Speakers

Dr G K Adak
Bob Adak has worked at the national centre since 1989 on surveillance and research into the epidemiology of salmonellas, Campylobacter sp., Vero-cytotoxin Escherichia coli O157, norovirus and the development of models for measuring the burden of foodborne infections. He has also been heavily involved in designing and conducting investigations into recent national outbreaks of foodborne disease.

Dr Sarah Cleaveland
Sarah Cleaveland is a veterinary epidemiologist based at the Centre for Tropical Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research work has been centred in East Africa, focussing on infectious diseases at the human-wildlife-domestic animal interface, including rabies, canine distemper, bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, and sleeping sickness. Key objectives have been to (a) understand infection dynamics in multi-host communities, (b) identify risk factors for disease emergence in human and animal populations, (c) quantify zoonotic disease burden and (d) optimise the design of zoonotic disease control strategies.

Dr John Coia
John Coia is Consultant Microbiologist with NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and Honorary Professor in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Glasgow. He is Director of the Scottish Salmonella Reference Laboratory (SSRL) and the Scottish Clostridium difficile Reference Service and member of the Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food. He is also the former Director of the Scottish E. coli O157 Reference Laboratory (SERL). Research interests include zoonotic infections, antimicrobial resistance and healthcare-associated infection.

John Morton Cowden
In 1995, after 10 years with the PHLS’s Communicable Disease Surveillance Centre, where he headed the Gastrointestinal Diseases Section, John moved to the Scottish Centre for Infection and Environmental Health (now Health Protection Scotland) where he is the consultant epidemiologist responsible for national surveillance of, and operational support for, infectious intestinal disease (IID). John is a member of numerous national and international bodies concerned with the surveillance and prevention of foodborne and other IID, and has published widely in the peer-reviewed literature.

Dr Kris De Smet
Dr. Kris De Smet started his veterinary carrier in 1987 as a researcher at the Laboratory of Virology and Immunology of the University of Ghent, Belgium. Since 1991, he was responsible for the veterinary services, quality control and feed formulation in a broiler integration. He joined the European Commission (DG SANCO) in 2001 where he was responsible for the management of Community legislation, initial on BSE, and since a few years on the monitoring and control of zoonoses and zoonotic agents. 

Dr Martin Donaghy
Dr Martin Donaghy is Medical Director at Health Protection Scotland (HPS). HPS, part of the National Services Scotland, is a multi-disciplinary organisation carrying out surveillance, operational support, research and training on communicable diseases and environmental hazards. His current post involves lead responsibility for clinical governance, data strategy and immunisation. He also leads several aspects of the development of Health Protection Scotland. He is a member of the National Expert Panel on New & Emerging Infections, the Joint Committee on Vaccination & Immunisation and a number of Scottish Executive working groups.
Prior to his current post Martin was Senior Medical Officer in Public Health at the Scottish Executive Health Department. With over 20 years experience in various aspects of public health, Martin has contributed to a number of publications, been Medical Adviser to the Food Standards Agency (Scotland) and extensively involved in public health policy in Scotland especially relating to health protection. During his career, he has been involved in a number of public policy and service issues including those related to food (E Coli 0157, BSE/vCJD, salmonella) and Healthcare Associated Infection.

Professor Anthony Fooks
Tony Fooks leads the Rabies and Wildlife Zoonoses Group at the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (National Reference Laboratory for rabies). He completed his PhD in 1994 investigating the interaction between morbilliviruses and the immune system. He worked at the Centre for Applied Microbiology and Research before joining the VLA in 2000 to head the rabies group. Since 2004, he has acted as an associate editor for Epidemiology and Infection. He is a member of the editorial boards for BMC Veterinary Research and the International Journal of Biomedical Science. He has been a committee member of the Society for Microbiology’s Clinical Virology Group since 2006. He is a scientific advisor to The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Since 2002, he was appointed director of a World Health Organisation Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response Collaborating Centre for the characterisation of rabies and rabies-related viruses and in 2006, he was appointed an OIE Reference Expert for Rabies. In 2006, he was appointed an Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathology at the University of Liverpool, UK. His principal interests include zoonotic viral diseases especially emerging RNA viruses, principally rhabdo- and flaviviruses.

Mr Paul Gayford
After qualifying from Edinburgh in 1970, Paul Gayford worked in practice before joining the Veterinary Investigation Service (VIS) of the then MAFF working in Wolverhampton, Shrewsbury, and Wye in Kent. On the closure of Wye, Paul moved to Tolworth and provided veterinary advice and policy to DEFRA on endemic animal diseases in general and zoonotic diseases in particular up to his retirement in April 2007. Since April Paul has been enjoying himself thoroughly!

Professor Noel Gill
Professor Noel Gill is Head of the HIV and STI Department at the Health Protection Agency’s (HPA) Centre for Infections and is Joint Lead for TSE activities in the HPA.  He also heads the HPA’s sexual health programme. For many years he has had an interest in large-scale unlinked anonymous tissue surveys, beginning with HIV seroprevalence studies and more recently focussing on abnormal prion prevalence using left-over tonsil tissue and other specimens. He is a member of the Epidemiology sub-group of SEAC. 

Professor Dr Arie Havelaar
Prof. Dr. Ir. Arie Havelaar is acting head of the Laboratory for Zoonoses and Environmental Microbiology at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) in Bilthoven, the Netherlands. He also holds a chair in Microbiological Risk Assessment at the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

Professor Dan Haydon
Dan Haydon is Professor of Population Ecology and Epidemiology at the University of Glasgow. He maintains wide-ranging interests in modelling evolutionary and ecological processes as they apply to host and pathogen dynamics across a range of scales, from within host processes to landscape ecology.

Professor Tom Humphrey
Tom Humphrey holds the Chair in Veterinary Zoonotic Bacteriology at the University of Bristol, School of Clinical Veterinary Science, Langford, Bristol, UK. In 1981 Tom joined the Public Health Laboratory Service in Exeter where he spent the next 20 years and eventually became Head of the Food Microbiology Research Unit (FMRU). The latter half of his time in Exeter coincided with the rise of Salmonella Enteritidis phage type 4 as a major egg-associated pathogen. Much of FMRU research activity was concentrated on this pathogen, although studies on campylobacter and salmonella in broiler chickens continued.

In 2001 Tom moved to Bristol, where he heads the Zoonotic Infections Group, which comprises ~ 20 staff and post-graduate students. This exciting new post has enabled him to alter the focus of his research and he is now particularly interested in the interaction between animal welfare and behaviour and susceptibility of pigs and chickens to the major zoonotic pathogens Salmonella and Campylobacter spp. Tom is one of the co-principal investigators on the Defra/Hefce-funded Veterinary Training and Research Initiative (VTRI) project on social stress in pigs and chickens and subsequent disease susceptibility. This five year programme brings together immunologists, specialists in animal behaviour and welfare and microbiologists to study infectious disease in food animals. The VTRI project also has the remit of encouraging veterinarians into research.

Tom Humphrey has published over 200 scientific papers and is a member of the Advisory Committee for the Microbiological Safety of Food (ACMSF) and Chairman of the ACMSF Surveillance Working Group.

Dr Anette Loeffler
Anette Loeffler qualified from the Munich University, Germany, in 1994 and spent six years in mixed practice in Cumbria. She completed a three-year dermatology residency at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in 2004 where she is currently undertaking a PhD on staphylococcal infections and antimicrobial resistance at the RVC. She holds the RCVS diploma in Veterinary Dermatology and is a diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Dermatology.

Dr Malcolm McWhirter
Graduating at Queen’s University Belfast in 1977, Malcolm studied hospital medicine gaining MRCP (Edinburgh) before moving to Scotland in 1981 to train in Public Health. He was a Consultant in Public Health for 10 years and Director of Public Health for a further 12 years in Forth Valley. He was appointed Senior Medical Officer in the Scottish Executive in 2007.

He holds an MBA (Strathclyde University) and is a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and the Royal College of Physicians. He chaired the Scottish Directors of Public Health from 1995 to 1997.

Malcolm’s experience of communicable disease incidents includes the Central Scotland E coli 0157 outbreak in 1996 and the Q fever outbreak in Bridge of Allan in 2006.

Mr Charles Milne
Following graduation from the Royal Veterinary College in 1985 Charles worked for 2 years in general practice before joining the State Veterinary Service in 1987. As a Veterinary Officer in the Perth Division he gained practical experience of delivering animal health and welfare policies in the field including the control of zoonotic disease.

Charles became a Veterinary Policy Adviser in 1996 and following a short period back in the field as Divisional Veterinary Manager, Ayr he was appointed as Chief Veterinary Officer (Scotland) in 2003. In his current role he is responsible for providing veterinary advice to Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Executive.

Professor Sarah O’Brien
Sarah O’Brien is Professor of Health Sciences and Epidemiology at the University of Manchester. She has considerable expertise in the epidemiology of infectious diseases, particularly foodborne disease, and is currently the Chairman of the government’s Advisory Committee on the Microbiological Safety of Food. Her personal research interests include understanding the contribution of acute infection to chronic illness.

Dr George Paterson
A graduate of Edinburgh University where he obtained BSc. and PhD degrees, George carried out post-doctoral research at the National Research Council in Ottawa prior to working for many years for the Canadian government in a wide variety of scientific and managerial positions.

His current position is Director of the Food Standards Agency Scotland where he is responsible for the development and delivery of the Agency’s programmes in Scotland.

In his spare time, George likes to play tennis and a bit of golf.

Sarah E Randolph PhD
Sarah Randolph is Professor of Parasite Ecology in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in Biological Sciences at Christ Church. Her studies on tick ecology since 1970 are now applied to understanding the epidemiology of tick-borne diseases. She also spent 15 years studying the natural field ecology and behaviour of tsetse flies in Africa.

Dr Jonathan Rushton
Jonathan Rushton has a first degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, and a Masters and PhD in animal health economics from VEERU, University of Reading. Dr Rushton has worked on animal health issues in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. His interests are the socio-economic impact of livestock diseases, the role of livestock in poor people’s livelihoods and the use of participatory methodologies in veterinary epidemiology. He is currently working on the economics of avian influenza in FAO.

Dr Flemming Scheutz
Flemming Scheutz, M. Sc. in Molecular Biology, Ph.D. on VTEC, Head of the International Escherichia Centre (WHO). Main interests include typing, clinical features and epidemiology of E. coli infections; international surveillance and research, standardisation of detection- and typing methods. A particular area of interest is risk assessment of VTEC.

Mr Alick Simmons
Alick Simmons qualified from Glasgow in 1978. After a few years in private practice, he became a district Veterinary Officer in the Belize government. He joined the State Veterinary Service in 1985 holding several posts in operations and policy, the most recent of which was head of the Defra division advising on zoonoses. In 2004 he was appointed Veterinary Director of the Food Standards Agency leading a team responsible for veterinary public health and meat hygiene.

He is a member of the governing Board of the Meat Hygiene Service and holds post-graduate qualifications in tropical veterinary medicine and animal welfare.

Professor Eystein Skjerve
Eystein Skjerve is a veterinarian from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science (1983).  He is currently professor of the epidemiology of food-borne diseases and leads the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the same institution.

Mr Christopher Teale
Chris Teale qualified as a veterinary surgeon from the University of Cambridge. He spent two years in general veterinary practice in Somerset and Leicestershire before joining the Veterinary Investigation Service (now the Veterinary Laboratories Agency) at Barton Hall, Preston. He has an MSc in Veterinary Microbiology from the University of London and currently works at VLA Shrewsbury, where he is Head of Antimicrobial Resistance for VLA.

Professor John Threlfall
Professor John Threlfall has worked in the Health Protection Agency (formerly the Public Health Laboratory Service) since attaining a PhD in Microbial Genetics from the University of Leicester in 1969. He is currently Director of the HPA Laboratory of Enteric Pathogens, which is the national reference facility for bacterial enteric pathogens isolated from humans in England and Wales, including such pathogens as Salmonella and VTEC. John is also a Project Leader on the EU-funded EnterNet project and was Principal Investigator on the EU-funded SalmGene project, which was the forerunner of PulseNet Europe. John has responsibility for the HPA for liaison with the Veterinary Laboratories Agency (VLA) and as such is involved in numerous joint research projects between the HPA and the VLA. He has acted as a consultant for the World Health Organisation and the European Food Safety Authority on several occasions. His principal interests are in antimicrobial drug resistance and in the molecular epidemiology of foodborne zoonoses, and has published over 300 papers in these areas.

Mark Woolhouse 
Mark Woolhouse is Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. BA Oxford, MSc York, PhD Queen’s (Canada). Research posts at University of Zimbabwe, Imperial College and University of Oxford. OBE for work on 2001 UK foot-and-mouth disease epidemic. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Wright Memorial Medallist.

Dr Jakob Zinsstag
After studies of Veterinary Medicine in Berne, Dr Zinsstag worked in rural practice and trypanosomiasis research. From 1990 to 1998 he worked at the International Trypanotolerance Centre in The Gambia and directed the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques in Côte d’Ivoire. Since 1998 he leads a research group at the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel and is Assistant Professor (PD) in Epidemiology.