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Officers and Board Members 2022-2023

Submitted by isvadmin on Fri, 12/31/2021 - 10:57
President

Denise Doolan

Denise Doolan
ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
Australia
Portraits
Treasurer

Jeffrey Ulmer

Description

Dr. Jeffrey Ulmer has been an active scientist in the vaccines community since completing his post-doctoral fellowship in 1990.  He has published more than 200 scientific papers in various aspects of vaccines discovery and development, is named as a co-inventor on eleven patents, serves on the editorial boards of three journals, and has been on the scientific advisory boards of many academic laboratories and biotechnology companies.  During his career in the vaccines industry, he has held scientific and management positions in the Vaccines divisions of Merck Research Laboratories, Chiron Corporation, Novartis and GSK.  His various leadership roles and responsibilities have included:  Platform Technology Leader (DNA, RNA vaccines), Project Leader (Tuberculosis, SARS); Department Head (Immunology & Cell Biology), Global Function Head (External Research), US Site Head Research, Head Preclinical R&D, and Program Head Technical R&D.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Secretary

Xavier Saelens

Title
Professor of Biochemistry and Microbiology, Ghent University
Description

Dr. Xavier Saelens obtained his PhD degree from the University of Ghent (Ghent, Belgium) in 1990 in the laboratory of Walter Fiers. After postdoctoral training in the influenza research group of Willy Min Jou, and in the Molecular Signaling and Cell Death group of Peter Vandenabeele, both at Ghent University, he became an assistant professor in Molecular Virology in 2008. Currently, he is a full professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Ghent University and a principle investigator at the VIB-UGent Center for Medical Biotechnology.

The research team of Xavier Saelens applies modern biotechnology methods to develop new vaccines and antivirals against important human respiratory viruses such as influenza, respiratory syncytial virus and, more recently, coronaviruses. In addition, his group uses interactomics tools to gain new insights in the molecular interplay between host and viral factors.

His research group pioneered the development of a universal influenza A vaccine candidate based on the viral matrix protein 2 and elucidated it’s mechanism of protection. More recently, his team proposed a new human respiratory syncytial vaccine candidate that is based on the small hydrophobic protein of this virus. This vaccine candidate has successfully passed a Phase I clinical study. The group also develops single domain antibodies and formats thereof as new candidate biologics to control infections by human respiratory viruses. A recently started research focus point is the development of respiratory delivery technologies for antibody-based antivirals.

In 2015 he received the biennial price in Virology from the Study Centre Princess Joséphine- Charlotte from the Flanders and Walloon Research Foundations of Belgium. In 2019 and 2020 Xavier Saelens obtained excellence awards from VIB for outstanding scientific and technology transfer output.

He is a board member and the treasurer of the Belgian Society for Microbiology and member of the board of the International Society for Vaccines where he has contributed in many ways to the society.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
Belgium
President Elect

Linda Klavinskis

Title
Professor of Viral Immunology, King’s College London
Description

Linda S. Klavinskis, PhD, is Professor of Viral Immunology at King’s College London where her laboratory focuses on immunity to vaccination and virus infection. The goal is to understand and harness cross talk between dendritic cells and T cells, and use this knowledge to develop new and more effective vaccines. This work has led to deciphering an alternative mode of antigen presentation, termed ‘cross-dressing’ and unravelling mechanisms contributing to epitope selection and CD8 T-cell immunodominance. At the translational level, her lab has made contributions to the development of gene delivery systems for DNA and viral-mediated vaccination. More, recently she made inroads in understanding the biology of skin immunisation and developed a microneedle vaccine delivery platform. This has led to the new finding that skin immunisation activates cross talk with innate cells in epithelial barrier tissues to recruit effector CD8+ T-cells and can establish immune surveillance at the barrier tissues. During the COVID-19 pandemic her lab has focused on the role of innate immunity in the hyperinflammatory response in severe COVID-19 and applying therapeutic approaches. Her laboratory has co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications.

Professor Klavinskis currently serves as a member of the UK Medical Research Council’s Infection and Immunity Board. She also serves as Associate Editor of Frontiers in Mucosal Immunology and as an Editor of Frontiers in HIV and AIDS. She has served as President of the ‘Medical Research Club’, a prestigious London based biomedical society established 1891 with a focus in infection and immunity. She contributes to national and international peer review in vaccine sciences and as a consultant in industry. She has expertise in executive and senior management positions, including most recently as Vice Dean for Postgraduate Research (Life Sciences and Medicine) at King’s College London. She is a Fellow of the International Society for Vaccines and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists.

Linda Klavinskis has been an active member of the International Society for Vaccines since 2015 and is an elected ISV Fellow. Her service to the ISV includes, membership of the Executive Board since 2018 (where she has championed promoting opportunities for women and junior/early career researcher members in ISV activities); Secretary for the 2020-2021 term; and is President-elect for the 2022-2023 term.

She served as Co-Chair of the 2019 ISV Annual Congress in Ghent, playing a key role in identifying the Scientific Committee (SC) and planning the scientific program with the SC and also introduced further opportunities for junior researchers e.g. the “Bright Sparks in Vaccinology’ junior PI session and a career focus event illustrating opportunities beyond the purely academic career path.  During the COVID-19 pandemic she served as Co-chair for the ISV COVID-19 Vaccine Congress mini-series (2020 -2021). With Drs Shan Lu and Margaret Liu she wrote an article published in Emerging Microbes and Infections, which described the leadership role of the ISV in providing the global community with balanced presentations of progress and challenges in COVID-19 vaccine development.

Over the past 5 years she has annually contributed to the ISV as a workshop chair and as a plenary/workshop speaker. She regularly contributes to the ISV newsletters to publicise and feedback on the ISV’s work. She brings a trans European and North American perspective to the Society from her training and extensive research experience in several labs on these continents.   

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United Kingdom
President Emeritus

Ted Ross

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Portraits
Board Chairs

Denise Doolan

Denise Doolan
ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
Australia
Portraits

Manon Cox

Description

Dr. Manon M.J. Cox, MBA founded NextWaveBio early 2018 initially providing scientific and strategic direction to various biopharmaceutical companies. NextWaveBio’s mission is to bridge the gap between preclinical and clinical development by offering infrastructure and education around quality systems required for clinical development and manufacturing. Prior to that she led the development of Flublok®, the only FDA approved recombinant influenza vaccine at Protein Sciences Corporation where she served as President and Chief Executive Officer since April 2010 and Director since 2008. She joined Protein Sciences in 1998 as Director of Business Development and became Chief Operating Officer in 2003.

Previously she was with Gist-brocades, a large Dutch company specialized in fermentation, where she held various management positions, most recently in New Business Development and before that in Production and Research and Development.  Prior to joining Gist-brocades, she worked as a Molecular Biologist on the development of a PCR screening test for cervical cancer at the University of Amsterdam. 

She serves on the Board of Directors of Vaxxas, the Netherland-America Foundation including its Education Committee, the International Society of Vaccines, and various Scientific Advisory Boards in the vaccine development space.

Dr. Cox has received many honors and awards recognizing her stature as a leader in innovation and influenza, including in 2014 receiving a Doctorate in Humane Letters honoris causa from St. Joseph University and the Woman of Innovation award from the Connecticut Technology Council and was elected fellow in the International Society of Vaccines in 2015. Dr. Cox holds a Doctorate from the University of Wageningen, received her MBA with distinction from the University of Nyenrode and the University of Rochester, NY and holds a Doctorandus degree in Molecular Biology, Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Portraits
Board Members

Bruno Correia

Title
Assistant Professor, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland
Description

Dr. Bruno Correia trained at the University of Washington and The Scripps Research Institute.   Very early in his scientific career he found his fascination about protein structure and function. His PhD studies evolved in the direction of immunogen design and vaccine engineering which sparked his interest in the many needs and opportunities in vaccinology and translational research. His efforts resulted in an enlightening piece of work where for the first time, computationally designed immunogens elicited potent neutralizing antibodies. During his postdoctoral studies he joined a chemical biology laboratory at the Scripps Research Institute. In this stage he developed novel chemoproteomics methods for the identification of protein-small molecule interaction sites in complex proteomes. In March 2015, Dr. Correia joined the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) – Switzerland as a tenure track assistant professor. The focus of his research group is to develop computational tools for protein design with particular emphasis in applying these strategies to immunoengineering (e.g. vaccine and cancer immunotherapy). The activities in his laboratory focus on computational design methods development and experimental characterization of the designed proteins. His laboratory has been awarded with 2 prestigious research grants from the European Research Council. Dr. Correia has been awarded the prize for best teacher of Life sciences in 2019 and the Young Investigator Award of the Protein Society in 2021.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States

Manon Cox

Description

Dr. Manon M.J. Cox, MBA founded NextWaveBio early 2018 initially providing scientific and strategic direction to various biopharmaceutical companies. NextWaveBio’s mission is to bridge the gap between preclinical and clinical development by offering infrastructure and education around quality systems required for clinical development and manufacturing. Prior to that she led the development of Flublok®, the only FDA approved recombinant influenza vaccine at Protein Sciences Corporation where she served as President and Chief Executive Officer since April 2010 and Director since 2008. She joined Protein Sciences in 1998 as Director of Business Development and became Chief Operating Officer in 2003.

Previously she was with Gist-brocades, a large Dutch company specialized in fermentation, where she held various management positions, most recently in New Business Development and before that in Production and Research and Development.  Prior to joining Gist-brocades, she worked as a Molecular Biologist on the development of a PCR screening test for cervical cancer at the University of Amsterdam. 

She serves on the Board of Directors of Vaxxas, the Netherland-America Foundation including its Education Committee, the International Society of Vaccines, and various Scientific Advisory Boards in the vaccine development space.

Dr. Cox has received many honors and awards recognizing her stature as a leader in innovation and influenza, including in 2014 receiving a Doctorate in Humane Letters honoris causa from St. Joseph University and the Woman of Innovation award from the Connecticut Technology Council and was elected fellow in the International Society of Vaccines in 2015. Dr. Cox holds a Doctorate from the University of Wageningen, received her MBA with distinction from the University of Nyenrode and the University of Rochester, NY and holds a Doctorandus degree in Molecular Biology, Genetics and Biochemistry from the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Portraits

Lars Frelin

Title
Associate Professor/Researcher, Karolinska Institutet
Description

Lars Frelin, PhD, is a senior researcher, associate professor in virology and a principal investigator in the Vaccines and Immunotherapies against Viruses and Cancer (VIVAC) at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. His research is focused on the development of genetic vaccines for viral hepatitis, specifically for hepatitis B, C and D viruses, but also other infectious diseases like Sars-Cov-2. The research program also aims to establish and evaluate in vivo and in vitro models of the studied infectious diseases to enable appropriate evaluation of vaccine efficacy.  He is also the director for the study program in biomedical laboratory science and the master´s program in diagnostic cytology at Karolinska Institutet.  He teaches undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate students at Karolinska Institutet in the field of microbiology and vaccinology.

Dr. Frelin is an active senior researcher in the field of genetic vaccines, and has published >45 peer-reviewed scientific papers in the field.  He has participated in two clinical trials (phase I/II) using an in-house developed hepatitis C virus DNA-based vaccine in combination with in vivo electroporation.  He has also developed a new pre-clinical multi-needle device for high-speed injection of vaccines into tissues. The device has been evaluated in mice, rabbits and pigs.

Dr. Frelin is a cofounder of the Swedish Vaccine Factory that aims to commercialize genetic vaccines for viral diseases. Currently, the company is developing one immunotherapy for hepatitis B and D and one vaccine for Covid-19.  He is an appointed member of the Infrastructure Committee at Karolinska Institutet and the Steering Committee ANA Futura at Karolinska Institutet.

Anke Huckriede

Title
Professor of Vaccinology, University Medical Center Groningen
Description

Anke Huckriede, always interested in immunology and infectious diseases, arrived at the field of vaccinology only after some detours.  Anke studied cell biology and obtained her PhD in this field at the University of Bielefeld, Germany.  During a postdoc at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, Anke got involved in research on heat shock proteins which, at the time, were explored as cancer vaccines.  Though her research on heat shock protein-based vaccines was moderately successful, she became fascinated by vaccinology and subsequently turned to influenza vaccines.

Anke’s main interest is in understanding what (pheno)type of immune response is best suited to counteract a certain pathogen and how such an immune response can best be generated by vaccination. In this line, her work aims at improving immune responses to (influenza) vaccines by generating knowledge on the effects of pre-existing immunity on vaccine-induced responses, by elucidating the role of vaccine composition and of host-specific factors on the magnitude and quality of immune responses, and by developing new vaccine administration forms.

In 2011, she was appointed Professor of Vaccinology at the Department of Microbiology and Infection Prevention, University Medical Center Groningen.

Anke has been involved in various national and international vaccine consortia as participant, work package leader or co-coordinator.  She is founding member of the Division Vaccinology of the Royal Dutch Society for Microbiology (KNVM) and has been co-organizer of the Dutch Vaccine Symposium for many years.  Anke teaches vaccinology for medical and biology students and regularly presents on vaccines for the public. In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, she has been involved in advisory committees on coronavirus vaccination on local, regional, and national levels, writing regular columns on new developments for a Dutch medical journal, and giving many interviews on coronavirus vaccines for newspapers, news sites, radio and television.

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
Netherlands

Maria Issagouliantis

Title
Leading Researcher
Description

Dr. Maria Issagouliantis started her research carrier as a bioorganic chemist, and throughout the years developed a profile of immunology and vaccinology research. At Karolinska Institutet (Stockholm, Sweden) she led a project group working on the development of naked DNA vaccines against chronic viral infections and cancer with financial support of the Swedish Research Fund, Horizon 2020 program, and the Swedish Institute. From 2002-2010, she acted as the Swedish co-coordinator, and in 2011-2016, act as the coordinator of the Baltic partnership “Baltic Network against life-threatening viral infections” overseeing planning, organization and management of the activities in this field in 12 institutes from Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Finland and Russia. In 2017-2018, she coordinated the Initiation Project on Innovative Strategies of Vaccination and Immunotherapy INNOVIMMUNE for 5 Baltic countries, funded by the Swedish Institute.

Since 2013 she has been working at the Riga Stradins University, in EU projects “BALTINFECT” in 2013-2015, and “VACTRAIN” as coordinator in 2016-2018. EU project VACTRAIN/“Twinning on DNA vaccines against cancer” aimed to promote research on cancer vaccines, with partners in Poland, Sweden, Latvia and Ukraine. In 2018 she was attested as the leading researcher, and received research grants of the Latvian Research Council on immunotherapy of hepatitis C related liver cancer (2018-2019) and on in vitro and in vivo assessment of the direct immunomodulatory effects of HCV proteins (2020-2021).

In Russia, she pioneered the field of DNA immunization (first paper published 1999), developed candidate consensus DNA vaccines for the supportive immunotherapy of drug resistance in HIV-1 infection on the background of HAART. Lately, her group in the Gamaleya Research Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology focused on the development of DNA vaccines against oncoproteins of human papilloma virus, mainly HPV 16, for for immunotherapy of HPV related cervical cancer. Both arms of the research were and are currently supported by grants from the Russian Science Foundation (2015-2018, application pending) and the Russian Fund for Basic Research 2015-2022, totally eight grants, including collaborative grant with National Institutes of Health 2017-2019 “Development of therapeutic vaccines against papilloma virus for HIV infected men and women”.

She has an international group of Swedish, Latvian and Russian researchers.  Her main research focus is cancer associated with chronic viral infections and development of therapeutic DNA vaccines against these forms of cancer based on combination of viral and host tumor associated antigens, such as telomerase reverse transcriptase.  Research results have been published in over 90 papers in peer-reviewed international and national research journals.

 

Margaret Liu

Description

Professor Margaret A. Liu, obtained an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, a B.A. in Chemistry, summa cum laude, from Colorado College, and passed the Epreuve pour le Diplôme d’Enseignement, à l’unanimité (judges’ unanimous decision), in piano from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, and is the recipient of an honorary Medical Degree (MD honoris causa) from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and an honorary Doctorate of Science from Colorado College. She completed Internship and Residency in Internal Medicine and a Fellowship in Endocrinology, all at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She received Board Certification in Internal Medicine and in Endocrinology and Metabolism. Dr. Liu was a Visiting Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Instructor at Harvard Medical School, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, a Visiting Professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and the recipient of an NIH Physician Scientist Award. She served as Senior Director at Merck Research Laboratories, Vice President of Vaccines Research and Gene Therapy at Chiron Corporation, Vice-Chairman of Transgène, Senior Advisor in Vaccinology at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Executive Vice-Chair of the International Vaccine Institute, and was on the US NIH NIAID Council.

Her research has focused on novel technologies for vaccines and immune treatments for cancer. She pioneered the development of DNA vaccines, which are now in clinical trials for many human diseases and are licensed for several veterinary applications. She also was an innovator in the field of bispecific antibodies to activate T cells for tumor cell killing. The Nobel Committee invited her to lecture in the Karolinska Research Lecture series, and she was named by Discover magazine as one of the 50 most important female scientists. She consults world-wide for companies, investment firms, non-governmental organizations, and governmental scientific advisory bodies, and has held positions as an Adjunct Professor at UCSF, and as a Foreign Adjunct Professor at the Karolinska Institutet. Dr. Liu was previously the President of the International Society for Vaccines for the 2015- 2017 term, then President Emerita, and is currently the Chairman of the Board of ISV (2020-2021).

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Portraits

Shan Lu

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States
Portraits

Lenny Moise

Title
Director of Vaccine Research, EpiVax, Inc. and Research Professor, University of Georgia
Description

Lenny Moise, PhD, serves as the Vice President of Research at SeromYx Systems. He earned his PhD from the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Biochemistry at Brown University in Providence, RI, in 2002. His doctoral research in Dr. Edward Hawrot’s laboratory focused on structure-function relationships of snake neurotoxin interactions with the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. Following his PhD, Dr. Moise pursued postdoctoral training at Brown University, where he delved into the functional analysis of toxin binding sites engineered into toxin-insensitive ion channels. In 2005, he joined Dr. Anne De Groot’s laboratory at Brown University as an Instructor in Medicine in the Department of Medicine (Infectious Disease), where his research centered on T-cell epitope-driven vaccination and protein therapeutic immunogenicity. He joined EpiVax in Providence, RI, in 2006, where he served as the Director of Vaccine Research until 2022. Over this time, he led innovative T cell epitope-driven vaccine development projects, employing a comprehensive genomes-to-vaccine approach that combines immunoinformatic and immunologic methodologies. He also dedicated his efforts to the de-immunization of protein therapeutics through epitope modification. In 2008, Dr. Moise accepted a part-time appointment as Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Rhode Island, becoming a founding faculty member of the URI Institute for Immunology and Informatics, and was promoted to Associate Research Professor in 2014. Additionally, from 2020 to 2022, he was a part-time Research Professor in the Center for Vaccines and Immunology at the University of Georgia. Dr. Moise joined SeromYx in 2022, where he assumed the responsibilities of driving the scientific development of the Systems Serology platform and overseeing the management of both commercial and internally driven research projects.

 

Joon Haeng Rhee

Title
Professor of Microbiology, Chonnam National University Medical School
Description

Dr. Joon Haeng Rhee is a graduate of Chonnam National University Medical School and received PhD from the same university. He has been working on molecular microbial pathogenesis and vaccine biology for more than 30 years.

For the molecular microbial pathogenesis studies, his laboratory has been observing the V. vulnificus-host interactions using various molecular and cellular microbiological tools. His team was the first reporter of the whole genome sequence of V. vulnificus, which became one of the most widely used standard strains in the Vibrio research field. They identified an RTX (repeats in toxin) toxin as the culprit of deadly host-killing mechanism in the V. vulnificus infections and recently developed an effective preventive vaccine and therapeutic monoclonal antibody targeting a specific region of the toxin. Vaccine study was first started aiming the high mortality V. vulnificus infections. During the vaccine research, his team came across the finding that a flagellin protein of V. vulnificus has an excellent mucosal adjuvant effect in late 1990s, which was later proved by his group and others to be mediated by the TLR5 signaling. Currently his laboratory is studying the basic science and applications related to the flagellin-TLR5-mediated immune modulation. His team reported the mechanism how TLR5 is very well maintained in senescent animals and proposed that flagellin could be used an effective adjuvant for vaccines against infectious diseases affecting elderly population. Now flagellin is applied to the development of effective vaccines and immunotherapeutics against diverse diseases such as cancers, allergies, and Alzheimer’s disease.

He was the president of Korean Vaccine Society (KVS) from 2013 to 2015. He hosted the 2015 International Society for Vaccines (ISV) Congress in Seoul as a local co-chair. He was elected as an ISV Fellow and serves a member of ISV Executive Board. He served editorial board member for Infection and Immunity and Microbiology and Immunology journals. He is currently the director of Clinical Vaccine R&D Center and Combinatorial Tumor Immunotherapy Research Center of Chonnam National University. As of August 2021, he has more than 160 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and named as an inventor on 20 patents

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
South Korea

David Weiner

Title
Director, Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center and Executive Vice President, Wistar Institute; Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania
Description

Dr. David B. Weiner directs a translational molecular immunology research team focused on synthetic nucleic acid-based approaches for disease prevention and treatment.  His group is one of the first research teams in the field of Nucleic Acid Vaccines & Immune Therapies, advancing some of their first clinical trials.  His lab has contributed to multiple aspects and technology developments in advancing DNA vaccines.  Work resulted in clinical studies of an early Zika vaccine, the first MERS vaccine, an advanced Ebola Vaccine, a SARS-CoV2 Vaccine and a novel HIV immunogen platform, among others in the infectious disease arena.  In oncology his laboratory has helped to advance novel immune therapy approaches for HPV disease, prostate disease, GMB immunotherapy which are in clinical testing. This year a therapeutic DNA vaccine (HPV CIN) (VGX3100) moved into a licensure trial (REVEAL).  His lab work is also advancing dMAb in vivo antibody technologies for immune prevention and therapy.

Dr. Weiner’s laboratory has published over 430 papers/chapters & reviews and provided > 450 lectures. He has received several awards/honors, including the WW Smith Family Chair in Cancer Research - 2016, Vaccine Industry Association Outstanding Academic Research Laboratory (2015 & 2016) (runner up 2017, 2018, 2019), Top 20 Translational Research Laboratories of the Year (Nature Biotechnology 2016 - 2020), Stone family award for Cancer Research 2014, NIH Directors Translational Research Award 2011, and the Pennsylvania Life Sciences Achievement Award (2019). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 2011 and a Fellow of the International Society for Vaccines 2010.  He served as President of the International Society for Vaccines (2018-2020).  He serves on the Executive Committee of the UPENN CFAR and served as chair of the prestigious Gene Therapy and Vaccine Training Program at the University of Pennsylvania (2004-2016).  He is currently a Wistar Institute Professor, Director of the Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center and the Executive Vice President of the Wistar Institute, and a Professor Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania.   Dr. Weiner has been an avid teacher, trainer, advisor, and advocate for students, fellows and junior faculty as he is highly committed to developing of the careers of young scientists.  

ISV Fellow of the Month
Country
United States