BIOGRAPHIES
Dr. Armenia is a research fellow in virology at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. Dr. Armenia is a biotechnologist and attended his PhD in Medical Microbiology and Immunology in 2010 at University of Rome “Tor Vergata”. In the latest years, he dedicated attention on the characterization, by both experimental and computational approaches, of structural and biological modifications of HIV integrase, reverse transcriptase and protease. His research activity pertains to the collection, management and analyses of data regarding genotypic resistance tests from HIV-1 infected patients, to characterize the mechanisms of development of resistance to protease, reverse transcriptase and integrase inhibitors. He also involved in bioinformatics and biostatistics management of next-generation sequencing data of HIV, HBV and HCV.
David Back is Professor (Emeritus) of Pharmacology at the University of Liverpool and has been at the forefront of studies on the Pharmacokinetics and drug –drug interactions of antiretrovirals and drugs for treatment of Hepatitis C. David has authored ~450 publications. He is a former Editor in chief of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. He has established several key resources for health care professionals including www.hiv-druginteractions.org and www.hep-druginteractions.org. In 2007 he was awarded the Lilly Prize from the British Pharmacological Society for outstanding contribution to Clinical Pharmacology and in 2015 a Lifetime achievement award from EACS.
Dr. Julià Blanco is the leader of the Cellular Virology and Immunology Group of the AIDS Research Institute IRSICAIXA. Dr. Blanco has extensively studied the mechanisms involved in the immunological damage induced by HIV infection, including the analysis of the contribution of virological and immunological factors to CD4 T cell depletion, CD8 T cell hyper activation, immune exhaustion and B cell function.
Pedro Cahn has been working in infectious diseases for the last 45 years and has been involved in the HIV/AIDS arena since 1982. He has served as Chief of Infectious Diseases at the Juan Fernandez Hospital, where he is now Senior Consultant. He is President of Fundación Huésped in Buenos Aires, the largest NGO in Argentina serving patients with and at risk of HIV/AIDS. Dr. Cahn is Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Buenos Aires University Medical School. He is also a Past-President of the International AIDS Society. He is also an external advisor for UNAIDS, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pan-American Health Organization, UNITAID, Doctors without Borders, as well as a member of the antiretroviral guidelines panel both for WHO and a former member of the guidelines panel of the International Antiviral Society-USA. Dr. Cahn has published more than 190 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.
Dr. Bonaventura Clotet, MD, PhD, received his MD at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in 1976 and his PhD in 1981 for his investigations on surrogate markers for connective tissue diseases. He is Head of the HIV Unit since 1987 and Director of the Retrovirology Laboratory “irsiCaixa” Foundation at the Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol. He is also President of the Foundation “Lluita contra la SIDA” and co-director of the HIVACAT project for the development of the AIDS vaccine. Indeed, he is associated professor of Medicine at the Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona (UAB) and Professor of the “Chair of AIDS and related diseases” at the University of Vic (UVic-UCC). Dr. Clotet is member of the steering committee of EuroSIDA (multicenter group for the study of AIDS in Europe) and he has been member of the Drug Resistance Mutations Group (IAS-USA) and of the Governing Council of the IAS. He also participates in the organizing committee and scientific committee of several international AIDS and Vaccine conferences. He has published more than 750 papers in international journals (average citations per item: 24.42; h-index: 77). He is a member of the editorial board of several Journals. Dr Clotet’s team is composed by 110 people working at the clinics and at the lab focusing on HIV, hepatitis, immune system and cancer, papillomavirus, metagenomics and aging.
Dr Giovanni Guaraldi is a Assistant Professor of Infectious disease at University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy). He is Modena university Rector Delegate for Cooperation and Development. Since the year 2000 he lead a liver and kidney transplant program for people with HIV infection at the m ultivisceral transplant centre at Policlinico of Modena. Since 2002 he runs a Metabolic Clinic for HIV infection. This tertiary level referral center offer a multidisciplinary team consultant service consisting of infectious disease physicians, nutritionists, personal trainers for physical activities, psychologists, cardiologist, nephrologists, endocrinologists and plastic surgeons for diagnosis and treatment of Non infectious Co-Morbidities. More than 4500 people are in charge of the Metabolic Clinic. He is a panel member of the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) guidelines on prevention and management of HIV associated co-morbidities . He has published widely on clinical aspects of HIV treatment and care.
Catherine Jankowski, PhD, FACSM Associate Professor, University of Colorado College of Nursing and School of Medicine, Division of Geriatric Medicine The focus of my research is the impact of aging, chronic disease, and their interaction on physical function and the musculoskeletal system. As an exercise physiologist with 15 years of clinical research experience, I have been studying the effects of exercise interventions on physical function and targeted biomarkers in healthy persons and those with chronic conditions including HIV-1 infection, cancer, sarcopenia, and osteopenia. I earned my BS in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA in 1979; MS in Physical Education from Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA in 1990; PhD in Kinesiology from Texas Woman’s University, Denton, TX, USA in 1996; and completed a postdoctoral training in Physiology and Gerontology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO, USA in 2003. Thereafter, I joined the faculty of the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus, in the Division of Geriatric Medicine and then the College of Nursing in 2012. I am a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) and an ACSM Certified Clinical Exercise Specialist.
Scott Letendre, M.D., is Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry in Residence in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He graduated from Georgetown University School of Medicine and, following his residency in internal medicine at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, he completed fellowships in Infectious Disease Medicine at Duke University and in Neurologic HIV Research at UCSD. At UCSD, Dr. Letendre performs translational, patient-oriented research of the central nervous system complications of chronic infections, including HIV, HCV, and CMV. As part of a multidisciplinary research team, he leads clinical trials focused on treatment of nervous system infections as well as studies of the pharmacokinetics of antiretrovirals, the effect of comorbidities, and biomarker correlates of disease. Dr. Letendre is the recipient of a K24 mentoring award from the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Letendre is Vice Chair of the Neurologic Collaborative Science Group of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group, Co-Chair of the International Workshop on HIV & Aging, and Chair of the UCSD Institutional Biosafety Committee. He has participated in international research projects in China, India, Zambia, and Romania. Dr. Letendre balances his research activities with outpatient and inpatient clinical care of people living with HIV and other infectious diseases. Dr. Letendre also teaches in the Microbiology course at the UCSD School of Medicine. Dr. Letendre has co-authored or contributed to nearly 300 peer-reviewed manuscripts published in AIDS, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Journal of Infectious Diseases, Lancet Neurology, Neurology, Journal of Virology, Journal of Neurovirology, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Journal of Neuroimmunology, and other journals.
Dr Mallon is Associate Dean for Research and Innovation within the School of Medicine, University College Dublin and an Infectious Diseases Specialist at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin. Dr Mallon heads the HIV Molecular Research Group, which focuses on translational research into toxicities of antiretroviral therapy, including cardiovascular disease, adipose tissue toxicity and bone disease. He sits on the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) Guidelines Panel and is widely published in the field of HIV/AIDS.
The Dutch writer and art activist Han Nefkens has been living with HIV since 1987. In 2000 he began collecting international contemporary art and his Han Nefkens H+F Collection comprising close to 500 works is now housed in a number of European museums. He later set up ArtAids, which employs art in the fight against the stigma surrounding HIV. Through the Han Nefkens Foundation he stimulates young artists, writers and fashion designers with commissions, residencies, prizes and stipends. The foundation also makes funds available for HIV research. Han Nefkens has written several books which explore his life with HIV
Dr. Eugènia Negredo completed the specialty of Internal Medicine at the Sant Pau Hospital, Barcelona, in 1998. She received her Ph.D. in Medicine from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, in 2002. Since 1999, Dr. Negredo works as a physician in the HIV Unit of Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital in Barcelona, and she is the responsible for a research group focused on the epidemiology, pathogenesis and treatment of different HIV- and antiretroviral-related complications.
Background in Chemistry (Bsc in Chemistry, PhD in Computational Chemistry, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona), Biochemistry (BSc in Biochemistry, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona) and Computer Science (Computer Engineriing, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). He did his PhD in computational and theoretical chemistry and later switched to human and microbial genomics and bioinformatics. His research is mainly focused on human microbiome data analysis and HIV resistance from the computational perspective.
Dr. Roger Paredes, MD, PhD, is head of the Microbial Genomics Group at the irsiCaixa AIDS Research Institute and attending physician at the HIV Unit, Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol in Barcelona, Catalonia. His team has made seminal contributions to understanding the clinical relevance of minority drug-resistant HIV and X4 viruses on antiretroviral treatment outcomes and HIV disease progression, and is now using next-generation genomics to characterize the role of the human microbiome on HIV disease and inflammaging. Dr. Paredes is clinical virologist for several European HIV cohorts and advisor to the WHO HIV ResNet group.
Peter Reiss is Professor of Medicine at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where he holds a joint appointment in the Division of the Department of Global Health and Infectious Diseases. Peter Reiss has been Director of the Netherlands HIV Monitoring Foundation since February 2013. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Agence Nationale de Recherches sur de Sida et les hepatitis virales (ANRS) and the Swiss HIV Cohort Study, as well as on the Steering Committees of the D:A:D study, the Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort Collaboration and the EuroSida Study. In addition, Peter Reiss is one of the four rotating scientific coordinators of EuroCoord. Dr. Reiss is clinical HIV section editor for Antiviral Therapy and editorial board member of a number of other journals. He is also Immediate Past President of the European Aids Clinical Society (EACS) and, until recently, served as the European and Central Asia regional representative on the Governing Council of the International Aids Society (IAS). His current research focuses primarily on the complications of HIV and HIV treatment, and more particularly in relation to ageing.
Jürgen Rockstroh, MD, is Professor of Medicine and Head of the HIV Outpatient Clinic at the University of Bonn in Germany. He earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Bonn, and completed his residency in the Department of Medicine also at the University of Bonn. His department treats the world’s largest cohort of HIV-infected hemophiliacs. In addition to his clinical practice, Dr Rockstroh is involved in HIV research on: antiretroviral therapy, including new drug classes; the course of HIV disease in haemophiliacs; and HIV and hepatitis co-infection. He has been an investigator in multiple clinical trials of antiretroviral agents and treatments for HIV and hepatitis co-infection. From 2007-2011 he was elected as the president of the German AIDS Society. He is also since 2009 a member of the executive committee of the European AIDS Clinical Society (EACS) and since 2011 member of the governing council of the International AIDS Society. He currently chairs the hepatitis research activities in NEAT and EuroSIDA. He is also the chair of the National German AIDS Advisory Panel since 2011 and the EACS coinfection guidelines since 2008. In 2015 Professor Rockstroh was elected chair of HIV in Europe. The German Society for Infectious Diseases awarded Dr Rockstroh and his co-authors the prize in clinical infectious diseases in 2002, and the national AIDS research prize in 2005. Dr Rockstroh has authored or co-authored over 400 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and over 70 book chapters.
Dr. Schapiro completed his Fellowship in Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine focusing on antiretroviral drug development at the Stanford Center for AIDS Research. His research has focused on the causes of antiretroviral drug failure, interventions to optimize clinical care, and new drug development. Dr. Schapiro has served as a member and advisor of numerous international HIV expert panels and working groups including the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee, WHO Resistance Network, and the IAS-USA Drug Resistance Group. He currently runs the HIV/AIDS clinic at the National Hemophilia Center in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Since 25 years, Dr. Serra, has been working as geriatrician, in the field of health assistance (leading a group that treat more than 5000 very elderly patients per year), teaching (in medical degree, postgraduate and specialist teaching), and research (leading the group of “biopathology of aging” in the Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Gregorio Marañón). His areas of research are: nutrition, sarcopenia, physical training in elderly, functional impairment, hip fracture, and heart failure. This research activity has been funded, at least in part, with competitive grants. His group has developed a research activity very relevant in terms or translational medicine. Some of our contributions to the scientific knowledge in the field of models of care has been incorporated or cited in international clinical guidelines.