Dr Farzana Ismail is a Clinical Microbiologist and initially worked as a consultant at a tertiary level Microbiology laboratory affiliated with Academic Hospitals in Pretoria, providing specialist services in both infectious diseases, and infection control.
In 2017, she was appointed as the pathologist at the Centre for Tuberculosis at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, and leads the WHO Supranational TB Reference laboratory section of the centre, while providing support to other National TB reference laboratories in the region.
Ismail has a keen interest in drug-resistant TB, diagnostic technologies, infection control, and patient centered care for TB. She plays a pivotal role in diagnostics policy for South Africa and was instrumental in the rollout of the National DRTB reflex testing algorithm for second-line drug susceptibility testing (including Bedaquiline and Linezolid). She was also the laboratory lead for the first-ever South African National TB prevalence survey that was recently completed.
An important initiative since joining the centre has been the provision of reference laboratory support for specialised testing to clinicians managing difficult to treat and highly resistant TB patients in the country. She also plays an important role in surveillance activities, monitoring new drug resistance as well as patient pathways to TB diagnosis, and provides advice to other pathologists and clinicians regarding TB diagnostics. She is a member of the WHO Technical Advisory group on Tuberculosis Diagnostics and Laboratory Strengthening and has participated in WHO guideline development group (GDG) meetings for different diagnostic tools including the development of the relevant WHO guidance policy documents.
Ismail is also a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria, involved in training medical undergraduate and postgraduate students in clinical microbiology and infection control.

Dr Waasila Jassat (MBBCh, MMed, FCPHM) is a medical doctor and public health medicine specialist. She works at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she leads the DATCOV hospital surveillance for COVID-19 where she analyses COVID-19 hospital admissions, support the Ministerial Advisory Committee and National Incident Management Team in tracking the epidemic, as well as providing data for modelling purposes.
Dr Jassat has also led in conducting a sentinel surveillance study in long-term care homes, a long COVID study, and a sentinel surveillance study in 16 public hospitals to better understand the contribution of non-communicable diseases, namely HIV and TB, to COVID-19 mortality. The DATCOV team has also collaborated with the World Health Organization and the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC), providing South African data for pooled global analysis of COVID-19 hospitalisation and long COVID data.
She is currently registered towards a PhD at the University of Western Cape, focused on understanding the gap between health policy and its implementation. She employed a case study analysis of the implementation of the policy framework of drug-resistant TB decentralisation in two provinces, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
Dr Jassat has 20-years’ experience in clinical practice, research and management in the South African public health sector and has a strong interest in health systems, particularly in using information for health planning and effective implementation of health programmes.

Dr Dale Kitchin obtained his PhD in Microbiology and Biotechnology from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2017 following undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the same institution. After completing his PhD he joined the HIV Virology Section at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases as a postdoctoral research fellow, under the mentorship of Prof Penny Moore.
His postdoctoral research focused on delineating the ontogeny of anti-HIV-1 broadly neutralising antibody lineages, using a combination of cellular assays, high-throughput sequencing and bioinformatic methods.
Since 2021 he has been a Senior Medical Scientist at the same unit, where he is responsible for managing several HIV and SARS-CoV-2 research projects, including the virus surveillance component of the IAVI ADVANCE program, and supervising postgraduate students. His current research looks at how cross-reactive neutralising antibody lineages develop following viral infection or vaccination, and assessing the impact that viral genetic diversity has on the effectiveness of vaccines and monoclonal antibody therapies for pathogens that have direct public health implications for African populations.

Dr Michelle Lowe obtained her BSc qualifatoin at the North West University, and her BSc Hons, MSc (cum laude) and PhD qualifactions at the University of Pretoria. Dr Lowe is currently appointed as a Medical Scientist in the Centre for Healthcare-Associated Infections, Antimicrobial Resistance and Mycoses (CHARM) at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Her research focuses on the laboratory detection, characterisation, molecular epidemiology and evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in humans and food animals. Her main research scope is on the ESKAPE pathogens (i.e. Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Enterobacter species) which cause healthcare-associated infections.
Dr Lowe is involved with the supervision of post-graduate students and training of intern Medical Scientists on the application of molecular techniques in the Microbiology laboratory, including techniques related to laboratory identification and characterisation of healthcare-associated pathogens.

Dr Rindidzani Magobo is a young emerging researcher and currently appointed as senior Medical Scientist at the Centre of Healthcare-Associated Infections, Antimicrobial Resistance and Mycoses at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
She obtained PhD in Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the University of the Witwatersrand under Prof Nelesh P. Govender’s guidance. Over the years, her research focus area included molecular epidemiology and antifungal resistance mechanisms of azole-resistant Candida parapsilosis and Candida auris, which cause large healthcare-associated outbreaks in South Africa. The major highlight of her PhD was to describe the first cases of C. auris infections in Southern Africa. Her research has set a framework for future studies on molecular investigations (genetic diversity and resistance mechanisms) in other azole-resistant Candida species. She is currently overseeing and managing the laboratory segment of Baby GERMS-SA surveillance project.

Dr Tsidiso Maphanga is an emerging scientist in the field of Medical Mycology. She is currently a senior Scientist at the Centre for Healthcare-Associated Infections, Antimicrobial Resistance and Mycoses at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. She obtained her PhD degree from the University of Free State at the Department of Medical Microbiology under the supervision of Prof Nelesh P. Govender. Her research interests include understanding the molecular epidemiology of fungal pathogens which causes invasive diseases among hospitalized patients and this has led to the discovery of Blastomyces emzantsi and reclassification of thermally-dimorphic pathogens belonging to the Ajellomycetaceae family of which was the milestone for her PhD degree.
She also has an interest in antifungal susceptibility testing and understanding the mechanism of resistance of fungal pathogens. She is involved in the evaluation of newly developed diagnostic assays for accurate diagnosis and management of fungal pathogens causing life-threatening invasive mycoses (including candidemia and endemic mycoses). She has managed six research projects to completion and collaborated with both national and international researchers to produce more than 26 peer-reviewed publications with high impact factor.

Dr Susan Meiring is the Clinical Coordinator for the GERMS-SA Surveillance Network. GERMS-SA coordinates and runs national and sentinel, laboratory-based and clinical surveillance programmes of ‘diseases-of-public-health-importance’ at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa. From the many surveillance programmes, special studies arise which are planned and coordinated by the GERMS-SA staff. Meiring has been the principal investigator for three special studies, namely meningococcal carriage study in university students, neonatal bloodstream infections and meningitis study in secondary level institutions, and SARS-CoV-2 clinical characterisation and evaluation of shedding duration amongst patients hospitalised with COVID-19. Furthermore, she has been a co-investigator on many other surveillance studies.
GERMS-SA surveillance programmes cover a variety of bacterial, fungal and viral infections, including hospital-associated infections caused by pathogens such as Carbapenemase-Resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), Acenitobacter baumanii and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In particular, Meiring has developed a keen interest in the epidemiology of meningococcal and invasive pneumococcal disease and the public health programmes aimed at their prevention. She is also passionate about understanding the various drivers of antimicrobial resistance in isolates from neonatal sepsis in South Africa.
She received her medical degree from the University of Cape Town in 2003 and is currently pursuing a PhD part-time (looking at the epidemiology of meningococcal disease in South Africa) through the School of Public Health at the University of Witwatersrand. She is a member of the Global Meningococcal Initiative and has published over 20 peer reviewed articles, in addition to being a peer reviewer for papers submitted to Emerging Infectious Diseases, PLoSOne and Lancet Infectious Diseases. In 2019 Meiring received the Young Investigators Award for life-time contribution to infectious disease research from the Institut Merieux and the South African Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases.

Dr Nonhlanhla Nono Mkhize is a Senior Medical Scientist overseeing the HIV vaccine trial endpoints within the HIV Virology laboratory at the Centre for HIV and STI’s at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. She has a PhD in Medical Virology from the University of Cape Town and boasts extensive experience in multi-color flow cytometry, which she used in her PhD to investigate the phenotype and poly-functionality of mucosal T cells during HIV infection.
During her PhD, she was awarded a Columbia-Fogarty AITRP traineeship to visit the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) laboratory in Seattle, where she learned advanced flow cytometry techniques and panel design. Further flow cytometry training was undertaken at the NIH Vaccine Research Center in 2015 as part of a second Columbia-Fogarty traineeship. She has been involved in the isolation of antigen-specific B cells from HIV and SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals and contributed to a number of antibody-isolation-based projects and publications.
Mkhize is a recipient of the L’Oreal UNESCO sub-Saharan fellowship. In addition, she is also the laboratory lead of a paediatric HIV vaccine clinical trial (HVTN 135) enrolling infants in South Africa to test whether an HIV immunogen can give rise to bNAb precursors.

A graduate of the University of Witwatersrand with Doctor of Philosophy (Medicine) degree and a post-graduate diploma in management (PDM), Naazneen Moolla joined the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in 2011 and has been with the Special Viral Pathogens Laboratory since.
She is accomplished in the field of molecular research where she has experience in the development of molecular assays, candidate vaccines, the management and establishment of a Biosafety level II – IV facilities, and the supervision of students. Most of Moolla’s work is directed towards increasing regional capacity for rapid diagnosis as well as the improvement and maintenance of surveillance programs.
With respect to her technical expertise, she is skilled in production and biochemical analysis of recombinant proteins expressed in mammalian and bacterial systems. The main focus of her research and activities is improving the diagnostic capacity for viral haemorrhagic fevers (VHF) in South Africa. Moolla has experience in the development of serological assays for the diagnosis of filoviruses, in particular Ebola virus. The filovirus, Ebola virus is significant human pathogen that causes severe haemorrhagic fevers in humans and present a public health concern as emerging or re-emerging pathogens. This is evidenced by the prolonged nature and severity of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa (2014) and the outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo (2019). She also has a special interest in mammarenaviruses, like Lassa and has been working on improving diagnostics assays (both molecular and serological) for these viruses.
Moolla is the lead on the next generation sequencing (NGS) project that is assessing the utility of using the Oxford- Nanopore MinION device, as a tool for rapid VHF diagnosis.