Elmar A. Joura, M.D., is associated Professor and gynecological oncologist at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria and head of the clinic for colposcopy and vulvar disease. He worked in Tanzania, and together with Ron Jones at National Womens Hospital in Auckland and wrote his thesis on vulvar disease. Since 2001 Dr. Joura is investigator for HPV vaccine trials. He was president of EUROGIN in 2016 and is past president of the European college for the study of vulvovaginal disease (ECSVD). Dr. Joura has published more than 160 articles in peer- review journals and given more than 1000 lectures worldwide.

Within the Oncology Gynecology Unit, she coordinates translational research related to the human papillomavirus and pathology secondary to infection. Vicepresident of the Spanish Association of Cervical Pathology and Colposcopy (AEPCC) , and board member of the HPV Action Network. Board of the International Federation of Cervical Pathology and Colposcopy (IFCPC) until 2023. In recent years, he has participated in the development and application of numerous national clinical guidelines and consensus documents related to premalignant pathology of the female anogenital tract and cervical cancer screening strategies.

Mel Kohn is currently the Executive Director for HPV Vaccines, Global Medical Affairs, Merck Research Laboratories. He has been in that role since December of 2019. An epidemiologist and a pediatrician, Mel came to Merck in 2013, after a twenty-year career in governmental public health, including work for Oregon’s state health department as the Public Health Director (2008-2013), and State Epidemiologist (1999-2008). As Public Health Director he oversaw a government agency with approximately 750 staff and an annual budget of $250 million, working on a wide range of public health issues, including communicable disease control, chronic disease prevention, maternal and child health, injury prevention and environmental health. In his first role at Merck he was Global Director of Medical Affairs for Adult Vaccines, focused primarily on pneumococcal vaccines. Form 2017-19 he was lead for the EMEAC Regional Vaccines Medical Affairs Team based in Lyon, France. Mel holds a B.A. from Yale in Russian and East European Studies, an M.D. from Harvard, and a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. He also completed an Epidemic Intelligence Service fellowship at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He has authored over 40 articles on a variety of public health topics in peer-reviewed journals as well as numerous reports and white papers. He is board-certified in pediatrics and preventive medicine.

Dr Dorothy Machalek is a Senior Research Fellow at the Kirby Institute (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) and an Honorary Research Fellow with the Centre for Women’s Infectious Disease at The Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. She holds a Doctorate in epidemiology and a Master of Public Health from the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on developing and implementing novel public health surveillance systems and evaluating vaccination and screening strategies for HPV prevention. Dr Machalek has led Australia’s national HPV infection monitoring program, funded by the Australian Government, that provided a central mechanism for evaluating the impact of HPV vaccination on HPV infections in Australia. Dr Machalek is also a named investigator on a project evaluating the population impact of one- and two-dose HPV vaccine schedules in South Africa, funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her research has informed international guidelines and has led to well-cited publications on the impact of Australia’s HPV prevention policies. She co-leads Australia’s annual cervical cancer elimination national tracking reports.

Alfred received his MD from the University of Maryland, School of Medicine and his MPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Infectious Diseases and General Preventive Medicine/Epidemiology. He was an EIS officer with CDC and trained and worked at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH for 7 years and at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and School of Medicine, where he was on the faculty, for 10 years. While at the NIH, he worked with the FDA and CDC in the research leading to the acellular pertussis vaccine. He also co-founded the Multi-center AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) and was its Principal Investigator at Hopkins until moving to Merck Research Laboratories (MRL). At Hopkins, Al also taught extensively, headed an HIV practice clinic and conducted clinical research into factors influencing HIV infection in women and perinatal transmission in Malawi and Rwanda. His research and clinical activities throughout his career at NIH, Hopkins and MRL have focused on HIV-related research and therapy, tropical medicine, and vaccine development. Alfred joined Infectious Diseases at MRL in 1997 where he supported development or approval of indinavir, efavirenz, caspofungin, ivermectin and was liaison to the Mectizan Expert Committee for the reduction of onchocerciasis (river blindness) and lymphatic filariasis (elephantiasis). In 2004, he joined the HPV vaccine development team (Gardasil & Gardasil9) and still works in HPV vaccine development. Additionally, in 2013 Al took over heading the Merck Investigator Studies Program for vaccines.

Graduated from the Faculty of Medical Sciences of Santos, infectious specialized in Hospital for State Civil Servants and a PhD in Epidemiology and Infection Hospital, University of Freiburg, Germany (Freiburg University School at Hospital Epidemiology and Hygiene Department). Chairman of the Hospital Infection Control (CCIH), Hospital Santa Joana and Pro Matre Paulista, Rosana is also medical infectious disease Emilio Ribas Institute of Infectious Diseases since 1988. Current president of the São Paulo Society of Infectious Diseases (SPI) and member of the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI) in Atlanta (USA). She has published several national guidelines on hospital infection in neonates, vascular catheter-related infection and several book chapters and has participated as invited to speak at scientific events national, Latin American and international.

Anna R. Giuliano, PhD, is the founding director of the Center for Immunization and Infection Research in Cancer (CIIRC) at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. Dr Giuliano’s career had its inception in the relationship between human papillomavirus (HPV) infections and cervical cancer, and has evolved over the past 30 years to encompass penile, anal, and oral cancers in men, as well as other infectious diseases and their causal relationships with various cancers. Her work has contributed significantly to our understanding of HPV natural history and to HPV vaccine protection against multiple diseases in women and men. An expert in the field of cancer research she has led numerous studies conducted globally. Dr Giuliano was a contributor to the 1999 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report titled The Unequal Burden of Cancer and the 2005 International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) report that concluded for the first time that HPV is a cause of multiple cancers in women and men. In 2013, at the American Cancer Society (ACS) 100th anniversary, she was the recipient of the ACS Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Award. In 2018, she was selected for the ACS Clinical Research Professor Award for “Prevention of Infection-Related Cancers.” In 2019, Dr. Giuliano received the American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) Fraumeni Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award.

Dr Durand is an Associate Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University Of Toronto in Canada. She received her medical degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and completed her residency in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at McGill University. She is on staff at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada in the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Her clinical practice focuses on HPV and colposcopy. She speaks nationally and internationally about Human Papilloma Virus and HPV vaccination.

Professor of Head and Neck Surgery European Hospital Georges Pompidou Paris, France

Children's Hospital IRCCS, Rome, Italy. At present, his main research focus is vaccine communication. He coordinates a multidisciplinary group, including clinicians, social scientists and data-scientists, with the objective of analysing the vaccine discourse on social media in Italy. Among present activities, he is involved in projects dedicated to applying artificial-intelligence based techniques to interpret the natural language of vaccine-related posts on social media. In the past years, he developed an experience in digital epidemiology, studying the use of Twitter for analysing flu epidemics and allergic diseases, he participated in the development of a platform exploiting different web sources for analysing vaccine confidence in Italy, he coordinated the Web Analytics Project for the WHO’s Vaccine Safety Net, and he participated in the development of an online platform dedicated to monitoring vaccine confidence on the web for the European Joint Action on Vaccination. He has participated in the activities of the Istituto Bambino Gesù (a Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital project dedicated to improving the health literacy of the public on pediatric-related themes), collaborating in the production of contents on the Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital website and of an online magazine dedicated to families, teachers and teenagers. He conducts daily clinical activity with patients as a family paediatrician, with a special focus on breastfeeding and on vaccinations.