Session 1 - Wednesday, 16 September 2026

Session title available soon.

Tulio de Oliveira is the director of the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation (CERI). He got his BSc at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil and MSc/PhD at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, South Africa. He was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at University of Oxford, U.K. and a Newton Advanced Fellow at the Sanger Institute. He has worked for over 20 years with pathogen outbreaks, including HIV, Hepatitis B and C, Chikungunya, Dengue, SARS-CoV-2, TB, Zika, and Yellow Fever Virus. Prof. de Oliveira received the Order of Merit Medal of Portugal, the German-Africa Prize, was listed as one of ten most important scientists by Nature and on TIME 100 Most Influential People.

“Whole-Genome Sequencing and Clinical Metagenomics for the Study of Viral Infections”

Maud Salmona, PharmD, PhD, is Associate Professor and Hospital Practitioner in Virology at Hôpital Saint-Louis, Université Paris Cité, Paris, France, and a member of the INSERM UMR 1342 team “Biology and Pathogenesis of Viral Infections”. Her research focuses on viral infections in immunocompromised patients, particularly adenoviruses, respiratory viruses and BK polyomavirus. She studies viral diversity and evolution using whole-genome sequencing, phylogenetics and clinical metagenomics, and works on implementing genomic approaches in routine virology diagnostics.

“Immune response against infection and vaccination in fragile patients”

Irene Cassaniti is currently team leader of the Viral Immunology research group. Her research activity is focused on T-cell immune response against viral infections in transplanted patients, including arboviruses, respiratory viruses and herpesviruses. Her research team developed a number of assays for the quantification of T-cell response against viruses including SARS-CoV-2, West Nile virus, Varicella-Zoster Virus and Human Cytomegalovirus. She is author and co-author of 118 publications (h-index 31).

“New horizons for virus diagnostics”

Elisabeth Puchhammer-Stöckl is MD, professor for Virology and head of the Center for Virology of the Medical University Vienna. During her scientific career, she has published numerous publications, reviews and book chapters in the field of clinical and translational virology, with a particular emphasis on persistent human viruses. She was president of the ESCV, council member of international societies, as the ESAR and the GfV and member of numerous international expert and advisory groups on different aspects of clinical virology. In 2020 she was elected in Austria as scientist of the year, and since 2021 she is member of the Supreme Medical Council of Austria.