Meet our Keynote Speakers
Dr. Ana Allende
Dr. Ana Allende from the Spanish National Research Council in Spain is based in Murcia. She is a Research Professor with focus on safety of fresh produce and water. She holds several positions including 1) Chair of the BIOHAZ panel at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), 2) Member of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Meetings on Microbiological Risk Assessment (JEMRA), and 2) Coordinator of health risks in the CSIC emergency committee. She has built up more than twenty-five years of scientific research in the area of microbial safety of water and fresh produce but also management experience by executing and guiding research projects, including the coordination of 8 international projects. She has also an active role as Expert Evaluator for the Horizon Europe Programme. She is the author of more than 240 research articles published in international journals included in the Scientific Citation Index (SCI) on food and water safety. H-index = 65.
Dr. Sooria Balasegaram
Sooria Balasegaram has been working in public health for almost 30 years. She was a medical Consultant in Communicable Disease Control in London from 2006-2010, and since then, as a consultant epidemiologist at UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) Field Services covering the South East and London regions of England. She is the current UKHSA theme lead for Surveillance in the Health Protection Research Unit for Gastrointestinal Infections. During her time at UKHSA, she has worked on and chaired the development of the English Public Health STEC guidance and the Enteric Fever Guidance. She has worked with the UKHSA national gastrointestinal infections team on outbreaks and surveillance of a range of gastrointestinal pathogens, and acted as the Lead Epidemiologist for STEC for England between 2022 and 2024. She has led on the epidemiological investigation and management of numerous outbreaks, and surveillance and research projects in gastrointestinal infections particularly in STEC. Sooria is a supervisor for the UK Field Epidemiology Training Programme and has previously been a coordinator and supervisor for the European Programme for Interventional Epidemiology Training and the European Public Health Microbiology Training Programme.
Dr. Paula Coccia
Paula Alejandra Coccia is a Professor of Pediatrics at the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires University, School of Medicine, and a Consultant Paediatric Nephrologist in the Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Department of Pediatrics, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina. She graduated as a medical doctor from the University of Buenos Aires in 1991 and completed her clinical training in Pediatric Nephrology at the Hospital de Niños Ricardo Gutiérrez in Buenos Aires. She has been a member of the Pediatric Nephrology team at the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires since 2003. Dr Coccia currently serves as Coordinator of the Pediatric Renal Transplant Unit, providing specialised care to children with advanced kidney disease and those requiring renal transplantation, as well as long-term post-transplant follow-up. In the academic setting, she is Director of the Pediatric Nephrology Fellowship Program at the University of Buenos Aires, based at the Hospital Italiano. She is also an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires University, School of Medicine, where she is actively involved in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, and in the supervision of residents and fellows. Her research activities are closely linked to national and multicentre collaborative studies conducted through the Pediatric Nephrology Committee of the Argentine Society of Pediatrics. Her main research interests include Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli–associated haemolytic uraemic syndrome (STEC-HUS), atypical haemolytic uraemic syndrome, complement-mediated renal diseases, chronic kidney disease in children, and pediatric renal transplantation. She has participated in and led research projects aimed at improving early diagnosis, therapeutic strategies, and long-term outcomes in these conditions.
Dr. Lauren Cowley
Dr. Lauren Cowley is a senior lecturer in microbial genomics and bioinformatics in the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath. Lauren joined the university as prize fellow of bioinformatics in 2018, progressed to lecturer in 2022 and senior lecturer in 2023. Lauren’s background is in public health and genomic epidemiology. She has worked on several international outbreaks, including implementing real-time genomic surveillance during the West Africa Ebola outbreak and working as an embedded scientist on the COVID-19 Taskforce in the UK Cabinet Office. She also previously worked at Public Health England (now UKHSA) in the Gastrointestinal Bacteria Reference Unit. Her research centres around genomic epidemiology, GWAS and machine learning for microbial genomics. She has a special interest in Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli since her PhD on the genomic basis of phage typing of STEC O157.
Prof. Steen Ethelberg
I’m Steen Ethelberg, an epidemiologist with the Statens Serum Institut, in Copenhagen, Denmark. There I work as a senior scientist in epidemiology and am head of Section for Zoonotic, Food and Waterborne Infections at the Department of Epidemiology. We are responsible for surveillance, epidemiological analyses and outbreak investigations within the area of food- and waterborne and zoonotic infections in Denmark. We’re also the host site for the European field epidemiology training program, EPIET, and I’m the EPIET supervisor for Denmark. I’m is also a professor at the Global Health Department at University of Copenhagen. My research interest concern disease surveillance methods and the epidemiology of gastro-intestinal infectious diseases, including STEC/VTEC, with the aim of, hopefully, obtaining better prevention hereof.
Dr. Claire Jenkins
I started working for UK Health Security Agency, then the Public Health Laboratory Service, as a Clinical Scientist in 1996. I became head of the E. coli Reference Laboratory in 2012 and deputy head of the Gastrointestinal Bacteria Reference Unit in 2014, the same year as we implemented whole genome sequencing as our routine typing method for surveillance and outbreak investigation.
Dr. Sally Johnson
Dr Sally Johnson is a consultant paediatric nephrologist at the Great North Children’s Hospital (Newcastle, UK) and the lead paediatric clinician at the National Renal Complement Therapeutics Centre (based in Newcastle, UK), which has a national role in the management of patients with the rare kidney diseases atypical HUS (aHUS) and C3 glomerulopathy (C3G). She undertook clinical and academic training in the West Midlands, including a PhD in aHUS. She was Chief Investigator of The National Study of MPGN and C3G and of the ECUSTEC trial, an RCT of Eculizumab in STEC-HUS, and co-applicant for the Stopping Eculizumab Safely in aHUS trial. She was Research Secretary for the British Association for Paediatric Nephrology (BAPN) (2019-2022) and chair of the BAPN Clinical Studies Group until 2024. She is chair of the UK Kidney Association STEC-HUS Rare Disease Group. She is a member of the Kidney Research UK grants committee. She is a late discoverer of running and has run five half-marathons and the London marathon, raising money for research into kidney disease.
Alec Kyriakides
Alec Kyriakides is a food safety consultant with over 35 years experience in the industry. In his 28 years with the retailer Sainsbury’s, Alec managed safety, quality, supplier performance, technical training, serious incidents, customer complaints, analytical assurance and the in-house accredited laboratory. Prior to Sainsbury’s, he worked in food manufacturing including the dairy and brewing industries. He is the co-author of books on the practical control of food borne pathogens including Salmonella, Listeria, C. botulinum, Campylobacter and E. coli. Alec has sat on a number of influential industry and government committees and is currently Chair of the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food. He is a Non Executive Board Director of Campden BRI, a Trustee of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), Chair of the Safe to Trade Technical Standards Committee and Chair of the FSA Root Cause Analysis Steering Committee. Alec is an Honorary Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast.
Stefano Morabito
Stefano Morabito, MSc (Biology). Director of the Food borne Diseases Unit within the Department of Food Safety, Nutrition, and Veterinary Public Health at the Italian National Institute of Health. Serves as Director of the European Union Reference Laboratory for E. coli in the food and feed sector and Co-Director of the European Union Reference Laboratory for Food- and Water-borne Bacteria in the Public Health sector. Leads research projects on the molecular basis of virulence in Shiga toxin-producing E. coli and other pathogenic E. coli strains, as well as the ARIES research infrastructure dedicated to applying genomics to public health microbiology and high-intensity data analysis. Author of numerous peer-reviewed publications on the epidemiology of STEC infections, their circulation in animal reservoirs and the environment, and the evolution of virulence in these microorganisms. Edited the book Pathogenic Escherichia coli: Molecular and Cellular Microbiology, published by Caister Academic Press. Coordinates the IRIDA-ARIES platform, designed for data collection and analysis to enhance genomic surveillance of human infections caused by food borne pathogens, including STEC. His work focuses on promoting awareness of the One Health approach to address food borne infections and supporting the transition toward a sustainable and equitable food system in the medium to long term.
Prof. Andrew Roe
Professor Andrew J. Roe is Director of Research for the School of Infection and Immunity at the University of Glasgow and an internationally recognised microbiologist whose research focuses on the physiology and pathogenesis of Escherichia coli. A graduate of the University of Aberdeen, Andrew completed his BSc (Hons) in Microbiology before undertaking a PhD with Professor Ian Booth, investigating how weak acids such as acetic and benzoic acid inhibit bacterial physiology—work that helped illuminate the molecular basis of widely used food preservatives. He then moved into postdoctoral research with Professor David Gally, shifting his focus toward bacterial virulence and the emerging pathogen E. coli O157:H7. This period laid the foundations for his long-standing interest in how pathogenic E. coli adapt to, survive within and exploit host environments. Andrew joined the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in 2006, establishing a research group within the Institute of Infection, Immunity & Inflammation. His team investigates metabolic regulation, niche adaptation and toxin production in pathogenic E. coli, with a particular emphasis on the role of host-derived metabolites such as D-serine in shaping bacterial behaviour. His group has made major contributions to understanding pathogen evolution, regulatory plasticity and the mechanisms that underpin severe disease outcomes, including meningitis and bloodstream infection. Promoted through Senior Lecturer and Reader to Professor in 2018, Andrew was appointed Head of Bacteriology in 2020. In this leadership role he is committed to supporting early-career researchers, championing research integrity and fostering an inclusive, collaborative environment for the next generation of microbiologists. His research has been continuously funded by the BBSRC, MRC, Wellcome Trust, EPSRC, EU innovation programmes and multiple charitable organisations. He has published over 100 papers and reviews, and his work spans fundamental bacterial physiology to translational approaches aimed at developing new anti-virulence strategies. Andrew is an invited speaker at major international meetings, a co-author of a European Academies Science Advisory Council position paper on antimicrobial drug discovery, and a member of the editorial board of Microbial Cell. He is also active in public engagement, contributing to radio, print and science-communication events on antimicrobial resistance, food safety and emerging infections.