Dr Vanessa Quan is a medical doctor who qualified in 1993 at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg South Africa. She has an interest in child health and infectious diseases, and holds a Master’s qualifcation in Public Health, Maternal and Child Health. She has been in employ at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa since 2002. She works in surveillance and heads the GERMS-SA Surveillance platform, a national laboratory surveillance system with an enhanced, sentinel surveillance arm and clinics for syndromic surveillance.

Dr Said Rachida is a Senior Medical Scientist researching SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater at the Centre for Vaccines and Immunology (CVI) at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases located in Johannesburg, South Africa. Under the mentorship of Professor Maureen B. Taylor, Rachida spent seven years investigating the genetic identity of hepatitis A virus circulating within South African communities through analysis of clinical, water and wastewater sources. She was awarded a PhD in Medical Virology from the University of Pretoria for detecting potentially infectious hepatitis A virus strains from wastewater using viability PCR. Rachida is interested in studying the epidemiology of viruses through water and wastewater analyses.

Dr Jaishree Raman is a Molecular Biologist by training with a strong interest in malaria and public health. Raman currently heads the Laboratory for Antimalarial Resistance Monitoring and Malaria Operational Research (ARMMOR) at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa. The core focus of ARMMOR is to improve malaria diagnostic and treatment options, with the ultimate aim of assisting South Africa and Africa to eliminate malaria. To this end, ARMMOR hosts the South African National Surveillance Programme for Antimalarial Drug and Diagnostic Resistance Monitoring. This robust surveillance programme enables the near real-time tracking of emerging resistance to inform case management policy and prompt containment responses.
In partnership with collaborators from other malaria endemic countries and research organisations, including the Universities of Cape Town, Pretoria, Namibia and California-San Francisco, Raman’s laboratory is currently investigating novel techniques and technologies aimed at improving malaria case detection and treatment practices. As an active member of regional research networks including the Pathogen Genomics Diversity Network Africa (PDNA), the Southern African Drug Efficacy Network and the Elimination 8 Initiative (E8), Raman is assisting to build much needed malaria molecular capacity within national malaria control programmes and academic institutions so that African scientists and healthcare professionals can provide African solutions to eliminating and eventually eradicating malaria.

Dr Said, is Medical Scientist specializing in Medical Microbiology. She had Hons and MSc in general Microbiology from University of Pretoria. She obtained her second MSc in Medical microbiology from University of Limpopo and has a PhD in Med Microbiology from University of Pretoria. Her early research was on Salmonella and genotyping of Human Papilloma Virus. Her subsequent and current research focus is on Tuberculosis, mainly molecular epidemiology of TB as well as in drug-resistance in TB. She played a pivotal role in the establishment and implementation of molecular typing laboratory at the center TB, which was previously carried out at specialized off-site laboratories.
She had comprehensive background and experience in clinical evaluation of numerous diagnostic assays and clinical trial studies. She is affiliated lecture at University of Free State, participates in supervision of postgraduate students. She is a C rated NRF researcher, had published over 20 publications, which comprise research papers in accredited journals and conference proceedings. She have reviewed international journals, a number of funding applications. She has served as an examiner for Masters and Doctoral dissertations and thesis at a number of universities.

Dr Cathrine Scheepers is a Senior Medical Scientist in the Centre for HIV and STI’s at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is also a Researcher in the Antibody Immunity Research Unit within the School of Pathology at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). She holds a PhD (Virology) from Wits, together with an MPhil (Computational Biology) from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Her main area of research is focused on understanding antibody genetic diversity and antibody responses to infections, particularly HIV and SARS-CoV-2. Scheepers has over 18 peer-reviewed articles and supervises post-graduate students.

Dr Jacqueline Weyer is a Principal Medical Scientist at the Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases located in Johannesburg, South Africa. Here she leads a team of scientists tasked with the laboratory investigation (diagnostics and research) of human rabies, viral heamorrhagic fevers and other emerging zoonotic disease of concern to the health of the South African public.
Weyer completed her PhD in Microbiology at the University of Pretoria and was employed as a Research Fellow with the Rabies Unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta Georgia from 2004 to 2005. In 2006 she was awarded the L’Oreal-UNESCO, Department of Science and Technology Woman in Science Award: PhD Fellowship for Life Sciences. And in 2018 she was awarded the degree Master of Public Health, cum laude from the Sefako Makgatho Health Sciences University in South Africa.
In the past 10-years, Weyer has authored and co-authored more than 40 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, and seven chapters in books, and achieved a National Research Foundation C2 rating in 2017. Jacqueline has been appointed as Extraordinary Lecturer at the University of Pretoria and has been involved in supervision of 14 BSc Hons or MSc research studies, one MPH and four PhD students.
In 2020, she was appointed as Lecturer in the School of Pathology at the University of the Witwatersrand. She serves on several national committees and working groups pertaining to laboratory biosafety and biosecurity, rabies and other zoonoses, One Health. Her interests include the laboratory diagnostics, epidemiology, pathogenesis and host interactions of rabies virus and other zoonotic viral pathogens that cause disease of public health importance in South Africa.

Dr Constantinos Kurt Wibmer is an early-career South African virologist, structural biologist, and protein engineer. He received a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand, supervised by Professors Lynn Morris and Penny Moore, focusing on understanding HIV-1 escape and the virus-host interplay that results in broadly neutralising antibodies.
Wibmer began training in protein x-ray crystallography with Dr Peter Kwong and Dr Jason Gorman at the Vaccine Research Center (NIH, Bethesda, USA) during a Fogarty traineeship, and further developed these skills as a postdoctoral research associate with Prof Ian Wilson at Scripps Research (La Jolla, USA). He has since solved dozens of unique protein structures, characterising at atomic resolution the interactions between antibodies and their antigens.
At the National Institute for Communicable Diseaes, he leads a research team hosted at the Centre for HIV and STIs that is currently focused on three research areas, namely the development of novel interventions for snakebite (a neglected tropical disease that kills/maims half a million people every year); the discovery of monoclonal antibodies from horses (supporting One Health goals); and offering structural biology support for collaborative research activities (such as SAR-CoV-2/COVID-19). During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, these data comprised the earliest description of neutralization resistance by variants of concern (VoC).

Dr Selamawit Woldesenbet completed her Master’s degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Columbia University (US), and a PhD in Public Health (major epidemiology) at the University of the Western Cape. She is currently an Epidemiologist at the Centre for HIV & STIs at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Her work focuses on the prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT), paediatrics HIV, and maternal and child health. Her work leverages on large datasets, including surveys and routinely collected programme data to track outcomes of people living with HIV. Woldesenbet has expertise in complex sample survey and longitudinal data analysis methods. She holds an honorary lecturer position at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Public Health, where she supervises Master’s students. She has over 12 years of research experience and has authored/co-authored several peer reviewed journal articles including in JAIDS, AIDS, HIV medicine, Scientific Reports, and International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Dr Nicole Wolter is a Principal Medical Scientist in the Centre for Respiratory Diseases and Meningitis (CRDM) at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in Johannesburg, South Africa. She also holds a joint appointment as a Lecturer within the School of Pathology at the University of Witwatersrand. She received her PhD in Molecular Microbiology in 2007 from the University of Witwatersrand, and an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 2019. Dr Wolter is an NRF-rated scientist, and has published more than 70 publications in peer-reviewed journals. In her position at the NICD, she leads a team of scientists in surveillance and research focused on the epidemiology, advanced diagnostics and molecular characterisation of pathogens causing respiratory disease in South Africa. Her research interests include understanding the burden, epidemiology and transmission of respiratory diseases in order to guide public health policy and action.