Sharon Chen is the Director, Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology Laboratory Services, ICPMR, New South Wales Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital, Sydney, Australia with reference laboratories in Bacteriology, Mycology, Virology, and public health services. She also heads the Clinical Mycology service at Westmead.

Her external commitments include Secretary, Australia and New Zealand Mycoses Interest Group, committee member, National Antimicrobial Committee, Australia, and Board member, US Mycoses Study Group Education and Research Consortium (MSGERC). She is a Fellow of the European Confederation for Medical Mycology (ECMM), and is one of the founding members of the Australasian guidelines for use of antifungal agents. She is the current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Medical Mycology. 

Dr. Chen has an active research interest in the surveillance, tracking and prevention of fungal  infections, new antifungal agents and drug resistance. She has been the principal site investigator of new antifungal drug trials. Dr Chen is undertaking a project under the auspices of the ECMM/MSGERC for updated mycology clinical trial response criteria.

Professor Eugene Athan is an international expert in research for Infective Endocarditis and medical device infections. He has published over 250 papers in peer reviewed journals.

He is a tenured Professor of Infectious Disease at the School of Medicine at Deakin University and an Honorary at University of Melbourne.

He was previously Director of the Department of Infectious Disease at Barwon Health now the inaugural Director of the Barwon South West Public Health Unit.

He was a public health leader in the COVID response in Victoria overseeing infection control, vaccine and antiviral rollout across communities and in aged care.

He is a principal investigator for dozens of phase 1 through 3 clinical trials including novel and emerging therapeutics and vaccines.

He is Co-Director for the newly formed Centre for Innovation in Infectious Disease and Immunology Research a collaboration between Barwon Health and Deakin University.

Kelly Cairns is an Antimicrobial Stewardship and Infectious Diseases Clinical Pharmacist at The Alfred Hospital, Melbourne, Australia, and is currently undertaking a PhD through the Department of Infectious Diseases, The Alfred Hospital and Central Clinical School, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include antimicrobial dose optimisation for VRE bloodstream infections, with a focus on daptomycin, in addition to the role and impact of antimicrobial stewardship teams within the hospital setting. 

Professor Erica Donner is Research Director of Australia’s Cooperative Research Centre for Solving Antimicrobial Resistance in Agribusiness, Food, and Environments (SAAFE CRC), and a Research Professor in the Future Industries Institute at the University of South Australia. She is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist specialising in systems-based contaminants analysis, risk assessment and management, especially in relation to water and food production systems. Erica is a member of the Australian Strategic and Technical Advisory Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (ASTAG) and a Steering Committee member for the Victorian Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy and the South Australian AMR Action Plan. She co-leads the Water, Soil, and Food Security theme for the NHMRC Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) national research network and is an advisor on environmental AMR and One Health to the Australian Pathogen Genomics Program and several other national and international AMR research initiatives.

University of Tasmania

Katie Flanagan is a clinician scientist who has been studying vaccine immunology for over 25 years. She did her pre-clinical training at Oxford University, clinical training in London, UK and a PhD in malaria vaccine immunology at the University of Oxford. She is Director of Infectious Diseases at Launceston General Hospital, with academic professorships at University of Tasmania and RMIT University. She is also Director of the Tasmanian Vaccine Trial Centre which she established in 2016. She is President of the Australian Society for Infectious Diseases (ASID) and previous Chair of the ASID Vaccination Special Interest Group (VACSIG). Katie has been a member of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) since 2019 and Co-Chairs the ATAGI COVID-19 Vaccine Subgroup.

Katie has a long history of conducting vaccine research in Africa both during her PhD and as Head of the Infant Immunology Research Program at the British Medical Research Council Research Unit based in The Gambia. She has led numerous vaccine immunology trials throughout the world including clinical trials of novel malaria, HIV and rotavirus vaccines in Africa, and trials of the immunological effects of commonly used vaccines in infants and aging individuals. Her current research focuses on applying systems biology techniques (e.g., transcriptomics, epigenetics, metabolomics, microbiomics) to study human responses to vaccination, particularly at the extremes of age, and the role of biological sex in vaccine responses. She is a Chief Investigator on research grants totalling >$40 million over the last 10 years.

A/Prof Caitlin Keighley is a microbiologist and infectious diseases physician with interests in mycology and genomics, the focus of her PhD. She is the medical director at Southern.IML Pathology, honorary medical officer at The Wollongong Hospital and an adjunct associate professor at The University of Wollongong. She is current co-chair of ANZMIG, an ASID board of directors member and a member of the Wollongong Antimicrobial Resistance Research Alliance (WARRA), a large-scale research initiative focused on AMR trends across community and inpatient settings.

Tony Lai is a clinician-researcher based at The Children’s Hospital at Westmead and a clinical lecturer at the University of Sydney. He is a specialist pharmacist in antimicrobial stewardship and infectious diseases with experience in an extensive range of Sydney hospitals spanning over 15 years in paediatrics and adults. His expert advisory editor roles include the Society of Hospital Pharmacy Australia (SHPA) Injectables Drugs Handbook, Australasian Neonatal Medicines Formulary (ANMF) and the upcoming Therapeutic Guidelines: Antibiotic. He is a member of the NSW Health AMS Expert Advisory Committee, the NSW Health Tuberculosis (TB) Advisory Committee and NSW Health High Consequences Infectious Diseases (HCID) Committee. His research interest is dose optimisation of antimicrobials and is currently a PhD candidate investigating liposomal amphotericin B therapeutic drug monitoring in children.

Ian Seppelt is a senior specialist in Intensive Care Medicine at Nepean Hospital, Sydney and the University of Sydney Medical School, Clinical Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Professorial Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health, Sydney and Adjunct Professor (Research) at Monash University. He is an active clinical researcher and teacher in intensive care medicine. Research interests include critical care infection (including gut microbiology in critical illness), fluid resuscitation, complex airway management, and sedation and delirium in intensive care. He has NHMRC/MRFF grant funding for the SuDDICU, SPICE and REMAP-CAP programs. Other interests include neuroanaesthesia and neurocritical care, and the ethics of clinical research in critical illness. He is senior horse transport technician and deputy assistant groom for his children and a member of the Medical Advisory Committee to Equestrian Australia. He is also part owner of a very nice vineyard near Orange in central New South Wales.

Prof. Karin Thursky (MBBS, BSc, MD, FRACP, FAHMS) is an infectious diseases physician and health services researcher who has over 20 years’ experience in the fields of antimicrobial stewardship  and infections in the immunocompromised host. She has successfully implemented and scaled programs to improve the quality and safety of healthcare and has a national leadership role in antimicrobial stewardship and sepsis.Her roles include the Associate Director of Health Services Research and Implementation and the implementation stream for the NHMRC National Centre for Infections in Cancer Sciences at Peter MacCallum Cancer Hospital. In her role at the Doherty Institute, Karin leads the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship which takes a One Health approach to AMS across all human and animal health sectors, and is the Director of the Guidance Group at the Royal Melbourne Hospital which develops, implements and scales information technology to support the judicious use of antimicrobials.

Professor Steven Tong is an infectious diseases physician and clinician scientist. He is an expert in staphylococcal disease, having published over 100 papers in this area. He leads the Staphylococcus aureus Network Adaptive Platform (SNAP) trial – a global multicentre clinical trial that addresses multiple clinical questions about S. aureus bloodstream infections.

Emily is an Infectious Diseases Physician, working at the Royal Adelaide and Queen Elizabeth Hospitals in South Australia . She is a member of Therapeutic Guidelines, Antibiotic 17 expert group.

University of Adelaide

Dr Turnidge completed his training in Infectious Diseases and laboratory Microbiology at the Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide, South Australia. He subsequently undertook research with William A. Craig, MD, in Madison, WI, on the early stages of development of the science of antimicrobial pharmacodynamics. He spent eight years at Monash Medical Centre in Melbourne before returning to Adelaide as head of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, and then as chief of the Laboratory Medicine division at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. He was Clinical Director of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases for SA Pathology for 3 years, while continuing to be based at the Women’s and Children’s. His research career has led to over 340 publications and a range of editorial boards and leadership positions. He has chaired the Australian Joint Expert Technical Advisory Committee on Antibiotic Resistance and the Expert Advisory Group on Antimicrobial Resistance. He was a member of the Subcommittees on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing and Veterinary Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute, and chaired the NHMRC’s Expert Advisory Group on Antimicrobial Resistance. He co-founded the Australian Society for Antimicrobials in 1999 and was President of the Australian Society of Microbiology from 2010 to 2012. He retired from clinical work in 2014 to work as a Senior Medical Advisor at the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Health Care, responsible for implementing national surveillance for antimicrobial resistance and usage in human health. In January 2017 he commenced work as the Scientific Secretary for the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing.