Meeting the Challenge of Infectious Diseases in a Changing World

Event details

Date

14-16 October 2026

Location

Manipal, India

Format

In-Person Event

Organized in partnership by Nature Medicine, Nature Microbiology, Nature Health, Nature Communications, and MAHE, this conference will bring together leading voices in infectious disease research to explore innovative solutions to global health challenges. As the world faces rising threats from emerging pathogens, climate change, and antimicrobial resistance, the event will highlight advances in surveillance, diagnostics, drug development, and vaccination strategies.

Program highlights include:

Disease surveillance, modelling and forecasting
Antimicrobial resistance and drug development
Challenges in diagnostic and screening
Disease prevention strategies
Future of vaccination and disease eradication
Climate change and One Health approaches
Pandemic preparedness

Join us in Manipal for three days of insightful discussions, collaboration, and forward-thinking science.

Keynote Speakers

Lauren Gardner

Alton and Sandra Cleveland Professor, Department of Civil and Systems Engineering

Johns Hopkins University (Maryland, USA)

Lauren Gardner is the Alton and Sandra Cleveland Professor in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering at Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering and holds a joint appointment in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also a member of the Data Science and AI Institute. She is the creator of the interactive web-based dashboard used by public health authorities, researchers, and the general public around the globe to track the COVID-19 Pandemic. The dashboard debuted on January 22, 2020, and since has recorded more than 200 billion feature requests, which are the number of interactions visitors have with the underlying data available on the site.
Gardner is a specialist in modeling Infectious Disease Risk. Her work focuses holistically on Virus Diffusion as a function of climate, land use, human behavior, mobility and other contributing risk factors. She has published around 100 scholarly articles, letters, communications, and conference proceedings, and supervises a research group of PhD students and post docs. Gardner is an invited member of multiple international professional committees, and reviewer for top-tier journals and grant-funding organizations.
Gardner was named to WITI’s Women in Technology Hall of Fame in 2024 and included on BBC’s 100 Women List 2020: Women who led change; was named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business for 2020; was on the Baltimore Sun’s 25 Women to Watch list, 2020; and was among the Baltimore Business Journal’s Best in Tech 2020. She was also a winner of the 2020 Route Fifty Navigator Award, which honors individuals and teams who, while working with or in state, county, or municipal governments, demonstrate their ability to implement a great idea that improves public sector services and the communities they serve.

Shabir A. Madhi

Dean: Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand

Co-Director: African Leadership in Vaccinology Expertise (ALIVE), (Johannesburg, South Africa)

Prof Shabir Madhi is an NRF A-rated South African researcher of global standing. He has been conducting clinical and epidemiology research for 25 years, with a specific focus on the clinical and molecular epidemiology and prevention of pneumonia, meningitis, neonatal sepsis, and diarrheal disease. His is an outstanding example of the application of scientific thinking in the service of society.Madhi is Professor of Vaccinology and Director of the South African Medical Research Council Vaccines and Infectious Diseases Analytics Research Unit (Wits VIDA) at the University of the Witwatersrand. In January 2021, he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand.Born in 1966, Madhi initially aspired to becoming an engineer but his bursary conditions only allowed him to study medicine. In 1990 he completed his undergraduate training at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and six years later, became a fellow of the College of Paediatrics (FCPaeds (SA)). During this time, he applied for a post under Professor Keith Klugman, to work on vaccines for pneumonia. In 1998 he received a Master’s degree in Medicine (Paediatrics) and a PhD in 2003.

Marion Koopmans

Professor of Public Health Virology and Scientific Director of the Pandemic & Disaster Preparedness Center

Erasmus University Rotterdam (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

Prof. Marion Koopmans is Professor of Public Health Virology of the Department of Viroscience at Erasmus Medical Centre in The Netherlands, the WHO collaborating centre for Emerging Infectious Diseases, scientific director for Emerging Infectious Diseases of the Netherlands, Centre for One Health NCOH and scientific director of the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Centre in Rotterdam/Delft The Netherlands.

Her research focuses on emerging infections with special emphasis on unravelling pathways of disease emergence and spread at the human animal interface. Creating global networks to fight infectious diseases systematically and on a large scale is a common thread in Koopmans' work. Koopmans coordinates the EU funded consortium VEO, which develops a risk based innovative early warning surveillance in a One Health context, and is deputy coordinator of a recently awarded HERA funded network of centres of excellence for EID research preparedness. In 2021, Koopmans founded the Pandemic and Disaster Preparedness Centre PDPC, a research centre with a focus on the occurrence and prevention of pandemics and climate-related disasters, combining expertise from technical, bio-medical, environmental and social sciences.

Madhukar Pai

Professor and Chair, Department of Global and Public Health

McGill University (Montreal, Canada)

Prof Madhukar Pai, MD, PhD, FCAHS, FRSC is the Inaugural Chair, Department of Global and Public Health at the McGill School of Population and Global Health. He holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Epidemiology & Global Health. He was previously Director of the McGill International TB Centre. He was the inaugural Editor-In-Chief of PLOS Global Public Health. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Speakers

Alessandro Vespignani

Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor and Director, Network Science Institute

Northeastern University (Massachusetts, USA)

Alessandro Vespignani is the Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor at Northeastern University, holding positions across Computer and Information Sciences, Health Sciences, and Physics. He founded Northeastern's Network Science Institute and directs the Laboratory for the Modeling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems. As an Italian-American physicist, Vespignani is recognized for his work applying network theory and data-driven methods to model infectious disease spread, using statistical and simulation techniques to study complex networks and the spatial spread of epidemics, particularly focusing on emerging infectious diseases.

Vespignani earned his degrees in physics from Sapienza University of Rome and conducted postdoctoral research at Yale and Leiden Universities. Prior to Northeastern, he held positions at the International Center for Theoretical Physics, the University of Paris-Sud, and Indiana University, where he was a professor of Informatics and Computing. He has been a pioneer in using data science and computational tools for forecasting global epidemics, with his team providing modeling for outbreaks including the 2009 H1N1 flu, Ebola, Zika, and COVID-19. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his team's predictive models informed the White House, CDC, and WHO on intervention strategies.

His work has earned him recognition as an elected fellow of the American Physical Society and the Network Science Society, and an elected member of the Academy of Europe. In 2021, he was knighted by the Italian government for his role in fostering cooperation between Italy and the U.S. during the pandemic. Vespignani has co-authored books such as Evolution and Structure of the Internet and Dynamical Processes on Complex Networks, and has a significant number of publications in scientific journals.

Elaine Nsoesie

Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health

Boston University (Massachusetts, USA)

Elaine O. Nsoesie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Global Health at the Boston University School of Public Health. She is an internationally recognized data scientist and a leading voice on the use of data and technology to advance health equity. She is a Data Science Faculty Fellow and was a Founding Faculty of the Boston University Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences. She co-edited and contributed to the book, Urban Health in Africa – a collection of essays by thirty eight scholars focused on addressing critical issues related to urbanization in Africa.
She served as a program lead and senior advisor to the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Consortium to Advance Health Equity and Researcher Diversity (AIM-AHEAD) Program at the National Institutes of Health through the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) Mobility Program. She also led the Racial Data Tracker project at the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research.
She has expertise in the application of data science methods (including, machine learning and artificial intelligence) and data from non-traditional public health sources (such as, mobile phones, satellites, and social media) to address major global health challenges. Her work approaches health equity from multiple angles, including increasing representation of communities typically underrepresented in data science through programs like Data Science Africa and AIM-AHEAD; addressing bias in health data and algorithms; and using data and policy to advance racial equity. She has collaborated with local departments of health in the U.S. to improve disease surveillance systems, international organizations like UNICEF and UNDP, and served as a Data & Innovation Fellow in the Directorate of Science, Technology, and Innovation (DSTI), The President’s Office, Sierra Leone.

Kelly Wyres

Associate Professor & Research Group Leader Department of Infectious Diseases

Monash University (Melbourne, Australia)

Assoc/Prof Kelly Wyres is a computational microbiologist who’s research focusses on genomic and metabolic diversity of bacterial pathogens. Most notably, these include the World Health Organization’s #1 ranked priority antimicrobial resistant organism- Klebsiella pneumoniae. Kelly is a Research Group Leader and Co-Lead for the Infectious Diseases Genomics program at the Department of Infectious Diseases, Monash University. She also co-leads the KlebNET Genomic Surveillance Platform, a multi-national consortium working to develop and harmonise resources that support global surveillance for Klebsiella species and Escherichia coli. Kelly has received prestigious research funding awards, including a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Investigator Grant, Australian Research Council Discovery Project awards and Gates Foundation Investments. Her work has gained international recognition, as evidenced by a recent Australian Society for Microbiology Frank Fenner Award and nomination as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.

Rada Savic

Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering

University of California, San Francisco (California, USA)

Rada Savic is a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and co-vice dean of Graduate Pharmacy Education Programs at the UCSF School of Pharmacy. Her academic career began with a PharmD from the University of Belgrade in Serbia, followed by a PhD in pharmacometrics from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Her groundbreaking research uses computational methods and data modeling to optimize drug development, dosing strategies, and personalized treatments for various diseases, particularly infectious diseases like tuberculosis (TB), HIV, and malaria. As a leader in this field, she oversees the Savic Lab, which uses data-driven analytics to improve global health. She also serves as the associate director of the UCSF Center for TB.

Michael Mina

Senior Lecturer, M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and

Chief Medical and Strategy Officer, Truvian Health (Massachusetts, USA)

Nicaise Ndembi

Deputy Director General, Regional Director

IVI Africa Regional Office (Kigali, Rwanda)

Professor Nicaise Ndembi, Ph.D., is the Deputy Director General and Regional Director of the IVI Africa Regional Office, based in Kigali, Rwanda. Prof. Ndembi is also an Associate Professor at the Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland School of Medicine as well as a Research Professor at the Kanazawa University School of Medicine, Department of Viral Infection and International Public Health, where he completed his doctorate in molecular virology. Prior to joining IVI in 2025, Prof. Ndembi was the Principal Advisor to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Director General, where he established the Partnerships for Africa Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM), creating a framework for regional vaccine manufacturing and self-reliance. He additional held the position of Deputy Incident Manager Mpox – Marburg Continental Preparedness and Response Plan for Africa. Prof. Ndembi has authored and co-authored over 300 peer-reviewed papers and chapters in professional journals. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public Health of Africa as well as AIDS Research and Therapy. And he has been named to the TIME100 Health list – recognizing the 100 most influential people in global health.

Joacim Gustav Rockloev

Director of the Heidelberg Planetary Health Hub

Heidelberg Institute of Global Health & Interdisciplinary Centre for Scientific Computing (Heidelberg, Germany)

Prof. Joacim Rocklöv is a globally recognized expert in climate change, infectious diseases, and data science. As Director of the Heidelberg Planetary Health Hub and Chair of the Climate-Sensitive Infectious Diseases Group (CSIDlab), he leads cutting-edge research to advance health surveillance, pandemic preparedness, and data-driven solutions to global health challenges.
He co-directs the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change in Europe and contributes to major international research activities, such as the IPCC reports. His interdisciplinary approach fosters collaboration between fields such as epidemiology, public health, environmental science, ecology, microbiology, and computational sciences.

Tahmeed Ahmed

Executive Director

International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research (icddr,b) (Dhaka, Bangladesh)

Dr Tahmeed Ahmed is the first Bangladeshi scientist to serve as Executive Director of icddr,b, where he has dedicated forty years to research and institutional leadership. A physician and public health researcher, his career spans pioneering work in nutrition, gastroenterology, and infectious diseases, with lasting contributions to improving public health in resource-limited settings.

He guided icddr,b’s research teams to undertake a wide range of COVID-19 studies, covering infection, transmission dynamics, treatment, and diagnostics. Among his notable achievements is the work on Microbiota Directed Complementary Food (MDCF) with Professor Jeffrey Gordon of Washington University at St. Louis, recognised in TIME magazine’s Best Inventions 2025 for its social impact on childhood malnutrition. He also developed Sharnali, a locally produced therapeutic food for children suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Named among TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in Health, Dr Ahmed continues to promote evidence-based health solutions globally. He is a member of the Global Task Force on Cholera Control (GTFCC) and Professor of Public Health Nutrition at the BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health.

Katharina Hauck

Professor in Health Economics

Imperial College (London, UK)

Katharina Hauck is a Professor in Health Economics and Deputy Director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (Jameel Institute), School of Public Health, Imperial College London. She is specialized in the economics of infectious diseases and the economic evaluation of complex public health interventions. Her research focuses on the economic impact of endemic and emerging infectious diseases, the economics of pandemic preparedness, cost-effectiveness analysis, and health system strengthening.

Katharina leads the 'Jameel Institute-Kenneth C. Griffin Initiative for the Economics of Pandemic Preparedness', an international collaborative program of research that has the mission to determine the health and economic value of pandemic preparedness with integrated economic-epidemiological modelling. She is lead for pandemic preparedness at the Health Protection Research Unit in Modelling and Health Economics.

Katharina regularly advises on national and international health policy related to the economics of infectious diseases and the economics of pandemic preparedness, including the World Health Organization, GAVI, two G20 task forces, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, the Global Fund, governments of low-and middle income countries, and the UK Cabinet Office. She is an associate editor for the journal 'Health Economics'.

Katharina has lead several collaborative studies in low-and middle-income countries, and she was co-convener of the economic analysis for the Infected Blood Inquiry in the United Kingdom.

Katharina holds a PhD in Economics from the University of York (2005). Her previous appointments were at the Business School of Imperial College London (2010-2015), the Department of Econometrics and Business Statistics, Monash University (Australia, 2005-2010), the Centre for Health Economics, University of York (UK, 1999-2005), and the World Health Organization in Geneva (Switzerland, 1998-1999).

Vandana K.E.

Professor, Department of Microbiology

Manipal Academy for Higher Education (Manipal, India)

Dr. Vandana K E is a distinguished medical professional currently serving as Professor and Head of the Department of Microbiology at Kasturba Medical College (KMC), Manipal. Her academic foundation includes an MBBS from JJM Medical College, Davangere, followed by an MD in Microbiology from Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore. With over two decades of experience in clinical diagnostics and medical education, she has held faculty positions at prestigious institutions, including Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, before advancing through the academic ranks at Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE).

In the realm of research, Dr. Vandana is a prolific scholar with a focus on Antimicrobial Stewardship, Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), and Infection Control. Her work, extensively documented on her ORCID profile and Google Scholar, addresses critical public health issues such as neonatal sepsis and bloodstream infections. Beyond her clinical and research duties, she is an active member of professional bodies like the Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists (IAMM), contributing to the advancement of microbiological standards and education in India.

Meru Sheel

Professor of Infectious Diseases and Global Health

The University of Sydney (Sydney, Australia)

Professor Meru Sheel is a distinguished infectious diseases epidemiologist and vaccinologist based at the University of Sydney School of Public Health. Raised in India, her early exposure to the devastating impacts of diseases like polio and tuberculosis inspired her career as a "disease detective". Today, she serves as a Professor of Infectious Diseases and Global Health, where she leads the Infectious Diseases, Immunisation and Emergencies (IDIE) research group. Professor Sheel was a founding member of the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute (Sydney ID), an organization dedicated to improving global health security through multidisciplinary research.

Her career is defined by a commitment to public health in resource-limited settings and extensive field experience. She has responded to numerous international crises, including the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh and major disease outbreaks in Fiji, Tonga, and Papua New Guinea. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she provided critical leadership as a consultant for the World Health Organization (WHO), specifically coordinating preparedness efforts for Tonga. A prominent advocate for diversity, she chairs the Australian Chapter for Women in Global Health and has been recognized as one of the "40 Under 40 Most Influential Asian-Australians".

Professor Sheel’s academic foundation includes a Bachelor’s in Biotechnology from Manipal University, a PhD in Life Sciences from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research and Queensland University of Technology, and an MPhil in Applied Epidemiology from the Australian National University. As a Westpac Research Fellow, she continues to bridge the gap between laboratory science and field-based public health to ensure equitable health outcomes worldwide.