Charles Feldman is Professor of Pulmonology and Chief Physician, Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital and Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1975 and his PhD (1991) and DSc (2009), both for theses on community-acquired pneumonia. He was registered as a sub-specialist in Pulmonology in 1993 and elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) in 1997. In 1988/89 he was a Research Fellow and Honorary Senior Visiting Colleague, in the Department of Thoracic Medicine, National Heart and Lung Institute, and Royal Brompton Hospital, London, United Kingdom. Professor Feldman is a member of a number of National and International Societies. He has been very active on the American Thoracic Society, serving on a number of Committees of the Microbiology, Tuberculosis and Pulmonary Infection Assembly. He has been the South African Governor and Regent for the American College of Chest Physicians, and the National Delegate for South Africa on the European Thoracic Society. In 2014 he was elected as a Foundation Fellow of the European Respiratory Society in recognition of excellence in scientific and/or educational contributions to Respiratory Medicine over a number of years. He has been President of the South African Thoracic Society on two previous occasions. Professor Feldman is on the Executive Committee of FIDSSA in his role as Editor in Chief of the Southern African Journal of Infectious Diseases, a position he has held for a number of years. Professor Feldman’s research interest is in the field of community-acquired pneumonia, and in particular pneumococcal pneumonia. In addition to being part of large international clinical collaborations, he also participates in basic research studies. He has more than 300 publications overall and is an NRF A-rated scientist
Professor Keith Grimwood is Professor of Infectious Diseases at Griffith University and a Paediatric Infectious Diseases physician at Gold Coast Health, Queensland Australia. As a clinical researcher he has diverse research interests, but these include respiratory viral infections, pneumonia, cystic fibrosis lung microbiology, bronchiectasis and vaccine-preventable diseases.
Jeremy Brown
Jeremy Brown is an academic respiratory consultant with a subspecialty interest in lung infection. Dr Brown did his clinical training in London alternating with Wellcome funded laboratory research at Imperial College into respiratory pathogens. Since 2003 he has run his own laboratory at UCL and been a clinical consultant at UCLH. Dr Brown's laboratory investigates Streptococcus pneumoniae pathogenesis and mechanisms of immunity, as well as assessing new potential vaccine candidates. Important findings made by his laboratory include mechanisms and role during infection of cation acquisition by S. pneumoniae, identification of the first pneumococcal pathogenicity island, the central role of complement system for immunity to S. pneumoniae (including the mechanisms by which the complement system is activated and how these are prevented by the bacteria), and more recently describing the mechanisms of naturally acquired adaptive immunity to S. pneumoniae. Dr Brown's clinical practice includes caring for patients with a range of clinical respiratory infection problems, including bronchiectasis, aspergillosis, and pneumonia in immunocompetent and immunocompromised patients. As well as the laboratory research into S. pneumoniae, Dr Brown's lab participate in clinical and translational research projects investigating patients with pneumonia or bronchiectasis.
Professor Anne Chang (MBBS MPHTM FRACP PhD FAPSR FAHMS) is an established clinician researcher recognised for her contributions to clinical research in the areas of paediatric cough, bronchiectasis and evidence based articles. She has helped develop and apply evidence based medicine for respiratory illness in children, in Australia and internationally in the areas of cough, bronchiectasis and asthma. She is the Division Leader of Child Health at the Menzies School of Health Research and leads an Australian National Health and Medical Research Centre of Research Excellence in Indigenous Children’s Lung Health. Her main clinical practice is at the Children’s Hospital in Brisbane. She has been a NHMRC practitioner fellow since 2004 and has published over 400 peer reviewed articles and book chapters. Her major interest are in Indigenous health issues, evidence based management, airway disease, protracted bacterial bronchitis, cough and suppurative lung disease in children.
Ron Dagan is Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva. He founded the Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit at the Department of Pediatrics, Soroka University Medical Center, Beer-Sheva, Israel, and served as its director from 1987 to June 2014. His previous appointments include Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA, from 1993 to 1998, in addition to Advisor for Infectious Diseases at the Israeli Ministry of Health. Professor Dagan obtained his MD degree in 1974 from the Hadassah Medical School of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. A member of several national and international advisory committees and medical and scientific associations, Professor Dagan was the Chairman of the Advisory Committee for Infectious Diseases of the Israeli Society of Pediatrics from 1992 to 1997 and has served on the National Advisory Committee on Infectious Diseases and Immunization since 1991. He is also a Founding Member of the World Society of Pediatric Infectious Diseases (WSPID) and a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). He served as a member of the Executive Committee of the International Society of Infectious Disease (ISID) from 2010 to 2016. Professor Dagan has been involved in the World Health Organization (WHO) Working Group on Pneumococcal Nasopharyngeal Carriage and the WHO Pneumonia Radiology Working Group. He served as President of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID) from 2004 to 2006, as President of the World Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases (WSPID) from 2006 through 2009 and as Chair of the Board of the International Symposia on Pneumococcus and Pneumococcal Diseases (ISPPD) from 2010 to mid-2016.
Dr Mackenzie is an epidemiologist/paediatrician with a particular interest in pneumococcal disease and vaccines, pneumonia and severe bacterial infections. He trained at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. His PhD at Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin described the effectiveness of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in northern Australia. His MPH studies focussed on Aboriginal health, epidemiology and statistics. He then spent two years with a paediatric HIV programme in Nairobi, Kenya, seconded from the University of Sydney. He has been based at the Medical Research Council (UK) unit in the Gambia since 2008. Dr Mackenzie has been a Clinical Epidemiologist at the Basse Field Station of MRC (UK) The Gambia, since 2008. His research falls under the Disease Control and Elimination Theme. He co-ordinates surveillance for pneumococcal disease and carriage in eastern Gambia, evaluating the effectiveness of the introduction of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine to reduce rates of invasive disease, radiologic pneumonia, carriage, and the cost-effectiveness of vaccination. He is also involved in studies evaluating different pneumococcal vaccine schedules, the aetiology of pneumonia, documenting short and long-term outcomes after childhood pneumonia, socio-economic risk factors for pneumonia, evaluating IMCI criteria for pneumonia, and describing the epidemiology of pneumonia and the causes of serious bacterial illness.
Keith Meyer, MD, MS is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Dr. Meyer is a physician-scientist in the Section of Allergy, Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine Division of the Department of Medicine, and he has served as the Medical Director of Lung Transplantation, Director of the UWHC Interstitial Lung Disease Clinic/Program, and Director of the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Program. Dr. Meyer’s current research interests include pathogenesis and treatment of interstitial lung diseases with an emphasis on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, clinical and translational research in lung transplantation, new therapies for cystic fibrosis lung disease, and respiratory infections. Basic science and translational research projects include development of a novel blood test to detect sepsis, protein folding in Alzheimer disease, interactions of phospholipase A2 and different forms of albumin in various disease states, and the relationship of advancing age with immune function and susceptibility to respiratory infections.
Dr. Musher graduated Harvard with high honors in history and did his medical training at Columbia, Bellevue and Tufts-New England Medical Center. He joined the Baylor College of Medicine faculty in 1971 and rapidly rose to the rank of tenured Professor of Medicine and Professor of Molecular Virology and Microbiology. His special areas of interest in medicine are bacterial diseases and pneumonia. He has coauthored more than 500 publications. He loves reading and is an avid string quartet player; he was the founding concertmaster of the Texas Medical Center Orchestra. He is active in communal organizations, especially in the Jewish and musical communities in Houston.
Jordi Rello has served as Professor of Medicine at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and URV in Tarragona, Spain. He has performed clinical research in the Critical Care Department and is Director of the Clinical Research & Innovation in Pneumonia and Sepsis (CRIPS) Group at Vall d'Hebron Barcelona Campus Hospital: http://www.vhir.org/gr/crips He earned his Doctor of Medicine with Honors and his PhD on Infectious Diseases at the University of Barcelona, Spain, followed by a residence and fellowship in Critical Care at the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona, Spain. His areas of research include studies on epidemiology of ventilator-associated pneumonia or severe community-acquired pneumonia, treatment of infections in critically ill patients and postoperative management of lung transplant. Prof Rello has directed 17 doctoral thesis, he has an H-index of 96 (Google Scholar, accessed January 2018). He has chaired different guidelines and Position Papers, such as the ESCMID Guidelines on aerosolized antibiotics in Mechanically Ventilated patients.
Dr Waterer is a respiratory physician at Royal Perth Hospital and is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Western Australia and Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University, Chicago. He is currently the Chair of the American Thoracic Society and Infectious Diseases Society of America Community Acquired Pneumonia Guidelines having been a panel member of the 2017 ATS/IDSA HAP/VAP guidelines. He has over 170 peer reviewed publication, more than 60 invited international presentations, is the Section Editor for Infections for the European Respiratory Journal, and is on the Editorial Board of many journals including the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Chest and Pneumonia. In addition to his academic qualifications he has an MBA, is currently a board member of the North Metropolitan Area Health Service and a Medical Director at Royal Perth Hospital.
