Tom Chiller MD MPHTM
Chief, Mycotic Diseases Branch; Associate Director for Global Health, Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA
At the CDC, Tom Chiller provides leadership for fungal disease activities, which include detection, prevention and response activities, policy and advocacy, both nationally and internationally. He also serves as the associate director for global programs in the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases. He remains actively involved in antimicrobial resistance, healthcare associated infections, molecular epidemiology and laboratory activities for fungal diseases. Dr Chiller is board certified in infectious diseases and is a faculty member in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Emory School of Medicine. During the past decade with the Mycotic Diseases Branch, Dr Chiller has led efforts to end deaths from opportunistic fungal infections in HIV, control the spread of MDR Candida auris and azole resistant Aspergillus, and identify emerging mold infections.
Patrick Francioli
Patrick Francioli studied Medicine in Lausanne and undertook several missions for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Bangladesh, South Vietnam, Iran and Indonesia. He did postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases Laboratory in Lausanne and several internships in American universities. He was appointed Chief Physician in hospital epidemiology/Infection Control at the CHUV in Lausanne and full professor in 1994. From 2000 to 2006, he was head of the Infectious Diseases Department, and from 2006-2012 was Dean of the Faculty of Biology and Medicine at the University of Lausanne, from which he has now retired.
Patrick Francioli has been internationally recognised for his expertise and his research work in the field of hospital infections, infectious endocarditis, Lyme disease and AIDS. He contributed to the influence of Swiss research as President of the Swiss HIV Cohort Study for 16 years. He has published more than 400 scientific articles. He was one of the founders of Swissnoso, a Swiss expert group dedicated to the reduction of nosocomial infections and multi-resistant microorganisms. He led the Programme Committee for Europe’s premier infectious disease meeting (ECCMID) for many years.
No potential conflicts of interest.
Former Board members are:
Jorge Alvar (2013-2015), David Denning (2013-2018), Michel Glauser (2013-2020), Victor Rydgren (2013-2021) and Nigel Lightfoot (2013-2021).
Ameyo M. DORKENOO
Associate Professor in parasitology and mycology at faculty of Health Sciences in University of Lomé, Togo
Prof. Fathallah Akila
Head of the Department of Parasitology and Mycology at Farhat Hached University Hospital; Sousse; Tunisia.
Professor of Medicine at Faculty of Medicine; Sousse; Tunisia.
Teacher, Parasitology and Tropical Medicine at Faculty of Medicine of Djibouti.
Sara Werkneh
Sara Werkneh is a public health professional with seven years of experience in the Eritrean Ministry of Health where she worked in non-communicable diseases prevention and control.
She is a CSLA scholar and has a Master’s degree in public health with a specialization in Epidemiology from EHESP in Paris, France in 2021.
She has experience in research, public health analysis, and hands-on epidemiology. Furthermore, she has an interest in Global Health and finding solutions to public health problems with an emphasis on LMICs.
Sara is the co-author of a forthcoming book on non-communicable diseases.
She Joined GAFFI in October 2021 as an intern and she is working on the ongoing survey on access to diagnostics and treatment as well as modelling of fungal diseases.
Yolande SISSINTO SAVI de TOVE
Associate Professor in Parasitology-Mycology. Centre National Hospitalier Universitaire - Hubert Koutoukou Maga (CNHU-HKM). Faculté des Sciences de la Santé/Université d’Abomey Calavi (FSS/UAC)
Ana Alastruey-Izquierdo
Ana Alastruey-Izquierdo has an MsC in Microbiology and Parasitology and in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from Complutense University (Madrid, Spain). She got her PhD in 2009 under the title “Molecular identification and antifungal susceptibility profile of human pathogenic fungi”. After completing her degree she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Public Health Research Institute (New Jersey, USA) working in antifungal resistance. She joined the Mycology Reference Laboratory at the Spanish National Centre for Microbiology (Madrid, Spain) in 2011 where she is working at the present as a Research Scientist. She has been a visitor Scientist at The Fungal Biodiversity Centre (CBS, Utrecht, The Netherlands), Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT, Seibersdorf, Austria) and European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI, Hinxton, UK).
Her main area of research is focused on Medical mycology: Identification and early diagnosis of invasive fungal infections, standardization of antifungal susceptibility testing methods, resistance mechanisms to antifungals, the taxonomy of fungal species, molecular biology and bioinformatics.
In the last years, she has been a principal investigator in projects dealing with new antifungals, antifungal resistance, cryptic species of fungal pathogens, developing diagnostic methods for fungal infections, epidemiology and microbiome.
She has published over 125 peer-reviewed papers, including several guidelines for the diagnosis of fungal infections and book chapters. She is a regular speaker and chair of national and international conferences. She collaborates with WHO and PAHO in several projects. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Fungi and belongs to the editorial board of Mycopathologia and Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology.
She is the current chair of the EFISG (Fungal Infection Study group) from ESCMID (unpaid), Spanish delegate in the ECMM (European Confederation of Medical Mycology) board (unpaid), Fellow of the ECMM (FECMM), vice president of the Spanish Society for Mycology (AEM) (unpaid), on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Joint Program Initiaive on Antimicrobial Resistance (unpaid) the co-supervisor of the EUPHEM (European Public Health Microbiology training program) from ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) in Spain. She chairs the WHO Technical advisory Fungal disease expert group (unpaid).
Ana has received research support in her laboratory from F2G and Scynexis and has given talks on behalf of Gilead, Pfizer, MSD and Astellas.
Richard Penney, Global Health Programme Associate.
Having grown up in Herefordshire, Richard studied Natural Sciences at Durham University, specialising in Biology and Chemistry. He completed his degree in 2020 (though he is yet to have a graduation due to the pandemic). His Masters research project was on the topic of antimicrobial resistance.
He joined GAFFI in October 2020 as an intern and was subsequently offered the job of Global Health Programme Associate, which mainly involves working with Emma Orefuwa (Director of Programmes for Africa) on the ongoing Access to Diagnostics survey, in which they are documenting the availability of various procedures and diagnostics related to fungal disease.
