Our Team
Coordinating Committee of Scientific Activities (CCSA)
Carrie Tudor
Chair - CCSA
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Carrie Tudor has worked in global health for over 20 years on various global health projects throughout Asia and Africa. She earned a BSN and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and a MPH from Emory University. Following her PhD, she completed a Fogarty Global Health Post-doctoral research fellowship at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (now the African Health Research Institute). Her research interests are focused on the occupational risk factors for TB among healthcare workers, airborne infection prevention and control, and preventing TB and other infections in healthcare workers.
Tudor is the TB Project Director for the International Council of Nurses working to build the capacity of nurses related to TB/MDR-TB and patient-centred care in China, the Russian Federation, and seven sub-Saharan African countries.
Rovina Ruslami
Universitas Padjadjaran, Indonesia
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Rovina Ruslami is Professor of Clinical Pharmacology in the Faculty of Medicine at Universitas Padjadjaran in Bandung, Indonesia. Her main research areas are pharmacology of tuberculosis treatment and clinical trial (DS-TB, MDR-TB, Latent TB Infection, and TB Meningitis).
Richard Anthony
National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands
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Improving the diagnosis of tuberculosis has been the main focus of Richard Anthony’s work for almost 20 years. This has ranged from updating microscopic protocols to the development of molecular assays.
His work in the Netherlands tuberculosis reference laboratory currently involves the use of genome sequencing for diagnostics, its quality control and potential to monitor the emergence and spread of successful mycobacterial strains with respect to epidemiological type and drug resistance.
Niesje Jansen-Aaldring
KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Netherlands
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Niesje Jansen-Aaldring is a registered nurse and has been working as senior consultant for KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation since 2008. Since the end of 2021, she is Team Lead of the Dutch Team of KNCV.
She has an enormous amount of hands-on experience as a TB nurse in Dutch TB control. Beside general (nursing) care for TB patients, her field of expertise is training of healthcare workers, access to healthcare, stigma reduction, cross border TB control and TB in marginalised groups. She is the project leader of a project to develop evidence-based guidelines for nursing care for people with TB and people treated for LTBI in the Netherlands.Since the end of 2019, Niesje has been Programme Lead for The Union’s Nurses and Allied Professionals Subsection.
Kevin Mortimer
The Union, UK
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Kevin Mortimer is a Consultant in Respiratory Medicine at Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Honorary Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Director of Lung Health for the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union). He is also Deputy Director of the Pan African Thoracic Society Methods in Epidemiologic, Clinical and Operations Research (MECOR) Programme, Chair of the British Thoracic Society Global Health Group, member of the Board of Directors for the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD), member of the Science Committee for the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) and co-chair elect of the Global Asthma Network. He is interested in developing solutions for the lung health needs of the world’s poor including tackling global inequalities in access to basic effective care for people with chronic lung diseases including asthma, COPD and post-TB lung disease.
Ingrid Schoeman
TB Proof, South Africa
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Ingrid Schoeman is the Director of Advocacy and Strategy at TB Proof, a TB advocacy organisation in South Africa. She is a drug-resistant TB survivor and passionate about advocating for high quality, person-centered care for all, free from stigma and discrimination. She is a board member of The Union and chairperson of The Union Community Advisory Panel (UCAP).
Fred Quinn
University of Georgia, USA
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Fred Quinn oversaw several laboratory emerging bacterial diseases groups at the CDC in Atlanta investigating bacterial disease outbreaks including tuberculosis. His current research at the University of Georgia focuses on understanding the pathogenesis and transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and M. bovis including zoonotic tuberculosis with the ultimate goal of developing improved vaccines and diagnostic tests for humans and animals.
Elif Dagli
Pediatric Pulmonologist, Turkey
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Elif Dagli is a Pediatric Pulmonologist and a tobacco control advocate. She is also the Chair of Health Institute Association in Istanbul.
Kobto Koura
The Union, France
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Kobto Ghislain Koura is a Medical Doctor Public Health Specialist. He is acting Director for The Union TB Department. He completed his medical degree at Abomey-Calavi University, Benin and his Master of Public Health at Paris-Saclay University in Paris, France. He attained his Ph.D. in Public Health/Epidemiology at Sorbonne University in Paris, France. He also completed a post-doctorate in Epidemiology at Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France. Since joining The Union in 2013, he has addressed the challenges of Tuberculosis by supporting and advising National Tuberculosis Programmes in low-middle income countries and this involved the planning, designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating strategies and policies for the prevention, detection and management of drug-susceptible TB, multidrug resistant TB in adults and children.
Bertrand Mbatchou Ngahane
University of Douala, Cameroon
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Pr Mbatchou Ngahane Bertrand is currently Professor of pulmonary medicine at the University of Douala. He is a consultant in respiratory at the Douala General Hospital in Cameroon. He’s the vice president of the PanAfrican Thoracic Society and the President of the Cameroon Respiratory Society. His research interest includes air pollution associated respiratory conditions and tuberculosis.
Palwasha Khan
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
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Palwasha Khan is a clinical associate professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and a clinical epidemiologist at Interactive Research and Development. Her research interests include understanding Mycobacterium tuberculosis transmission at a population-level in high burden setting. She particularly enjoys working at the clinical academia-implementation interface which helps to maintain a healthy level of pragmatism whilst striving to improve health for all.
TBScience
Scientific Committee
Claudia Denkinger
Chair
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Claudia Denkinger completed her medical school training and doctoral thesis in immunology at the Julius-Maximilians University in Wuerzburg, Germany. She trained in internal medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Harvard Medical School, Boston and also was a chief medical resident there. After her internal medicine training she completed a Master in Tropical Medicine and International Public Health as well as a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has worked in non-governmental organizations in HIV and tuberculosis care in South Africa and South America. She did a postdoctoral research fellowship focused on tuberculosis epidemiology and impact assessment as well as mathematical modeling of tuberculosis diagnostics at McGill University. She continued to hold a faculty appointment in the Division of Infectious Disease at the BIDMC, Harvard Medical School, Boston, until 2015. In February 2014 she became the Head of the Tuberculosis and Hepatitis Programme at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND).
Monde Muyoyeta
International Co-Chair
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Monde Muyoyeta, MBChB, PhD, is a physician-scientist and the Director of TB programmes at the Center for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia (CIDRZ) in Lusaka, Zambia. She received a Bachelor degree in Human Biology, Medicine and Surgery from the University of Zambia, and a PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has been undertaking TB and HIV diagnostics and implementation research in Zambia for more than 15 years.
Anete Trajman
International Co-Chair
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Anete Trajman has MD, Msc., and PhD degrees from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is Professor of Internal Medicine at Federal University of Rio do Janeiro, Brazil and visiting professor at McGill University, Canada. In both universities, she has been engaged in global health-related research, teaching and activism.
Willem Hanekom
Member
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Willem Hanekom trained in medicine at the University of Stellenbosch and in pediatrics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He then trained in pediatric infectious diseases at Northwestern University in Chicago and completed a postdoc in immunology at Rockefeller University in New York City. He ultimately directed the South African Tuberculosis Vaccine Initiative (SATVI) at the University of Cape Town, before leading the TB vaccine programme at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He recently returned to South Africa to direct the Africa Health Research Institute in Kwazulu-Natal. His main research focus has been TB vaccine development.
Daniela Cirillo
Member
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Daniela Maria Cirillo is a board-certified clinical microbiologist, Head of the Emerging Bacterial Pathogen Research unit at San Raffaele Scientific Institute in Milan. Cirillo is also the Director of the WHO CC in tuberculosis (TB) laboratory strengthening ITA-98 and ESCMID Collaborating Centre at Ospedale San Raffaele. Areas of expertise include clinical bacteriology and infection control, next generation sequencing based diagnostic tools, diagnostic capacity building in high burden TB countries, research on new diagnostics for active TB and Infection, nosocomial infection. She is Co-Chair of the New Diagnostic Working Group of the StopTB partnership, core group member of European Laboratory Initiative and ERI, PI of the European laboratory network (ERLN-TBnet), Elected member of the Disease Network Coordination Committee (DNCC) for Tuberculosis at ECDC and President of the European Society of Mycobacteriology since 2016.
Satoshi Mitarai
Member
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Satoshi Mitarai is a medical doctor and Professor/Head of Department of Mycobacterium Reference and Research (DMRR) at the Research Institute of Tuberculosis, Japan. He received his undergraduate degree and completed his PhD degree in Nagasaki University. He started his career as physician in 1988 and has initiated TB studies since 1991. His main interest is active TB diagnosis including drug resistances. He also focuses on molecular epidemiology of tuberculosis and anti-TB drug development.
Christian Lienhardt
Member
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Christian Lienhardt, MD, DTM, MSc, PhD, is Research Director at the French Institute for Research on Sustainable Development (IRD), in Montpellier, France, where he is in charge of a research portfolio on tuberculosis (TB) and antimicrobial resistance. He is an Infectious and Tropical Diseases specialist and Clinical Epidemiologist. After several years of clinical practice in France, he undertook humanitarian medical relief and health development work in the Middle-East and in Africa (1981-1989). He then initiated and conducted a large panel of research work on TB in high-burden countries, including case-contact studies, observational cohort studies, multicentre randomized controlled trials, and operational/implementation research studies (1990-2008). From 2004 to 2008, he headed the Clinical Trial Division at the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases (The Union) in Paris. He then worked at the Global TB programme of the World Health Organisation in Geneva (Switzerland) as Team Leader, Research for TB Elimination (2009-2018).
Timothy Walker
Member
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Timothy Walker is an infectious diseases physician, a clinical microbiologist and a Wellcome Trust clinical research fellow based at Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. He has worked in TB research for 12 years, with interests ranging from pathogen genome sequencing for epidemiology, diagnostics and drug resistance prediction, to observational clinical studies, to clinical trials. His work contributed heavily to the introduction of routine whole-genome sequencing for mycobacterial diagnostics in England. This is his 2nd year on the TBScience Scientific Committee
Rohit Sarin
Member
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Rohit Sarin, Principal Consultant and former Director, National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, is a senior Tuberculosis Consultant with over four decades of experience in this specialization and having specialised training in tuberculosis in India, Japan and New York.
He is the Former Chairman of the Regional Green Light Committee (MDR TB Advisory Group) for South East Asia Region (2012-2015) and subsequently a Member of the rGLC SEAR and Global Drug Resistant Initiative. He contributed to the fight against Covid-19 as a member of the National Task Force on Covid-19 which defined the treatment guidelines. Further, he is also a member of WHO Global Guideline Development Group on treatment of Covid-19 and involved in global policy.
Rada Savic
Member
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Rada Savic is the Associate Director of the UCSF Center for TB and a Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in the Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine at the University of California San Francisco. Her research focuses on applications of Pharmacokinetic/Biomarker/Pharmacodynamic and Pharmacogenetic modeling to problems in drug development and routine drug therapy in infectious diseases including special populations such as children and pregnant women. She is recognised as a world leader on tuberculosis drug regimen and dosing pharmacokinetics and was named the 2021 Leon I. Goldberg Early Investigator Award recipient.
Grania Brigden
Member
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Grania Brigden is a Senior TB Advisor at The Global Fund. In this role, she is involved in providing technical advice on investment of Global Fund resources to Global Fund teams and grant implementers and works closely with national programs and technical partners. She has previously worked for The International Union Against TB and Lung Disease (The Union) as the Director of TB, Médicins Sans Frontières (MSF) Access Campaign as a TB Advisor, with Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) in Uganda, and in Banda Ache, Indonesia with Medic Global Sikhs. She studied medicine at University of Aberdeen and completed her specialist training in general and respiratory medicine in the UK and is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh.
Emily Kendall
Member
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Emily Kendall is an Associate Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her TB research combines clinical and epidemiological data collection with mechanistic and computational modeling to answer questions at the intersection of TB disease dynamics and clinical management. Particular interests include the patterns and prevention of TB transmission, the natural history of subclinical TB, the optimisation of diagnostic and screening strategies, and the evolutionary and clinical dynamics of TB drug resistance. She is also a practicing general infectious diseases and HIV physician.
Richard Anthony
Member
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Richard Anthony is a senior scientist at the RIVM (tuberculosis national reference laboratory) in The Netherlands. He aims to improve primary tuberculosis diagnostics and use the new and available tools most effectively to control the emerging epidemic of drug resistant bacteria. Including making the optimal use of available antimicrobials and exploiting to the maximum extent these extraordinarily valuable compounds while preserving their effectiveness.
Kobto Ghislain Koura
Member
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Kobto Ghislain Koura is a Medical Doctor Public Health Specialist. He is acting Director for The Union TB Department. He completed his medical degree at Abomey-Calavi University, Benin and his Master of Public Health at Paris-Saclay University in Paris, France. He attained his Ph.D. in Public Health/Epidemiology at Sorbonne University in Paris, France. He also completed a post-doctorate in Epidemiology at Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France. Since joining The Union in 2013, he has addressed the challenges of Tuberculosis by supporting and advising National Tuberculosis Programmes in low-middle income countries and this involved the planning, designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating strategies and policies for the prevention, detection and management of drug-susceptible TB, multidrug resistant TB in adults and children.