Prof. Rouse is a native of England where he completed his education through a BVSc honors degree. Graduate education in Canada with MSc in Virology and PhD in immunology Postdoctoral fellowship at Walter and Eliza Hall of Medical Research in Melbourne Australia in Cellular Immunology 1970-72.Established research Program at University of Saskatchewan on Viral immunology supported by Medical Research Council of Canada. Moved to College of Veterinary Medicine University of Tennessee in 1977 where he remains as the Lindsay Young Distinguished Professor. Took several mainly sabbaticals, including one with Peter Doherty (another veterinarian) in Canberra and Hermann Wagner for one year in Mainz, Germany Worked on the immunology of herpes virus infections supported continuously by multiple NIH grants until the lad was closed in Dec 2022.Published >470 research articles and reviews with and h index 91 and won several Research Achievement awards. Trained 80 PhD and postdoctoral fellows most of whom he stays in contact and occasionally writes reviews on topics in Viral Immunology.

Uwe D. Staerz, M.D., Ph.D., received his M.D. degree from the Eberhard-Karls-Universitaet, Tuebingen, Germany, and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of California, San Diego, CA. He worked as Fellow at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, as Member of the Basel Institute for Immunology, Basel, Switzerland and as Professor at the Department of Immunology, National Jewish Health / University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO. His work has focused on the development, activation and inhibition of T cell immune responses. Having founded Greffex, Inc., he left academia to guide the companies' R&D efforts. He established numerous research programs that were continuously funded for 30 years, published widely in highly regarded scientific journals, and was an inventor of the patents that established the T cell-recruiting bispecific antibody and 4th-generation adenovirus vector technologies.

Angus Dalgleish was the Foundation Professor of Oncology at the University of London at St George’s Medical School, now known as SGUL from 1992 – February 2024 and is now Emeritus. Since 2000 he has been the Principal of the Institute of Cancer Vaccines and Immunotherapy, a major charity that has funded clinical immunotherapy research. He obtained his MBBS with intercalated Hons Degree in Anatomy from University College London and University College Hospital in 1974. Following registration, he spent a year as a flying doctor in Mount Isa, Australia, before being appointed as a training registrar in Princess Alexandra in Brisbane. He then specialised in oncology at the Queensland Radium Institute and spent two years in Sydney under Professor Martin Tattersall and Professor Tony Basten. He spent time at the Immunology Institute where, unusually, they looked after multiple myeloma and lymphoma patients and this is where he became acquainted with patients with Acquired Immune Deficiency and became interested in viruses and how they cause cancer. After fully qualifying as a FRACP he undertook a research project under Professor Robin Weiss, FRS, who was Director of the Institute of Cancer Research in London. It was here that he isolated HIV from patients and was the first to discover the association with the CD4 receptor, with major publications in Nature, Science and Cell. He was the first to link slim disease in Africa with HIV, as well as the aggressive form of Kaposi’s Sarcoma, both of which were major Lancet publications. He was then appointed a Senior Clinical Fellow and Honorary Consultant Physician and Oncologist at the MRC Clinical Research Centre in Harrow. Whilst there he developed a deep understanding of how HIV interacts with the immune system and proposed that the disease is caused by pan activation of the immune system, similar to that seen in chronic graft versus host and isolated a part of the virus next to the CD4 binding region, called C5. This has been proposed and taken up by Bionor as a first-class HIV vaccine candidate. Whilst at Harrow and covering immunodeficiency and autoimmune disease he became aware of the overlooked powers of Thalidomide and championed its use in HIV and cancer. This led to collaboration with Celgene, who funded his research for nearly two decades, which ended up producing Revlimid and Pomalidomide. Revlimid is one of the most successful drugs in oncology and was one of the first to sell over $10 billion a year. After being appointed to the Chair at St George’s he began applying the immunology learnt from HIV interactions to cancer and pioneered the development of immunotherapy in melanoma, with the use of a variety of vaccines and growth factors. The most effective vaccine that he developed for cancer was based on a heat-killed mycobacterium, known as M.vaccae. After showing that it was entirely effective in melanoma patients he persuaded a company called Immodulon to take this project on and superior strain, called obuense, was selected, which is now known as IMM-101. It has been shown in a number of cancer types to be effective, particularly in combination with chemotherapy and immunotherapy. As a result of the large vaccine trial programme that he headed, it has emerged that vaccines tend to be only useful in patients with good Vitamin D3 levels and this revealed that the majority of patients with cancer had poor Vitamin D levels and he showed that supplementation increases the response to treatment. Colleagues in America have confirmed that patients with low Vitamin D levels have very poor response to any form of treatment and supplementing levels to high normal greatly improves response rates to all forms of treatment across a broad range of cancers. The other thing that came out of this research is that people with high inflammatory background markers do not do as well as those who have normal levels. Research revealed that Naltrexone, a drug used to treat morphine and heroin misuse, when used at low doses, blocked a vital inflammatory pathway through TLR-9, which when stimulated produced Interleukin-6, which has been labelled ‘cancer growth factor’ in several publications. During Covid, along with his Norwegian colleagues, he was the first to spot and report that the covid virus could not possibly have been a natural virus but had all the hallmarks of genetic engineering, which had already been published from the Wuhan lab and that it was clearly a laboratory leak. We also showed that the spike protein had 80% human homology and that any covid vaccine should omit these homologies. Unfortunately, in the race to develop the vaccine, this was not heeded and the predicted side effects of heart attacks, strokes and neurological diseases, such as transverse myelitis and Guillain-Barré syndrome have been significant side effects in the programme. As covid has been associated with high levels of Interleukin-6, which determine the outcome of long covid, he was the first to use low dose Naltrexone to treat long covid and has found it to be probably the most important effective agent. This has been confirmed by studies in Australia and America. Professor Dalgleish obtained the FRCP and FRACP by examination and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and the Academy of Medical Sciences based on his research work. He was awarded the Joshua Lederberg in 2011 for his work developing Lenalidomide. He has previously been a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Cancer Research and was made the Chiles Visiting Professor of Earle A Chiles Cancer Research Institute in 2017 in Portland, Oregan, U.S.A.

Dr. W. John Martin is Medical Director of the Institute of Progressive Medicine, a component of MI Hope Inc., a non-profit public charity that was formed to support those with mental illnesses. He received his medical degree in 1965 from the University of Sydney, Australia, and his PhD degree from the University of Melbourne in 1970. He has Boards in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology with subspecialty qualifications in Immunopathology and Medical Microbiology. He has worked at the National Institutes of Health, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and the University of Southern California. Dr. Martin has pioneered research on viruses, which are not normally recognized by the cellular immune system and, therefore, do not cause inflammation. He coined the term stealth adapted to describe these viruses, some of which were derived from the viruses that commonly infected monkeys used to produce polio vaccines. These studies led to an understanding of a non-immunological defense mechanism supported by the alternative cellular energy (ACE) pathway. The energy for the ACE pathway is a natural force that Dr. Martin refers to as KELEA, an acronym for Kinetic Energy Limiting Electrostatic Attraction. KELEA serves as a basic life-force energy that differs from energy obtained by photosynthesis or food metabolism. His more recent studies are on the ways that ecosystems, including those involving humans, can utilize KELEA to respond to changed conditions through adaptations in a process he terms Nature’s Allostasis. Deteriorating environments as well as many illnesses are attributed to insufficient KELEA for corrective allostasis. Providing sufficient added KELEA, especially in the form of KELEA activated water, can restore allostasis to previously disordered ecosystems.

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,fourUS 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 developedand commercialized for rabies post-exposure prophylaxis. Since 2008, Dr. Tsao has worked with Morningside Groupon 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 responsibleforprocess 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.

Dr. Merel Langelaar is a veterinarian, immunologist, and senior public health expert with over 25 years of experience across science, policy, and governance. Since 2024, she has served as Director of the Biomedical Primate Research Centre (BPRC), a leading European institute for translational research using non-human primate models. Prior to this, she was Professor of One Health Governance at Utrecht University, integrating scientific, societal, and regulatory perspectives on infectious disease and ecosystem health. Dr. Langelaar holds a veterinary degree and PhD in immunology from Utrecht University. Her previous roles include leadership positions at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health (RIVM), the Health Council of the Netherlands, and the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ), where she focused on antimicrobial resistance and preventive healthcare. She also served as Vice Dean of Education at Utrecht’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, leading curriculum innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic. At BPRC, she champions scientific excellence, ethical integrity, and innovation in both primate-based and non-animal model research. Dr. Langelaar advises national and international health authorities and has held key positions in organizations such as ZonMw, the European Joint Action on AMR, and the Royal Dutch Veterinary Association. She is committed to interdisciplinary collaboration and advancing biomedical research to address current and future public health challenges.

Stef Stienstra is a Strategic and creative consultant in biomedical science, with a parallel career as a Commander of the reserve of the Royal Dutch Navy. For the Dutch Armed Forces he has responsibility for the counter measures in CBNRe threats and (medical) consequence management both in a military and a civilian (terrorism) setting. He is strategic functional specialist for “Health & Environment” of the 1-Civil-Military-Interaction Command (1-CMI) of the Dutch Armed Forces and for 2015 also in the NATO Response Force (NRF), which is in 2015 the responsibility of the 1-German-Netherlands-Corps (1-GNC). He was the director of the 2014 World Congress of CBRNe Science & Consequence Management in Tbilisi, Georgia. In his civil career he works internationally as consultant or as scientific supervisory board member for several medical and biotech companies, merely involved in biodefense. He is also visiting professor for Punjab University in Pakistan and Rhein-Waal University in Germany. He has finished his studies in Medicine and in Biochemistry at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands and has extensive practical experience in cell biology, immuno-haematology, biodefense and transfusion medicine. His natural business acumen and negotiation competence helps to initiate new successful businesses, often created out of unexpected combinations of technologies. His good understanding of abstract science combined with excellent skills in the communication of scientific matters to non-specialists, helps him with strategic consulting at top level management.

Erika Castellanos is a globally recognized advocate for health equity, with over a decade of experience advancing access to healthcare for marginalized populations, including people living with HIV and transgender communities. As a transgender woman living with HIV, she combines personal experiences with professional expertise to drive inclusive policies and programs. Erika is the Executive Director at GATE (Global Action for Trans Equality), working on initiatives that promote human rights, health equity, and social justice worldwide. She is a sought-after speaker and thought leader, known for pioneering inclusive approaches to healthcare delivery, particularly in vaccine access and HIV prevention. Through her commitment to intersectionality and empowering underrepresented voices, Erika inspires transformative action for a more equitable and inclusive world.

Dr. Sivaram Gunisetty is an Assistant Scientist at the Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University School of Medicine, USA. He leads research projects focused on immune responses to infectious diseases and vaccines, particularly studying B and T cell responses to viruses such as COVID-19, Influenza, and Dengue. His work emphasizes long-term immune memory and protection. Dr. Gunisetty has made significant contributions to understanding CD8 T cells and immune memory in Dengue infections, crucial for vaccine development in high-transmission areas. Additionally, his research extends to inflammatory bowel diseases, investigating genetic factors influencing immune responses and disease susceptibility. Gunisetty earned his Ph.D. in Human Genetics from Osmania University, India. His research has been recognized at numerous international conferences for its contributions to immunology and vaccine development.

Professor Rongbao Gao is a distinguished virologist at the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, China CDC. His research primarily focuses on the emergence and control of influenza viruses, viral immunology, the pathogenesis of viral pneumonia, and the development of novel diagnostic techniques. Between 2009 and 2010, Professor Gao served as a guest research fellow at the Infectious Diseases Pathology Branch of the U.S. CDC. He published over 100 science papers on NEJM, The LANCET, Nature, CID, and so on, and obtained several Chinese scientific and technology honors for H5N1, 2009pdmH1N1 and H7N9 associated works.

Prof. Samy Saad Mohamed Aly from Mokattam, Cairo, Egypt, is a distinguished professor of vaccinology. He has innovated in vaccine adjuvants, designed and manufactured vaccines, and evaluated their effectiveness. His expertise includes planning vaccine strategies, monitoring immune responses post-vaccination, and implementing vaccine schedules. Since 2016, he has been a consultant overseeing vaccine production, troubleshooting issues, and ensuring GMP compliance. Previously, he headed the Scientific Bureau (2010-2016), attended conferences, and prepared scientific dossiers and brochures. As the Head of the Rift Valley Fever Department (2007-2010), he led the production of inactivated RVF vaccines, conducted epidemiological studies, and monitored immune responses. From 2003 to 2007, he served as a professor of vaccinology.

Amgad Mohammed Rabie Hamed Fouda has completed his MSc and Postgraduate studies in Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences at the age of 30 years from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Mansoura University, Egypt. He is one of the most famous and reputed Egyptian and Arab pharmacists, researchers and scientists. His new researches focused on the synthesis, discovery, and development of new drugs and medicines for the most resistant and untreated human diseases. He is the head of pharmacists at the Dikernis General Hospital (Mansoura, Egypt), a premier governmental hospital in Egypt. He has published more than 25 papers in very reputed journals and serving as an Editorial Board Member of great repute.

Raffaele Pilla, pharm.D., Ph.D., Doctor Europaeus, received his Master’s degree in Pharmacy at G. d’Annunzio University in Chieti-Pescara, Italy in 2005, where he also served internships at the Cell Physiology Laboratory and Molecular Biology Laboratory. Prior to his degree, he was an Erasmus Student at Faculté de Pharmacie de Reims in Reims, France. He received his doctor Europaeus in 2010 from Pitié-Salpétrière Institute in Paris, France. Also in 2010, he received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Physiology, and Pathology of Muscle at G. d’Annunzio University in Chieti-Pescara, Italy. He was hired as a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at the University of South Florida in Tampa, on two research grants respectively funded by the Office of Naval Research (US Navy) and Divers’ Alert Network.He has written and lectured widely on his experiences. Dr. Pilla has been involved in ongoing research at the University of South Florida with the use of ketone esters.

Dr. Renata Maria dos Santos is a scientist and pharmaceutical innovations analyst at Bio-Manguinhos / Fiocruz, a leading public health and biotechnology institution in Brazil. She holds a PhD in Biochemistry with an emphasis on Biotechnology from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and has over five years of experience in R&D projects in microbiology, proteomics, molecular biology, and analytical methods. Renata currently works on the development of the WHO mRNA vaccine Hub, focusing on quality control, analytical validation, and process optimization. Her work supports innovation in biotechnology and contributes to global public health.