power of molecular medicine to address many of the most egregious health care inequities globally. His group have been leaders in the development of adenoviral and other vaccines against infectious diseases and he has tested these in extensively in over eighty clinical trials in Africa and Europe. In partnership with the Serum Institute of India and AstraZeneca the Jenner Institute developed rapidly a ChAdOx1 vector-based SARS-CoV-2 vaccine which saved an estimated 6.2 million lives in 2021 alone.

His lab also designed a newly licensed high efficacy malaria vaccine, R21/Matrix-MTM, which has recently shown unprecedented high efficacy in a phase III trial in four African countries, again in partnership with the Serum Institute of India and also Novavax Inc. This vaccine promises to make a major impact on reducing the 500,000 childhood deaths from malaria each year. In 2021 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and is a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

Lianpan Dai, PhD, Principal Investigator at Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his doctor's degree from Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany. His research is mainly focused on the design and development of novel vaccines against major pathogens and the mechanism of protective immune response. Important research and translational achievements have been made in the research and development of vaccines against coronaviruses, Zika virus and other emerging infectious diseases, among which the recombinant protein subunit COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for use in many countries. The results are published as first/corresponding authors in the journals including Cell, The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Nature Immunology, Nature Reviews Immunology, Cell Host & Microbe. He is supported by the National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars, and is the winner of VCANBIO Award for Biosciences and Medicine, excellent member of the Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Young Scholar Award of Chinese Society of Immunology, and China Patent Silver Award Winner.

Han Wang, PhD, Associate Research Professor at the College of Future Technology, Peking University. She received her doctor's degree from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research is mainly focused on virus infection and the development of antiviral agents and novel vaccines. Important research and translational achievements have been made in the study of Ebola virus entry, nucleo-cytoplasmic large DNA virus (NCLDV) replication, and the development of novel vaccine against mpox virus. The results have been published as first/corresponding author in the journals including Cell, Nature Immunology, PNAS, Nucleic Acids Research. She was selected and supported by Postdoctoral Innovation Talents Support Program and Beijing Municipal Supporting Project for Young Talents (2022-2024), was a member of the Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is currently a young editorial board member of hLife journal.

Christopher Obwanga is currently the East Africa Regional Manager at P95 Africa, bringing over 15 years of experience in clinical trials within the EMEA region, with a particular focus on sub-Saharan Africa.  Throughout his career, Christopher has held multiple roles including leadership positions at IQVIA and Roche.  

Dr. Xu Gelin, senior  expert of  Wuhan Institute of Biological Products (WIBP), experienced on vaccine development for nearly 40 years. 

Baik-Lin Seong, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Yonsei University College of Medicine, and Director General of Vaccine Innovative Technology ALliance (VITAL)-Korea. He received B.S. from Seoul National University (1977), M.S. from KAIST (1979), PhD from MIT (1988). He worked as postdoctoral scientist at the University of Oxford (1988-1992).

He served as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council of Science & Technology of Korean Government (2021-2022) and the Scientific Advisory Board of International Vaccine Institute (IVI) (2018-2022). He chaired the COVID-19 Vaccine Pan-Government Strategic Plan of the Korean Government (2020-2023).

With a view to ensure equitable access of effective vaccines to LMICs, he works on developing a low-cost production platform of VLP/nanoparticle vaccines against RSV, norovirus, nipah, universal influenza vaccine, and flavivirus vaccines including Japanese Encephalitis, Zika, and West Nile viruses.

Dr. Yelin Xiong is the Vice President at Yither Biotech Co. Ltd. In this role, she is responsible for early-stage discovery to clinical material manufacturing of various vaccine candidates. Yelin has extensive research experience in immunology and vaccine development against infectious diseases. Prior to the current position, Yelin had over 20 years of industry experience in research, process development/scale-up, GMP manufacturing and CMC management in Sanofi pasteur. She received a Doctorate degree in Immunology and Cell Biology from John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University and had postdoctoral training in Emory University and University of Toronto.          

Christopher Gill has an MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School and an MS from the Tufts School of Graduate Biomedical Studies.  Dr. Gill is an infectious disease specialist by training. From 2002-2008 and again from 2011-2023 he was a faculty member of the Department of Global Health at Boston University School of Public Health rising eventually to the level of full professor of Global Health.  During the intervening years 2008-11 he was the clinical director for the development of the MenACWY-CRM conjugate meningitis vaccine for Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics. His work has centered broadly on child-survival in the areas of diarrheal diseases, pneumonia, and neonatal survival. However, his largest concentration of work has focused on better understanding the epidemiology of pediatric respiratory infections, notably Streptococcus pneumoniae, Bordetella pertussis and Respiratory Syncytial Virus.  At BU, Dr. Gill was the 2015 recipient of the Norman Scotch Award for excellence in teaching at Boston University School of Public Health, and the 2016 recipient of Boston University's Metcalf Cup and Prize. The Metcalf Cup and Prize is BU's highest teaching honor and is awarded to one of BU's >3500 faculty across its 17 colleges and schools each year.  At the Gates Foundation, Dr. Gill’s main areas are development of combination vaccines and expanding the impact of HPV vaccination globally. 

Professor Jiang Gu is the Deputy Director of the National Engineering Technology Research Center for Immunological Biopreparations at the Army Medical University. He serves as the Chief Scientist for a national key research and development program,and has earned the First Grade Prize for Technological Invention in Chongqing and the Second Grade Prize for Military Science and Technology Progress.

His primary research focuses on the fundamental and clinical applications of structural vaccinology, particularly in immune interventions against multidrug-resistant bacteria. Notably, he has spearheaded the development and commercialization of a Class 1.1 innovative new drug, a genetically engineered Pseudomonas aeruginosa vaccine, which has achieved a technology transfer agreement valued at 2.8 billion yuan.

Graduated with a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2014, under the guidance of Professor Liu Haiyan. Many years of experiences in molecular dynamics simulation and high-throughput sequencing, and have served as the Director of Bioinformatics for Micro Spin Genes and the Head of Nucleic Acid Drug Development for Yidu Cloud. Successfully developed multiple clinical high-throughput data analysis platforms and have authored multiple invention patent authorizations and SCI papers. As the co-founder of Therarna, responsible for identifying and optimizing upstream targets of mRNA drugs, leading the team to develop a systematic platform for identifying cross species cellular immune epitopes, designing humoral immune antigens, and optimizing mRNA sequences.

Hao Li is an associate professor and PhD supervisor at the College of Veterinary Medicine, China Agricultural University. He received his PhD degree from Tsinghua University in July 2017. From July 2017 to July 2019, he did his postdoctoral research at the School of Medicine, Tsinghua University. From July 2019 to now, he has worked at China Agricultural University and focused on tuberculosis immunology, TB vaccine development, and antibiotic resistance. He has published more than 30 articles in Nature Reviews Immunology, PNAS, Nature Communications, npj Vaccines, and other journals. Dr. Li serves as guest editor and youth editorial board member for multiple journals and as a reviewer for some journals and several grant agencies.

Markus is Head of Analytical Development, Microbiology, and Quality Control for the MAP-Program at LTS Lohmann Therapie Systeme AG in Andernach. He studied biology at Philipps University in Marburg, Germany, and was awarded a PhD in Parasitology in 2009 for his work on the membrane physiology and biochemistry of the Malaria parasite. From 2009 to 2015 he expanded his track record in infectious disease research at The Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. In 2015, he accepted a position for the University of Oxford, leading the Clinical Pharmacology laboratories at the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit in Bangkok, Thailand. In 2019 he joined LTS as Head of Analytical Development, Microbiology and Quality Control for the MAP Program.

Mr. Lake has worked in vaccine manufacturing and commercialization for 30 years developing diverse experience at global leaders Merck and GlaxoSmithKline. Mr. Lake's background includes live virus and recombinant vaccine bulk production, sterile filling, and quality control, before moving into product management and business development roles. He served as the manufacturing Alliance Manager between Merck and Sanofi Pasteur during the startup of their European loint Venture and worked for several years as asenior level commercialization consultant in the vaccine industry.

Arnaud Didierlaurent is an engineer in Biotechnology by training and an immunologist with a PhD in cellular immunology from the University of Lausanne in 2003 (Jean-Pierre Kraehenbuhl). Arnaud continued his work on innate immunity in the lab of Jürg Tschopp before joining the Imperial College, London, where he worked as postdoctoral fellow from 2004 to 2007 on the long-term impact of viral infection on the lungs. He was also a research fellow in Ralph Steinman's lab at the Rockefeller University in New York. Arnaud then joined the R&D department of GlaxoSmithKline in 2008 in Belgium, where he held several leading positions in vaccine research and development. Initially head of a lab investigating the mode of action of adjuvant, Arnaud became in charge of the GSK Adjuvant System portfolio and thus directly involved in the licensure of several adjuvanted vaccines.

Arnaud’s scientific contributions have consequently been focused on deciphering the interplay between innate immunity and pathogen/vaccine-specific adaptive response. With his experience in both academic and industrial settings, Arnaud has acquired a deep understanding of how vaccines are created, developed and deployed. He joined the University of Geneva in March 2020 to continue his work on translational vaccine research. He is acting as the chairman of the WHO Technical Advisory Group who provides recommendations for the Emergency Use listing of COVID-19 vaccine candidates. Since February 2023, he is an associate professor and the director of the Center of Vaccinology at the Faculty of medicine. 

After obtaining his PhD in Biological Chemistry from the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Wang started his industry career and worked at a number of biotech and pharmaceutical companies, including Grifols S.A., Novartis, and GSK Vaccines, during which he rose from scientist to leadership roles and accumulated rich vaccine and drug development experience, especially with self-replicating RNA. After leaving GSK, Dr. Wang co-founded Immorna Biotherapeutics. Under his leadership, Immorna has built cutting-edge and proprietary mRNA platform technologies and developed rich clinical pipeline spanning infectious diseases, immune-oncology, and rare genetic disease areas.

Professor Han Xuexiang is a researcher, project leader and doctoral supervisor of the Center of Excellence in Molecular and Cell Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Selected in the national high-level talents (overseas) project and Shanghai Leading Talents (overseas) project.

Hanz Biotechnology (Suzhou) Co., LTD., Co-founder & CSO.

He received his bachelor's degree from Shanghai University in 2014, and his PhD from Tsinghua University in 2019 (jointly trained by National Center for Nanoscience and Technology). From 2020 to 2024, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Professor Michael J. Mitchell, University of Pennsylvania, USA, during which he collaborated with Professor Drew Weissman, winner of the Nobel Prize, on the research of LNP-mRNA vaccines and drugs. In February 2024, he joined the Center of Excellence in Molecular and Cell Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the construction of novel LNP and RNA drug delivery. He is the first-author (including co-first author) of Nat.Chem., Nat.Nanotech., Nat.Mater., Nat.Commun. He has published nearly 20 papers in other journals, authorized one Chinese patent, and applied for a number of PCT patents.

PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology, University of Nevada

10 years of R&D experience and 5 years of industry experience

Published over 10 academic research articles

Plenty of experience at mRNA/ circRNA construction, genome editing and stem cell therapy

Dr. Jiangsheng Xu is the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of General Therapeutics, Inc., specializing in the development of non-reactogenic lipid nanoparticle (LNP) technologies aimed at overcoming challenges in mRNA vaccine hesitancy and RNA medicine re-dosing. With over 15 years of hands-on experience in nanoparticle and RNA research across both academic and industry settings, Dr. Xu has contributed to leading journals, including Nature Nanotechnologyand Nature Communications, and holds 10 patents.

Pei-Yin is leading the Preclinical R&D at Hilleman Laboratories. She has more than 20 years of experience in virology and close to 10 years of experience in vaccine development. She obtained her PhD from University of Wisconsin-Madison, and pursued her postdoctoral training at Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her industry experience started when she joined Sentinext Therapeutics in Malaysia, developing vaccines against enteroviruses. After Sentinext, she joined Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN), A*STAR, Singapore to develop therapeutic antibodies against viruses. She joined Hilleman Laboratories in 2021 as a Senior Scientist, and is currently the Senior Manager at Hilleman leading the Preclinical team.

Ph.D. Old Dominion University, Virginia. USA, concentrated on vector-borne disease.

ORISE fellow, The US Food and Drug Administration, CBER，DVP, OVRR.

An expert on Flaviviridae vector-borne diseases including LGTV, ZIKV, DENV infection and transmission through the facilitation of exosome and published on several top journals (PNAS, EMI, PLoS Pathog, etc.).

ORISE fellow at the FDA, worked on live attenuated Rubella vector vaccines expressing RSV， Covid-19 or HIV interest proteins.

Now working as a leading scientist & academic secretary of CNBG-Virogin, leading POC research team and be responsible for all the infectious disease mRNA vaccine pipelines that under the POC stage.

Dr. Hui  Li is a dedicated professional who is currently serving as the Director of  R&D at Innorna. Her work specializes in the research and development of  vaccines for infectious diseases. With her vast experience in the life  sciences industry, she has been involved in numerous vaccine development  projects and has conducted extensive research in this field. As a leader of  the vaccine R&D team at Innorna, Hui continuously innovates and has  successfully developed several mRNA infectious disease vaccines, which are currently undergoing clinical trials.  Founded in 2019, Innorna is a platform-based delivery technology company primarily focused on developing nucleic acid drug delivery technologies. It is among the few global high-tech firms that have mastered the LNP technology, with a proprietary mRNA platform technology. Leveraging the LNP and mRNA platform technologies, Innorna has developed pipelines for infectious disease vaccines, rare diseases, and tumor immunotherapies.

Dr. SeyedReza Banihashemi is the Head of Immunology Department and an Assistant Professor at Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute in Karaj, Iran. He holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Immunology from Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran.  With over 20 years of experience in vaccine research and development, Dr. Banihashemi designed and developed Razi Cov-Pars, Iran's domestically produced COVID-19 vaccine. Under his leadership, Razi Institute successfully conducted Phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials of Razi Cov-Pars.this vaccine is first intranasal covid 19 vaccine in the world.

His research focuses on mucosal Immunity , intranasal vaccine , adjuvants, drug delivery systems, immune regulation and the development of bacterial and viral vaccines. He has published over 50 papers and authored book chapters in his field. His work on nanobody technology and immunoliposomes has applications for targeted drug delivery.

In addition to conducting research, Dr. Banihashemi teaches courses in infection and immunity. He has received several awards for his scientific contributions, including for exemplary research from Razi Institute. 

When not engaged in his own work, Dr. Banihashemi reviews papers for international journals. 

Prof Keith Chappell

Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, and School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, Australia

Prof Keith Chappell is a Molecular Virologist whose research is focused on structure-based design of vaccines for medically important viruses. Keith is one of the inventors of the broadly applicable vaccine platform, molecular clamp. Molecular clamp locks viral glycoproteins into the native prefusion conformation to elicit highly protective immunity and enables consistent manufacture of highly stable, ready-to-use, fully liquid vaccines. Keith leads a team of 20 staff and students split across two major research programs: The CEPI funded Rapid Response Vaccine Pipeline which seeks to safeguard against future pandemics and contract research conducted for the UQ biotech spinout company Vicebio Ltd. In 2020, Keith co-led the University of Queensland’s effort to produce a covid vaccine, which progressed from sequence information to clinical trial dosing within 6 months, however did not progress due to interference with some existing HIV diagnostic tests. Since that time this team as produced a new covid vaccine incorporating a second-generation molecular clamp that has completed clinical testing showing favourable safety and immunogenicity profile in comparison to approved covid vaccine, Nuvaxovid (Novavax). Vicebio is also actively advancing this technology for the development of multivalent vaccine formulations to target life-threatening respiratory viruses, with a bivalent vaccine for Respiratory Syncytial virus and human metapneumovirus is currently undergoing phase I clinical trial testing.

Dr. Cunbao Liu is full professor at the Institute of Medical Biology, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, PI of the National Key R&D Program Young Scientist Project in China. In recent years, he has published dozens of research papers as the first/corresponding author, authorized 5 domestic invention patents. Dr. Liu’s lab mainly focuses on the research and development of novel adjuvant-based subunit vaccines and mRNA vaccines, especially the contribution of cell-mediated immunity （CMI）induced by such vaccines. CMI is critical for vaccines targeting to latent infection pathogens (e.g. herpes virus and rabies virus), and maybe helpful for vaccines targeting to mucosal infection pathogens (e.g. SARS-CoV-2 and respiratory syncytial virus that invade through respiratory tract, or rotavirus and norovirus that invade through gastrointestinal tract). His topic today is “An economical adjuvant without production limit to induce potent cell-medicated immunity in subunit vaccines”.

George Simeon is the CEO of Curevo Vaccine. He joined Curevo at the beginning of 2019 and has over 30 years of experience in the healthcare sector working with multinational firms, start-ups, and not-for-profits. He has worked in biotech, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, IVD, and healthcare convergence technologies. He has worked extensively in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Before moving to the USA, he was based in South Korea from 2014-2018, where he worked for SK Telecom’s Healthcare Division in M&A and global strategic alliances. In 2016, he joined Sollers Partners, a cross-border investment advisory firm, while maintaining an advisory role with SK Telecom.

He has worked across Europe and the USA as an executive with Johnson & Johnson, as the founding Vice-President of Cordis Neurovascular Europe, and with GHX Europe as a Commercial Vice-President. He also spent 3 years with Novartis Global Headquarters in Switzerland working on projects in their CNS portfolio in Health Economics and Pricing.

George has also founded two start-ups and advised GS1 on their global entry and expansion into the Healthcare, High-Tech, and Customs sectors as well as on ESG practices in FMCG logistics.

George is a graduate of INSEAD (MBA) and Yale University (MPH).

Yasuo Yoshioka， PhD

Group Leader，The Research Foundation for Microbial Diseases of Osaka University

Education;              

1995-1999; Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Osaka University (Awarded the degree of B.S.).

1999-2001; Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Osaka University (Awarded the degree of M.S.).

2001-2004; Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Osaka University (2004; Awarded the degree of Ph.D. from Osaka University)

Brief chronology of employment;

2004-2006; Research Scientist, National Institute of Health Sciences (Tokyo, Japan)

2006-2012; Specially Appointed Associate Professor, The Center for Advanced Medical Engineering and Informatics, Osaka University (Osaka, Japan)

2012-2014; Associate Professor, Laboratory of Toxicology and Safety Science, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Osaka University (Osaka, Japan)

2015-2020; Specially Appointed Associate Professor, Vaccine Creation Project, BIKEN Innovative Vaccine Research Alliance Laboratories, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University (Osaka, Japan)

2020-2024; Specially Appointed Professor, Vaccine Creation Project, BIKEN Innovative Vaccine Research Alliance Laboratories, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University (Osaka, Japan)

2015-Present: Group leader, The Research Foundation for Microbial Diseases of Osaka University (Osaka, Japan)

Dr. Xinzhong (Jon) Wang, Ph.D. currently serves as the Global R&D President and CSO of Parr Biotechnology (He Bei) Co. Ltd.

He was the Founder and CEO of Fusion Bioscience (Cayman) Inc. incorporated in November 2021.  Fusion Bioscience merged with Parr Bio in 2023. Dr. Wang is a scientific leader with over 20 years of experience in oncology research and drug development. He has extensive knowledge and experience in tumor immunology, molecular and cell biology, drug target discovery, animal modeling, and protein therapeutics development. He has published more than 30 original scientific papers in prestigious journals and is the inventor of several international patents.

Prior to Parr Bio, Dr. Wang served as Senior Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at CStone Pharmaceuticals (HK02616); Director of Immuno-Oncology research at Merck & Co.; Associate Director of BioSuperiors at AstraZeneca/MedImmune;  Principal Scientist at Biogen.

Dr. Wang obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from Nankai University and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Ohio University. He completed his post-doctoral training in Gene Therapy at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital and subsequently served as an Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Juhienah Khalaf is a medicinal chemist with expertise in the synthesis and development of bioactive compounds, including antifungal agents, immunomodulators, and protease inhibitors. With a strong background in organic and combinatorial chemistry, Juhienah has contributed to advancing research in therapeutic molecules targeting immune responses and infectious diseases. Her work spans the design and synthesis of TLR4 agonists, small-molecule drugs, and immuno-based therapeutics. Juhienah's research has been instrumental in the development of novel adjuvant systems and targeted therapies, aiming to address critical challenges in immunology and infectious disease treatment.  Juhienah first synthesized INI-2002, a TLR4 agonist that has become the lead component in Inimmune's Adjuvant Systems. This work is presented at the Vaccine Industry Forum (VIF) conference, highlighting its potential in enhancing vaccine efficacy through targeted immune modulation.

Yongming Chen received his Master degree of chemistry in 1990 from Northwest University, Xian. In 1993, he obtained his Ph.D. on polymer science from Nankai University, Tianjin. From 1994 to 1998, he was Postdoctoral Researcher and later Research Assistant at the Institute of Chemistry, CAS. Then he spent the period 1998−2001 as Postdoctoral Researcher in the University of Düsseldorf and the University of Mainz. Since 2001, Chen was Professor at the Institute of Chemistry CAS. He moved to Sun Yat-sen University in 2013 and he works in Henan University in 2024. He obtained the “Distinguished Young Scholars” by the National Science Foundation of China (2006) and the “Wang Bo-Ren Polymer Research Award” by the Chinese Chemistry Society (2011). He served for Polymer, an Elsevier journal as an Associate Editor from 2007 to 2018. He also was on the Advisory Board Panel of Macromolecules and ACS Macro Letters. Professor Chen’s research interests are in the areas of synthesis methodology of polymers and polymer application in nanomedicine on biologics delivery, immune activation and inhibition. He has published over 300 research articles and around 30 patents approved.

Jingxin Li, PhD, Professor, is working at Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Her research is focused on vaccine clinical evaluation and immunization strategy. She has participated in a lot of epidemiology investigations and a series of clinical trials of novel vaccines, including Enterovirus type 71 vaccine, recombinant human Ad5 vectored Ebola vaccine, and Covid-19 vaccines. She has got National Natural Science Outstanding Youth Founds and Jiangsu Provincial Natural Science Funds for Distinguished youths, and hosted or participated in seven National Natural Science Founds or National Science and Technology Major Projects. She has published over 25 articles in medical journals on vaccine clinical studies, including Nature Med, Lancet Respir Med, Lancet Glob Health, etc.

35 years of industry experience 

Former executive at global companies in China, the US, and Europe, including Amador, Worg, Alexion (AstraZeneca), Shire (Takeda), CancerVax (Amgen), and Elan (Perrigo). 

Extensive expertise in Quality Management & Regulatory Affairs, Medical Affairs & Clinical Development, and experience on both the sponsor and CRO. 

Former FDA/CBER reviewer.

Dr. Eric Tsao has served as the Chief Executive Officer of Synermore Biologics since the founding of the company in 2013.  He has over 25 years of direct experience with more than 20 products in clinical development, four US and EU approved products on the market, and eight biotech manufacturing facilities.  His areas of expertise include biological product development, process design, facility engineering, and operations.  Under his leadership, SYN023, an innovative anti-rabies monoclonal antibody cocktail, has been expertly developed and commercialized for rabies post-exposure prophylaxis.  Since 2008, Dr. Tsao has worked with Morningside Group on biotech investments.  He was instrumental in enhancing portfolio companies’ CMC capabilities. Dr. Tsao was the Vice President of Technical Operations at Aeras, a Gates Foundation sponsored vaccine development organization.  At MedImmune, Dr. Tsao rose to the position of Vice President of Process and Manufacturing Sciences responsible for process development as well as manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies and recombinant vaccines.  The development and manufacturing efforts led to the successful licensing of Synagis, FluMist, and Cervarix.  He was a process development scientist at Johnson & Johnson, where he focused on the development of cell culture processes and start-up of the commercial manufacturing facility for erythropoietin.  Dr. Tsao received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Adham began his professional journey as a neuroscientist, followed by a shift to a commercial career at GSK Vaccines. He possesses over 15 years’ experience in commercialising biological therapeutics in the emerging markets namely Middle East and Africa, South East Asia and South America. He was responsible for obtaining emergency use approval for a prominent Chinese Biotech in the United Arab Emirates prior to China’s Approval. Having led biotech and clinical firms to achieve more than $250 million in revenue over the past 5 years. In addition to having established numerous start- ups, overseeing concept, value proposition, market analysis, business modeling, product development and securing investments. A seasoned health technology expert boasting years of experience in Machine learning and AI in the healthcare space.

Meng LI has been leading the International business team of CNBG since 2013, oversees CNBG’s international cooperation and registration activities. She also serves on the board of CNBG-Virogen, and the board of Emerging Biopharmaceuticals Manufacturers Network (EBPMN). During her 19 year experiences in biological industry, she established extensive networks with academia, NGOs, enterprises internationally, and successfully completed a number of landmark projects. Including the bOPV capacity expansion and prequalification program with BMGF (received over 23Million USD financial supports from BMGF, prequalified by WHO in 2019), establishment of CNBG’s first JV with foreign enterprise, the first overseas acquisition by CNBG, roll-out of the Covid-19 vaccine PhIII trials in 6 countries and its registration in over 100 countries. Meng Li has successfully signed a number of in-license, research cooperation, commercialization and industrialization projects with NIH, Oxford, France Institut Pasteur, PATH, IVI, biotech companies and developing country manufacturers. She worked as temporary advisor to WHO inspectorate during WHO’s first inspection to China NMPA in 2010, and was elected as the executive committee member of DCVMN from 2014-2016.

Hani Kim is the Executive Director of the RIGHT (Research Investment for Global Health Technology) foundation, with 16 years of work experience in translational health research as an academic research scientist and at global health R&D funding organizations. She completed her PhD in Lab Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, Canada and post-doctoral training in molecular immunology of B cells at the Max-Planck Institute of Immunology, Germany.

During her MPH and her affiliation as a Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Hani trained researchers at icddr,b, Bangladesh and KEMRI, Kenya. Prior to joining the RIGHT foundation, she developed and managed portfolios of vaccine discovery grants and molecular surveillance grants as a Gates Fellow initially and later as a Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for six years.

Hani has published articles in translational medical research and in the political origins of health inequity. Her recent articles include "The Selangor Consensus: strengthening clinical trials for local public health in the Western Pacific", ‘‘We need people’s WHO to solve vaccine inequity, and we need it now”, “The sociopolitical context of the COVID-19 response in South Korea”, and “A critical assessment of the ideological underpinnings of current practice in global health and their historical origins.”

As Senior Director at Sanofi Vaccines External R&D, Sean is responsible for the identification and evaluation vaccine-related opportunities to support Sanofi Vaccines’ global pipeline strategy. Under his leadership, Sanofi Vaccines has completed three research agreements, initiated over 10 feasibility studies with both academic and industrial partners, organized 4 full due diligence, executed two global licensing agreements with biotech companies, and reached a 280 million AUD collaboration agreement with Queensland State Government. Sean has over 20 years of extensive vaccine R&D and business development experience. Before joining Sanofi, Sean was Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Altravax from 2013 to 2015 and Executive Director & Head of the Vaccine Research Institute at Simcere Pharmaceutical Group from 2010 to 2013. Prior to Simcere, he worked as a Senior Scientist and Project Leader on multiple vaccine programs at Maxygen for 9 years. Sean received his Ph.D. degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Delaware, M.S degree in Microbiology from the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and B.S. degree in Microbiology from Shandong University. He received his postdoctoral training at Columbia University.

Dr Robbert van der Most obtained his cum laude PhD in 1994 at Leiden University (Netherlands) on the topic of coronavirus molecular biology. He then conducted postdoctoral work on the immunology of chronic viral infection with Dr Rafi Ahmed(UCLA, Eiory University, USA) and flavivirus molecular biology with Dr Jim Strauss (Caltech, USA). Upon return to the Netherlands he worked on RSV vaccine immunology, focusing on the mechanisms of vaccine-enhanced disease. In 2004, he joined Dr Bruce Robinson's team at the University of Western Australia to study immune oncology and the immune-modifying effects of chemotherapy. In 2008, he joined GSK Vaccines in Belgium, in roles of increasing responsiblility, leadingTranslational Science, After a brief period at CEPl, he joined BioNTech as Vice-President Translational Science in 2022, leading a team of experts in the infectious disease portfolio, in 2024 he started his own consultancy business, aiming to provide scjentific and development advice to biotech and pharma companies, as well as not-for-profit organizations.

Yunlong Richard Cao is an immunologist and Assistant Professor at Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center (BIOPIC), Peking University. Cao obtained B.S. in Physics from Zhejiang University and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University. Cao’s research focuses on B-cell adaptive immune response, antibody drugs and vaccine designs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he made key contributions to the understanding of SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies, humoral immunity of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and infection, and antibody immune escape of SARS-CoV-2 variants. Cao’s research has been published in Nature, Cell, The Lancet Infectious Diseases and Cell Host & Microbe. Cao is a member of WHO Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 Vaccine Composition (TAG-CO-VAC) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) Scientific Advisory Committee. Cao’s work was listed among “China's top 10 scientific advances” and “China's top 10 advances in life sciences” in 2022. Cao was listed among "35 Innovators Under 35" (China) in 2021 by MIT Technology Review and “Ten people who helped shape science in 2022” by Nature (Nature’s 10).

Nigel obtained his BSc in Microbiology and Genetics from University College London (UCL) in 1990 and an MSc in Applied Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases (1992), PhD in Molecular Parasitology (1999) and DLSHTM (2000) from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). After his PhD, he returned to UCL as a post-doctoral scientist in the Division of Infection and Immunity. In 2009 Nigel was elected as a member of the highly prestigious Medical Research Club and set up his own research group at the University of Kent. He is currently Chair and Professor in Molecular Virology, Director of the Viral Pseudotype Unit (VPU) and Director of Research and Innovation. Nigel is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), Senior Associate Member of the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM), Member of the International Society for Influenza and other Respiratory Virus Diseases (ISIRV), the Microbiology Society and the European Society for Virology (ESV). Nigel acts as external consultant for VisMederi (Italy) and RQbio (UK). He has published over 200 articles with an h-index of 53, >14k citations.

Dr. Emanuele Andreano is an immunologist with almost 10 years of experience studying B cell and antibody responses to human pathogens, and he is currently project leader at the Monoclonal Antibody Discovery Laboratory (MAD Lab), Fondazione Toscana Life Sciences, directed by his mentor Prof. Rino Rappuoli. During his training, Dr. Andreano gained extensive experience on single cell sorting of memory B cells and isolation, cloning, expression and functional/structural characterization of human monoclonal antibodies. This experience has been used to tackle different pathogens which pose serious threats for global health such as the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), antimicrobial resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, SARS-CoV-2 and more recently the Monkeypox virus. The work that Dr. Andreano performed on SARS-CoV-2 led to the isolation of more than 14,000 thousand human monoclonal antibodies and to the identification of MAD0004J08, one of the most potent monoclonal ever described and evaluated in a phase II/III clinical trial for the treatment of COVID-19. Dr. Andreano first authored publications on top tier journals such as PNAS, Cell, Nature Medicine and Nature. For his scientific work, Dr. Andreano has been awarded the “COVID-19 heroes award” and has been nominated as “Rising Star” in the field of immunology by the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS) 2023.

Dr. Alejandra Capozzo has an MD in Biology from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina. She is a Doctor in Biotechnolgy also from the UBA. Her PhD thesis focused on alternative vaccines against foot-and-mouth disease directed by Dr José La Torre. She did postdoctoral studies in neonatal applied immunology at the Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) at University of Maryland (Baltimore, USA), where she worked on the development of new vaccines for neonates in the presence of maternal immunity. She has intensified her training in immunology at the National Academy of Medicine in Buenos Aires, focused on vaccines against Uremic hemolytic syndrome and animal models. Dr Capozzo worked as Market Development Manager for Latin America at Prionics (a Swiss company); and as leader of research and development in Biogenesis-Bagó, an international veterinary vaccine producer. She is also trained in sales management.

From 2008 to 2023 she was the head of the applied veterinary immunology laboratory at the Institute of Virology and Technological Innovations, a CONICET-INTA. She is currently Principal Researcher of the Argentinean national research council (CONICET), the CEO of the Global Foot and Mouth Disease Research Alliance (GFRA), President of the Argentine Association of Veterinary Immunology, coordinator of the Latin American Veterinary Immunology Network, and the Chair of the Veterinary Immunology Committee of the International Union of Immunological societies (VIC-IUIS). Dr Capozzo participates in several transboundary disease groups in FAO-WOAH, as the co-chair of the Global Coordination Committee on Foot and Mouth Disease (GCC-FMD) and as a member of the Partnership and Financial panel (PFP).

Dr Capozzo has been a professor of immunology at the School of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires for many years and directed 14 PhD theses. She is the Responsible Researcher of numerous national and international projects and has developed several products related to applied immunology that were transferred to Argentine and international companies. She is currently the Director of a Center focused on One health, located at the Interamerican University in Buenos Aires, since February 2024.

Dr. Raman Rao joined as the Chief Executive Officer at Hilleman Laboratories in February 2020. Dr. Rao has more than two decades of experience in research and development, manufacturing and commercialisation of vaccines for infectious diseases in global pharma and biotech companies. Prior to joining Hilleman Laboratories, Dr. Rao served as the Vice President of Global Product Operations with Takeda, Singapore, where he enhanced the global product portfolio while successfully leading an international team across Japan, Singapore and the United States. The teams worked in the areas of dengue, norovirus, zika, polio and other vaccines.

Dr. Rao started his career in 2002 with Shantha Biotechnics Limited, part of Sanofi Aventis Group in India, in Clinical Research and Scientific Affairs. He holds a MD in Medical Microbiology from the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research.

He plans to carry forward Dr. Maurice Hilleman’s legacy for providing effective solutions for global health, especially those impacting low- and middle-income countries.

Feng Huapeng is an Associate Professor and Master's Supervisor at the ISEEVAX Pharmaceutical Innovation Adjuvant and Novel Animal Vaccine R&D Center, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. He earned his Ph.D. under the guidance of Academician Professor Chen Hualan, a famous avian influenza expert in China, and completed postdoctoral training at the Institute of Medical Science, the University of Tokyo, Japan. His research focuses on the interaction between influenza viruses and hosts, as well as the development of novel adjuvants.  He has led multiple research projects, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) General Program and the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation. To date, he has published 23 SCI-indexed papers, applied for 9 international and national invention patents, and contributed to the development of multiple highly-pathogenic avian influenza vaccines.  Dr. Feng is a member of the Japanese Society for Virology and serves as a Youth Editorial Board Member for *Veterinary Vaccine* and a reviewer for several SCI journals. He has been recognized as a Youth Top Talent of the "City of Distinguished Scholars" Special Support Program in Shaoxing City. Additionally, he has participated in formulating 4 group standards for adjuvants. 

Chris Netherton leads the African Swine Fever Vaccinology group and has been investigating different aspects of the life cycle of African swine fever virus (ASFV) for over twenty-five years. His studies on ASFV have encompassed analysis of individual viral proteins right through to herd transmission experiments. Chris’ earlier work on ASFV focussed on intracellular virus-host interactions with a strong emphasis on cell-biology.

The principal goal of the research carried out within the ASF Vaccinology group is to support the development of effective vaccines against this devastating disease of domestic pigs. We have identified a pool of eight ASFV genes that prevent severe disease in domestic pigs and aim to improve the protective efficacy of this combination, by characterising immune correlates of protection, identifying additional protective antigens and exploring different vaccine platforms. We are also sequencing Pirbright's reference collection of ASFV isolates to improve our understanding of the genetic diversity of this complex virus and help guide the development of cross-protective vaccines.

Li Jie is a doctor from China Agricultural University and a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. He serves as the R&D Director of Jinyu Group and is the Director of the Key Laboratory of Ruminant Biological Products under the Ministry of Agriculture. Additionally, he holds the position of Director of the Key Laboratory of Animal Infectious Disease Vaccine and Diagnostic Reagent Engineering Technology in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Dr. Li specializes in the development of advanced vaccine technologies, including mRNA vaccines, exosome-based vaccines, and AI-driven bioinformatics platforms. He has successfully led the establishment of China's first GMP-compliant production facility for animal mRNA vaccines, which received official approval in February 2024. Under his leadership, the African Swine Fever subunit vaccine and the feline infectious peritonitis mRNA vaccine—both groundbreaking products globally—were submitted for clinical approval in 2024. Dr. Li has integrated cutting-edge technologies such as AI, metagenomics, and bioinformatics to develop a digital vaccine system that enables high-dimensional omics analysis of animal populations across diverse regions. His research focuses on understanding the clinical manifestations of hosts under multi-pathogen conditions post-vaccination and identifying the root causes of vaccine efficacy. Dr. Li has led three key projects at the provincial and municipal levels and has contributed as a sub-project leader to two national key R&D programs. He was awarded first prize in the Eighth China Innovation Challenge Livestock and Swine Technology Competition. With 24 patent applications and over ten peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Frank Chia-Jung Chang obtains his Ph.D. from Life Science and Institute of Genome Science department of Taiwan Yang-Ming Medical University in 2012. He received his postdoctoral training at Molecular Biology Institute of Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and worked as visiting scholar in Frances H. Arnold’s laboratory (Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner in 2018), Chemical Engineering Department of Caltech (U.S.). He joined Reber Genetics as the supervisor of R&D Division in 2014. From 2017, Frank also works for business development and strategic layout of vaccine products (technology included).

Dr. Chang has considerable expertise in virology, microbiology, reverse vaccinology and protein engineering for industrial production. His group has successfully developed novel subunit vaccines of swine PRRSV, pan-PCV, Mycoplasma, CSFV and PEDV in Reber Genetics, furthermore, also support the study of safe vector vaccine against ASF with external partners.