Prof. Gesine Meyer-Rath is a medical doctor and health economist working on the economics of infectious disease interventions in low- and middle-income settings. She is a Research Professor in the Department for Global Health of the School of Public Health of Boston University, US, and a Principal Researcher at the Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office (HE2RO) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dr Meyer-Rath’s research focus lies on modeling methods for economic evaluation and translating research into recommendations for public policy, in particular for the HIV and TB programmes of South Africa and other southern African countries

Professor Quarraisha Abdool Karim is a globally recognized infectious diseases epidemiologist and co-founder of CAPRISA, where she is Associate Scientific Director and holds the John C. Martin Chair in Global Health. She is also a Professor at Columbia University, President of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), and UNAIDS Special Ambassador for Adolescents and HIV. Her pioneering research showed that antiretrovirals can prevent sexual transmission of HIV, laying the groundwork for PrEP. Over three decades, she has advanced HIV prevention technologies for women and contributed to understanding HIV-TB co-infection and COVID-19’s impact on people with HIV. She serves on advisory boards for PEPFAR, WHO, and others, and has trained over 600 African scientists. With more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, she is a Fellow of several national and international academies and recipient of over 30 major awards, including the L’Oréal-UNESCO Award, Canada Gairdner Global Health Award, and the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award. She is a member of the Eastern and Southern Africa Commission on Drugs (ESACD)”

Dr. Strathdee is an infectious disease epidemiologist renowned for her research on the intersection of HIV and substance use, having generated >700 scholarly publications. She is the Harold Simon Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the University of California San Diego where has led research on prevention of HIV, HCV and related infections among people who use drugs in Canada, the US and most recently the Mexico-US border. In 2009, she and her team were awarded the Leadership Award in International Collaboration from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who also granted her a prestigious MERIT award for her substance use research in Tijuana.