Proceedings of the Influenza Research Priorities Workshop
Appendix 4: Plenary Speaker Biographies
Dr. Alan Bernstein
Dr. Bernstein is the inaugural President of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Canada's lead agency for the support of health research. An internationally respected researcher, mentor and scientific leader, he has made key contributions to our understanding of embryonic development, hematopoiesis and cancer. Prior to his appointment at CIHR in 2000, he was Director of Research at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital from 1994-2000 and Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics at the University of Toronto, where he is a Senior Fellow, Massey College. Dr. Bernstein has received numerous awards, including the McLaughlin Medal of the Royal Society of Canada, the Genetics Society of Canada Award of Excellence, the 2001 Australian Society of Medical Research Medal, and the Order of Canada in 2002.
Dr. Arlene King
Dr. King is the Director of the Immunization and Respiratory Infections Division, Public Health Agency of Canada and an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Health Care and Epidemiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She received her medical degree from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario in 1981, certification in Family Medicine from the University of Calgary, Alberta in 1984 and practiced Family Medicine in northern Alberta from 1985 to 1989. In 1990, she received a Masters Degree in Health Sciences from the University of British Columbia and in 1992, became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Community Medicine. She served as a medical officer of health in British Columbia from 1992 to 1994, and subsequently held various positions in communicable disease control at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control in Vancouver. She joined Health Canada/the Public Health Agency of Canada in 1999.
In 2003, she received Health Canada's Deputy Minister's Award of Merit for her contribution to Canada's National SARS Response. She has been a consultant to the World Health Organization on polio, SARS and influenza, and to the World Bank and CIDA on Emerging Infectious Diseases. She is a member of the World Health Organization Africa Region Polio Eradication Certification Commission. In 2004, she was appointed to the Board of the Global Alliance on Immunization (GAVI).
Dr. David Scheifele
Dr. Scheifele holds the CIHR/Wyeth Chair in Clinical Vaccine Research at the University of British Columbia and serves as Director of the Vaccine Evaluation Center at BC Children's Hospital. Since he established the Vaccine Evaluation Center in 1988, he has been involved in more than 100 clinical studies and has published over 200 related research papers. He is a past chair of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization. He currently chairs the Canadian Association for Immunization Research & Evaluation (CAIRE) whose members comprise of more than 100 Canadian researchers who are dedicated to building the scientific foundation of optimal immunization programs.
Dr. Theresa Tam
Dr. Tam is the Associate Director of the Immunization and Respiratory Infections Division, Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). She has provided leadership and technical support for national pandemic influenza preparedness since 1999 and played a key role in the realization and publication of the Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan. After completing her residency training in Paediatrics at the University of Alberta and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of British Columbia, she joined Health Canada as a Field Epidemiologist. Since then she has continued her career in public health with a focus on respiratory infections and immunization. She was part of the Health Canada response team on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2004. She has supported the World Health Organization as a technical consultant on influenza surveillance in China, pandemic preparedness and the response to avian influenza in Thailand and Vietnam in 2005. She is the current Executive Secretary of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization.
Dr. Mark Loeb
Dr. Loeb is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Pathology and Molecular Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McMaster University. He is Director of Infection Control at Hamilton Health Sciences. He trained in Internal Medicine, Medical Microbiology, Infectious Diseases, and Epidemiology at the University of Toronto and McMaster University, and completed a research fellowship at the University of Toronto. Dr. Loeb has served on Canadian and U.S. advisory committees about respiratory infections and receives research funding from CIHR, NIH, and CDC. He has been Principal Investigator on several CIHR grants related to respiratory infections, including the Canadian SARS Research Network. He is Co-Editor of the BMJ textbook Evidence-Based Infectious Diseases, serves as section editor for the BMJ Clinical Evidence chapter on Pneumonia and is Associate Editor of Evidence-Based Medicine/ACP Journal Club. He holds a CIHR New Investigator award, a Premier's Research Excellence Award, and last year received the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America Investigator Award.
Dr. Fred Aoki
Dr. Aoki is a Professor of Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of Manitoba. He trained in clinical pharmacology at the Montreal General Hospital and in infectious diseases at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Division of Communicable Diseases, Harrow, and the MRC Common Cold Unit, Salisbury, England. His research has focused on the clinical pharmacology of antiviral drugs and clinical trials of viral vaccines. He is a member of the Antiviral Subcommittee of the Canadian Pandemic Influenza Planning Committee.
Dr. Susan Tamblyn
Dr. Tamblyn is a public health consultant and Associate Clinical Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. She retired from her 30-year position as Medical Officer of Health for the Perth District Health Unit in June 2004 but has remained active in influenza work. Throughout her career Dr. Tamblyn served on advisory committees for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, Health Canada, the Canadian Paediatric Society, CDC and WHO. She was chair of Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization for four years and the Ontario Advisory Committee on Communicable Disease for three years.
Dr. Tamblyn has been involved in pandemic planning for over two decades and is currently co-chair of the Ontario Pandemic Influenza Health Steering Committee and chair of the Antiviral Working Group for the National Pandemic Influenza Committee. She also chairs the Local Public Health Capacity Review Committee which will recommend ways to strengthen Ontario's public health units.
Dr. Paul Gully
Dr. Gully is the Deputy Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada. In this position he works with the Chief Public Health Officer in the management of the Agency to enable it to fulfill its mission and mandate.
Dr. Gully joined Health Canada in 1990 and subsequently held a number of positions within the former Laboratory Centre for Disease Control, Health Protection Branch. In July 2000, he was appointed the first Director General of the new Centre for Infectious Disease Prevention and Control, PPHB and in March 2002, he was appointed Senior Director General of the Population and Public Health Branch.
Dr. Gully is a physician with specialty training in public health in the United Kingdom and Canada. Prior to training in public health, he worked in the United Kingdom (UK), Zambia, Vancouver and the Northwest Territories. Before joining Health Canada, Dr. Gully was attached to the UK Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre. He was also Medical Officer of Health in Saskatoon from 1986-1990.
Dr. Gully has written several publications on infectious disease epidemiology and has held honorary and adjunct academic positions in the UK and Canada. He was past-president of the National Specialty Society for Community Medicine.
Dr. Klaus Stöhr
Dr. Stöhr is the Coordinator of the Global Influenza Programme in the Department for Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response at the World Health Organization, located in Geneva, Switzerland. He is responsible for coordinating the work of the WHO Global Influenza Programme, including the WHO Influenza Surveillance Network, and for providing advice to WHO and national health authorities on policies and strategies for the surveillance and prevention of seasonal influenza and on influenza pandemic preparedness.
Dr. Stöhr completed his Masters Degree in Germany in 1984, and completed his PhD (Dissertation on Epidemiology and Infectious Disease Control) in 1987. Since that time, he became a Fellow at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, (University Leipzig, Germany); was a scientist in the Department of Infectious Diseases, National Institute for Epidemiology and Infectious Disease Control in Animals (Eastern Germany); was a Department Head of Infectious Diseases at the National Institute for Epidemiology and Infectious Disease Control in Animals, (Germany); has 10 years of experience as a scientist with the WHO's Veterinary Public Health Unit, Zoonotic Disease Unit, and the Animal and Food related Public Health Risks Division; most recently, he was the Coordinator of the WHO's SARS aetiology and diagnosis activities.
He is a corresponding member of the European Society for Clinical Virology since November 2003, has published over 60 scientific publications and has been invited to present at over 120 international meetings since 1992.
Dr. Benjamin Schwartz
Dr. Schwartz is the Senior Science Advisor, National Vaccine Program Office (NVPO), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In this position, Dr. Schwartz has had a lead scientific role in developing the draft HHS Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan and providing technical expertise in pandemic preparedness activities. He also coordinates the NVPO Unmet Needs program which provides support to priority vaccine research studies conducted collaboratively by HHS agencies and scientists. Dr. Schwartz received his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri; served as a pediatric resident at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio; and completed a fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1986, Dr. Schwartz began his public health career as an Epidemic Intelligence Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At CDC, in the National Center for Infectious Diseases and the National Immunization program, he developed and coordinated CDC's judicious antimicrobial use program to decrease the spread of resistance; studied the epidemiology of group A streptococcal infections including the streptococcal toxic shock syndrome; developed the New Vaccine Surveillance Network to study the epidemiology of vaccine preventable diseases and the impacts of new vaccines; and completed multiple international consultancies on acute respiratory infections, antimicrobial resistance, and vaccine preventable diseases.
