- NISN biographies
Arnold Monto
University of Michigan, Michigan, USA
Dr. Monto is a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. His recent research includes a comparative study of influenza vaccines in adults—specifically a series of large, randomized studies comparing the effectiveness of the traditional inactivated injectable influenza vaccines and the live attenuated nasal vaccine. Professor Monto was recently awarded the Alexander Fleming Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his work on the pathogenesis, treatment, and prevention of influenza virus infections. After receiving his medical degree from Cornell University in 1958, Dr. Monto completed his residency in internal medicine at Vanderbilt University Hospital. He then became a U.S. Public Health Service doctoral fellow in infectious disease at Stanford Medical Center (1960-1962) and later worked in the field in Panama as a part of the Virus Diseases Section of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In 1965 he joined the University of Michigan, where he commenced his research on infectious diseases.
Maria Zambon
Health Protection Agency, Centre for Infections, London, UK
Professor. Zambon is Director of the Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections. The Centre’s remit includes infectious disease surveillance, providing specialist and reference microbiology and microbial epidemiology, co-ordinating the investigation and cause of national and uncommon outbreaks, helping advise Government on the risks posed by various infections and responding to international health alerts.
Maria is medically qualified and has worked for many years as a clinical virologist with a scientific interest in RNA viruses, antivirals and vaccines. Maria’s PhD was on the mechanism of action of amantadine and led directly to the identification of a novel class of viral proteins, viral ion channels (M2 protein). Maria’s own research group is involved in respiratory virus diagnosis, surveillance and integrated clinical research programmes, with particular emphasis on influenza and other respiratory viruses. Maria co-ordinates several multinational EU projects on influenza vaccines and antivirals. Her main research interests are the diagnosis of viral infections in humans, especially RNA viruses, the pathogenicity of influenza and development of new vaccines for respiratory viruses, particularly influenza. Since 1998, Maria has been heavily involved in development of vaccines for avian influenza and is part of a successful UK consortium that has performed clinical trials of H5, H7 and H9 vaccines.
Elena Govorkova
St Jude Children's Research Hospital, Tennessee, USA
Dr. Govorkova is a Laboratory Director in the Division of Virology, Department of Infectious Diseases at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA. After receiving her medical degree from Moscow Medical Academy in 1980, Dr. Govorkova received a PhD in Virology at The DI Ivanovsky Institute of Virology, Moscow, Russia. For a number of years Dr. Govorkova was working at The DI Ivanovsky Institute of Virology in the Influenza laboratory collaborating with the World Health Organization. In 1993 she joined the laboratory of professor Robert Webster at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Dr. Govorkova’s research interests are primarily focused on evaluation of anti-influenza drugs against highly pathogenic influenza viruses on enzymatic and cellular levels, as well as in the animal models. Her work has involved investigation of advantages/disadvantages of combinations of antiviral drugs that have different mechanisms of action on the reduction of influenza virus replication in vitro, protection in animals and emergence of resistant variants. She is the author of over 75 original research publications and review papers in peer-reviewed journals, in addition to patents and awards. Dr. Govorkova is a member of the American Society of Virology and the International Society for Antiviral Research.
Alan Hay
WHO Influenza Collaborating Centre, London, UK
[biography not yet available]
Frederick G. Hayden
University of Virginia School of Medicine, Virginia, USA
Dr. Hayden is Stuart S. Richardson Professor of Clinical Virology and Professor of Medicine and Pathology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. During 2006-2008 he served as a medical officer in the Global Influenza Programme at the World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, and since September 2008, has been serving as influenza research coordinator at the Wellcome Trust, London. Dr. Hayden received his medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine in 1973 and completed his clinical training in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, New York, USA. He joined the faculty of the University Of Virginia School Of Medicine in 1978 and became Richardson Professor in 1990. His principal research interests have been on the respiratory viral infections with a particular focus on the development and application of antiviral agents for influenza and rhinovirus infections. Dr. Hayden is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, American Academy of Microbiology, American Society for Clinical Investigation, and Association of American Physicians.
Aeron Hurt
WHO Influenza Collaborating Centre, Melbourne, Australia
Dr. Hurt has been a research scientist for the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, Melbourne, Australia for over 10 years and during this time has been involved with many aspects of influenza virus analysis and research. The majority of Aeron’s research has focused on antiviral resistance to influenza, and in particular resistance to the neuraminidase inhibitor class of drugs, much of which has focused on the impact of key amino acid mutations on NA inhibitor resistance and their role in viral fitness using both in vitro and in vivo models. Aeron is also a member of the Australian Influenza Specialist Group Scientific Committee.
Alexander Klimov
WHO Influenza Collaborating Centre, Atlanta, USA
[biography not yet available]
Catherine Macken
Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, USA
Dr. Macken is a staff member in the Theoretical Biology and Biophysics group of Los Alamos National Laboratory. She completed her honours and masters degrees in mathematics and statistics in New Zealand and her Ph.D. in statistics at Cornell University in 1977. Before becoming a staff member at LANL, she held faculty or research positions in statistics at the University of New Mexico, Lincoln College, the University of Auckland and Stanford University. Dr. Macken’s professional interest, commenced in graduate school, is in the integration of probability and statistics with biological systems to interrogate and interpret biological processes. Her efforts have been directed primarily at cellular and molecular systems. In 1998, she launched the first public genetic database for the study of the evolution of the influenza virus. In recent years, her research interests have focussed primarily on developing novel bioinformatics tools for the detection of molecular changes associated with changes in phenotype of the influenza virus.
Jennifer McKimm-Breschkin
CSIRO Molecular Health Technologies, Victoria, Australia
Dr. McKimm-Breschkin is Chief Research Scientist and Project Leader in Virology at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Victoria, Australia. After completing a first class honours degree at Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Dr. McKimm-Breschkin went to the United States for postgraduate studies and returned to Australia in 1979. In 1987 she began working for CSIRO, on the development of Relenza™, and was carried out the pre-clinical resistance studies for drug registration.
Masato Tashiro
WHO Influenza Collaborating Centre, Tokyo, Japan
Dr. Tashiro is Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, Tokyo. He received his medical degree from Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan in 1975 and completed his clinical training in internal medicine. Dr. Tashiro has been studying molecular mechanisms and pathogenesis of paramyxoviruses and influenza virus infections at Yamagata University School of Medicine, 1977-84 and, as a Humboldt-Foundation research Fellow, at the Institute of Virology, University of Giessen, Germany, 1986-1989. He became Associate Professor of Department of Virology, Jichi Medical School, Japan in1989. He joined National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID, formerly National Institute of Health) in 1994 as Director of Department Virology. He was then Director of Department of Virus Research and Vaccine Control, 1997-2009 and since 2009 he directs newly established Influenza Virus Research Center at NIID. He has been a board member of many international scientific societies and committees. Dr. Tasihro has been awarded the Max-Planck Prize and Justus-Liebig Medal, Germany, and Butantan Medal, Brazil.
