Dr. Novick received his NYU MD with honors in microbiology and became interested in S. aureus during a post-doc with Martin Pollock at the NIMR in London. After a second post doc in bacterial genetics with Rollin Hotchkiss at Rockefeller. He joined the PHRI in NYC where he developed the fields of staphylococcal molecular genetics and of plasmid biology, founding the plasmid biology department at PHRI and the journal Plasmid. After 10 years as Director of the PHRI, he returned to the NYU School of Medicine and to full-time lab work, where he continued to make important contributions to the plasmid field, discovered the agr quorum-sensing system that regulates staphylococcal virulence and the phage-inducible staphylococcal pathogenicity islands (SaPIs). He is a fellow of the AAAS, the ASM, and the NAS, and is a member of the PNAS Editorial Board. He is currently the Recanati Family Professor of Science, Emeritus, and is engaged in developing the SaPIs as a non-antibiotic anti staphylococcal platform.

Bettina Loffler is the Director of the Institute of Medical Microbiology at Jena University Hospital. She obtained her degree in Human Medicine in Munich and completed her training in medical microbiology in Münster. She took over the direction of the institute in Jena that performs the microbiological diagnostic for the University Hospital and further external hospital. Regarding research she is interested in the host-pathogen interactions of S. aureus with different types of host cells. Her research group has established different in-vivo and in-vitro infection models that enable to analyze the infection process. Lung infections, in particular viral-bacterial co-infections are an important research focus of the group.

Prof. Dr. Friedrich Götz research focus is staphylococcal physiology and infection biology: biofilm formation, mechanism of excretion cytoplasmic proteins, lipoproteins, and immune response, dissolved inorganic carbon supply systems, or developing of new antimicrobial compounds. He was President and Vice president of the VAAM (association of general and applied microbiology) in Germany. He studied of Biology and Chemistry at the University München (LMU). In 1978 he finished his PhD in Microbiology and habilitated in 1985. In 1987, he became appointed professor and chair of "Microbial Genetics" at the University of Tübingen. From 2015 up to now he is endowed the Senior-Professorship. In 1989, he received the DECHEMA award for developing a new cloning system in Staphylococcus carnosus. In 1991, he received DGHM award for scientific work in microbial genetics.

Dr. Fischetti is Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology at the Rockefeller University, in NY. He has over 45 years of experience in the anti-infectives field, nearly all of which was spent at Rockefeller. His laboratory was the first to identify lytic enzymes as novel therapeutics to treat infections caused by the major antibiotic resistant bacterial pathogens. The first lysin against methicillin resistant S. aureus (MRSA) infections has successfully completed phase 2 clinical trials and is currently in phase 3 testing; the first antibiotic alternative to achieve this milestone. Other lysins, particularly against gram-negative pathogens, are also in the clinical development pipeline. His group was also the first to identify the LPXTG motif, necessary for attaching surface proteins on the gram-positive cell wall. This motif is now being used as a target for antibiotic development.

Dr. Silverman is a Professor of Medicine and Pathology at the NYU School of Medicine. Dr. Silverman is a clinically active rheumatologist, and elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the Henry Kunkel Society, and a Master of the American College of Rheumatology, and he has been NIH supported for over 30 years. Since 2011 has been a senior faculty member of the NYU School of Medicine, and he has published over 160 scientific papers on topics that include the properties of microbial B cell superantigens, mechanisms of autoimmunity, and anti-microbial defenses. For more than 20 years he has studied the properties of the prototypic bacterial superantigen for B cells, Staphylococcal protein A (SpA). He is also the Director of the annual course at Cold Spring Harbor Labs on “Phage Display Technology”, he has recently adapted this technology to the isolation and characterization of B cell epitopes in the toxins of S. aureus from gene fragment libraries, as a step towards reverse engineering of a protective clinical vaccine.

Dr. Wu is an associate professor at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Her research program centers on the development of next generation technologies to minimize the threats of sepsis and pandemics, including biomimetic nanoparticles for universal influenza vaccines (Science, Nature Nanotechnology), needle-free delivery of drugs and vaccines, and antimicrobial activity of blue light combined with phytochemicals (Sci. Trans. Med.). In addition, her team has pioneered several innovative technologies to accelerate platelet regeneration with infrared light (Sci. Trans. Med.), to augment skin vaccination with laser (Nature Com.), and to selectively induce microvasculature leakage for efficiently measuring circulating biomarkers without drawing any blood (Biomaterials).

Since 2007, Javad Aman has been the President and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of Integrated BioTherapeutics, Inc. (IBT), a US biotechnology company focused on discovery of vaccines and immunotherapeutics for emerging infectious diseases. Javad completed the school of Pharmacy at University of Frankfurt in 1990 and went on to complete his Ph.D. in molecular immunology at Johannes Wolfgang University in Mainz, Germany from 1990-1994. He then spent 6 years at NIH and University of Virginia as post-doctoral fellow. From 2000-2007 he worked at US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious diseases as a Principal Investigator on development of vaccines for bacterial toxins as well as viral hemoragic fever viruses. In 2007 he founded IBT to translate his research findings into practical solutions for emerging infectious diseases. At IBT he developed several large programs primarily funded by US government grants. His team has developed the first multicomponent, entirely toxoid-based vaccine candidate for S. aureus called IBT-V02, currently nearing clinical evaluation. Javad has published over 130 peer reviewed publications.

Dominique Missiakas is Professor of Microbiology and Director of the Howard T. Ricketts Laboratory, a Regional Biocontainment laboratory dedicated to Infectious Diseases research at the University of Chicago. She received her PhD in Enzymology from the University of Paris XI in 1991. Her studies on Staphylococcus aureus focus on pathways that support envelope assembly and protein secretion in this organism. In addition, she studies factors that support S. aureus colonization and mediate immune evasion during infection with the goal of developing therapeutics against S. aureus diseases.

Richard A. Proctor is a Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Medicine and Medical Microbiology, University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, retired from Merck as the Global Director for Infectious Diseases for Antibiotics and Antifungals, and continues an active consulting career for industry/universities/research funding agencies; He has made contributions in the fields of endotoxin activation of macrophages, septic shock, bacterial adhesion, S. aureus pathogenesis, and antibiotic resistant Gram-positive cocci with over 200 publications. Most recently, he has been involved in the assessment of staphylococcal vaccine immunology. Specific studies include receptors that regulate macrophage activation during endotoxemia, small-colony variants in staphylococcal infections, bacterial energetics, the protective immune response to S. aureus infections, and antimicrobial resistance.

Research in her laboratory focuses on the mechanisms by which bacterial pathogens cope with the harsh conditions encountered within the host environment. Specifically, she is interested in the impact of host-induced metal starvation on microbial physiology and how this stressor affects biofilm community structure, antibiotic resistance, and disease severity during chronic infection. This interest in metal homeostasis began during graduate school when she studied the magnesium transport systems of Bacillus subtilis and characterized a magnesium-sensing riboswitch. This interest expanded into metal homeostasis at the host-pathogen interface during her postdoctoral work on heme toxicity in Staphylococcus aureus. In her independent lab, she continued her interested in metal homeostasis at the host-pathogen interface and how this impacts intraspecies and interspecies interactions.

Yves Dufrêne is a Research Director at the National Fund for Scientific Research and a Professor at UCLouvain, Belgium, where he obtained his Bioengineering degree and Ph.D. He is interested in understanding the molecular architecture, elasticity, and adhesion of microbial pathogens, focusing primarily on staphylococci. This involves developing state-of-the-art single-molecule and single-cell nano techniques and combining these with fluorescence and biology approaches to address the cell surface. Currently, his challenge is to further push the limits of live-cell nanoscopy to understand how pathogens use their surface molecules to guide cell adhesion and trigger infections, and to contribute to the development of anti-adhesion strategies for treating biofilm-infections.

Dr. Jose Procopio Moreno Senna Graduated in Pharmacy from the Federal University, Master’s degree in Microbiology, Pathogenesis of Microorganisms and Agents Antinfectieux - Université Paris Sud, PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, pos doc Institut Pasteur, Unité des Agents Antibactériens. He is specialist in Public Health at the Institute of Immunobiological Technology - BioManguinhos - FIOCRUZ. His experience in the field of clinical microbiology, working mainly on the following topics: multidrug resistant (MDR) bacteria, development of passive immunotherapy - therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, vaccines and immunodiagnosis for MDR bacteria.

Dr. Yinduo Ji is a professor in the Department of Veterinary Biomedical Sciences at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. He obtained his PhD from Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and did his postdoctoral training with Dr. Pat Cleary in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Minnesota school of medicine. He joined the GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceutical R&D, where for 5 years he was involved in anti-infective drug discovery. His lab is interested in the functional genomics, pathogenesis of Staphylococcus aureus, and antibacterial discovery.

Dr. Sarah Rowe-Conlon is a research assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Here, she focuses on determining the precise mechanism by which conventional antibiotics fail to eradicate bacterial infections. In 2016, she joined the lab of Brian Conlon at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a research assistant professor. Here, she is focused on creating therapeutic solutions for recalcitrant bacterial infections.