Dr Rada has been a Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Georgia (Athens, GA, USA) and has been running his independent research group since 2012. He completed his Bsc at the Eötvös Lóránd University (1998, Budapest, Hungary), Ph.D. at the Semmelweis University Medical School (2005, Budapest, Hungary), and postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (2011, MD, USA). He has more than two decades of research experience and close to 70 PubMed-cited scientific articles in innate immunity and host-pathogen interactions. Investigating interactions of neutrophils with respiratory pathogens including Staphylococcus aureus in cystic fibrosis airways represents one of his recent research focuses.

Dr. Barbara M. Bröker's group is interested in the immune control of bacteria, in particular the complex interplay between Staphylococcus aureus and the adaptive immune system. She studied medicine and philosophy and did postdoctoral work in immunology in London (UK), Erlangen and Hamburg (Germany). In 2000, Barbara was appointed Professor of Immunology at the University of Greifswald, Germany. She is head of the Institute of Immunology and enjoys teaching immunology to medical and life science students.

Prof. Dr. Friedrich Götz is endowed Senior-Professorship at the University of Tübingen, Germany, since 2015. He is working for much microbiology/immunology related journals as reviewer or as associate editor and is consultant for various national and international research institutions. Since 2011, he is a member of the European Academy of Microbiology (EAM). He supervised more than 120 PhD students and postdocs, more than 15 obtained a professorship. His research focus is staphylococcal physiology and infection biology: biofilm formation, mechanism of excretion of cytoplasmic proteins, lipoproteins, and immune response, dissolved inorganic carbon supply systems, or developing of new antimicrobial compounds. He published more than 380 peer-reviewed papers which received > 37,000 citations and his h-index is 110 based on Google Scholar.

Jan Maarten van Dijl is Professor of Molecular Bacteriology at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in Groningen, the Netherlands. His research addresses bacterial gene expression, protein localization and secretion, bacteria-host interactions, bacterial pathogenesis, antimicrobial resistance and the imaging of bacterial infections. Prof. van Dijl has supervised 69 PhD students, published over 300 peer-reviewed papers, and is the inventor on 16 patents. He is speaker of the research programme Microbes in Health and Disease at the UMCG, and he has been coordinator of several national and international (EU-funded) research programmes.

Karen Moreau is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Lyon1, France, and has been carrying out her research in the Staphylococcal Pathogenesis team since 2012. After starting her career in virology, she joined Professor François Vandenesch's group to study the decipher interactions between S. aureus and P. aeruginosa in context of co-infections. She also explore the role of RNAin the regulation of S. aureus virulence.

Lindsey Shaw earned his PhD in the laboratory of Professor Simon Foster at the University of Sheffield, UK before moving to the USA to perform postdoctoral studies at the University of Georgia and the University of Missouri. He established his independent laboratory at the University of South Florida in 2007, where he is now the Richard and Patricia Wood Endowed Professor of Natural Sciences and Vice Chair of the Department of Molecular Biosciences. His work focuses on regulatory pathways that influence disease progression in Staphylococcus aureus.

Dr. Marc Burian's group is interested in the regulatory adaptation and reprogramming of gene expression of staphylococci, in particular Staphylococcus aureus and S. epidermidis, during colonization versus infection in the authentic human environment. Dr. Burian completed his PhD in microbiology in 2010 at the University of Tübingen in Germany. He did postdoctoral work in molecular biology and proteomics at the Universities of Greifswald and Tübingen. Since 2019, Dr. Burian is group leader at the Department of Dermatology and Allergology, RWTH University Hospital Aachen (Germany)

Mark Brönstrup studied Chemistry at the Philipps-Universität Marburg and at the Imperial College in London and received his doctorate from the Technical University Berlin in Organic Chemistry. He at Sanofi and its predecessor companies worked from 2000 to 2013, complemented by a research sabbatical in 2003 at Harvard Medical School. Since December 2013, he has been head of the Chemical Biology Department at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig and W3 Professor at the University of Hannover. His research is focused on the discovery, the characterization and the optimization of novel antiinfective drugs. His work on virulence inhibitors includes the CARB-X funded program on alpha-toxins that has recently entered development.

Professor Motoyuki Sugai is the Director of the Antimicrobial Resistance Research Center (AMR-RC) at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS). He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology in 1987 and served for 18 years as a professor of Bacteriology at Hiroshima University. While his early research focused on staphylococcal infections, his work has since expanded to encompass both Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens, with a primary focus on antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Professor Sugai currently oversees the Japan Antimicrobial Resistant Bacterial Surveillance (JARBS) program, a national genomic surveillance initiative monitoring key antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, including ESBL-producing and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (MDRP), Acinetobacter spp. (MDRA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Professor Sugai is actively engaged in both national and international policy and advisory groups. He serves on several official committees for Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, and serves on the Risk Assessment Working Group for Antimicrobial Resistance at the Food Safety Commission in Cabinet Office, Japan. He has been listed on the FAO/WHO Roster of Experts for foodborne antimicrobial resistance and is a member of the WHO Advisory Groups on Critically Important Antimicrobials and the Bacterial Priority Pathogen List. Under his leadership, the AMR-RC has been designated as a WHO Collaborating Center for AMR Surveillance and Research since 2021. Professor Sugai has published over 300 research papers in his career.

Dr. Paula M. Tribelli is a researcher and adjunct professor at the University of Buenos Aires, with a strong background in microbiology and biotechnology. Her current work bridges academia, healthcare, and industry, leading collaborative projects with major pediatric hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. Her group is less than 5-years old and they are focused on respiratory infections and antimicrobial resistance. She was awarded in 2017 with the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt fellowship in Germany to work with Prof. Em. Dr. Friederich Gotz and continues collaborating with research groups abroad. Her work aims to improve our knowledge of bacterial interactions and their consequences in the clinical setting field.

Peter Karp, Ph.D., Technical Director of the Bioinformatics Research Group at SRI International, works in the interdisciplinary field of bioinformatics, which develops computer-science methods for managing and analyzing the burgeoning quantities of biological data and knowledge. Karp has been a pioneer in metabolic-pathway bioinformatics. His group has developed a metabolic-pathway database called EcoCyc that charts the complete biochemical factory within an Escherichia coli cell. His group has also developed algorithms for visualization of metabolic networks, for predicting anti-bacterial drug targets within metabolic networks, and for predicting the metabolic pathways of an organism whose genome has been sequenced. The latter algorithm has been applied to thousands of organisms to produce the BioCyc database collection. Karp has authored more than 190 publications in computer science and bioinformatics. He is an SRI Fellow, a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Samane Rahmdel is a postdoctoral researcher in the Microbial Genetics group at the University of Tübingen, Germany. She earned her Ph.D. in Food microbiology from Shiraz University, Iran, and completed a sabbatical research fellowship at the Department of Biotechnology, University of Verona, Italy. Her current research focuses on neurotransmitter-producing skin and gut commensal microbiota and their interactions with the host.

Prof. Dr. Siegbert Rieg is an internist and infectious diseases specialist and is head of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany. One of his research areas is host-pathogen interaction and clinical disease in Staphylococcus aureus infection with a particular focus on S. aureus bacteremia and endocarditis. S. aureus bacteremia is an acute, life-threatening infection which represents an immense challenge for hospitals to provide fast and interdisciplinary management. S. aureus bacteremia carries a high risk of complications such as metastatic foci, endocarditis, severe sepsis or recurrences. The reported in-hospital mortality ranges between 15% and 30%. Since 2006 all patients with S. aureus bacteremia are prospectively evaluated by the infectious disease consultation service and enrolled into different cohort studies and registries. His research focuses on innovative diagnostic approaches as well as therapeutic management strategies and on the impact of adherence to infectious disease specialist recommendations.

Dr. Tao Jin is a Consultant Rheumatologist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital and an Associate Professor and Adjunct Lecturer at Gothenburg University, Sweden. His research focuses on understanding the disease mechanisms of septic arthritis and developing new therapies to prevent rapid joint damage and improve long-term outcomes. He has published over 80 scientific articles, supervised multiple PhD students, and received major research grants from the Swedish Research Council and ALF (the Swedish government funding program for clinical research and education). Tao Jin’s laboratory is recognized as a world-leading expert in murine models of Staphylococcus aureus septic arthritis. His research is currently expanding to include epidemiological studies in collaboration with epidemiologists. In addition, a clinical trial is in the planning phase together with leading experts in infectious diseases.

Dr Read has been a Professor of Medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases since 2009. He completed his BSc at the University of London, Ph. D. in Genetics at Leicester University, and postdoctoral fellowships at Emory University. From 1998-2003, he was a faculty member at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland and from 2003-2009, he was a group leader at the Naval Medical Research Center in Rockville. He has published more than 150 PubMed cited scientific articles on bacterial genomics and metagenomics.