SAC Members
Biographies
Prof Mark Woolhouse
University of Edinburgh
Mark Woolhouse is Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. He studied biology at the Universities of Oxford and York and Queen’s in Canada, then held Research Fellowships at the University of Zimbabwe, Imperial College London and Oxford, before moving to Edinburgh in 1997. His research interests concern the population dynamics of pathogens at the human-animal interface, especially those associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and emerging infectious diseases, applying ecological and evolutionary approaches to combat threats to both human and animal health.
He is Director of TIBA, a partnership between health researchers in Edinburgh and in nine countries in Africa. He is a frequent invited speaker to audiences of academics, clinicians and the general public and makes regular contributions in the press and media. He advises governments and national and international agencies and was a member of two high-level UK advisory groups on the Covid-19 pandemic response.
He was awarded an OBE in 2002 and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the African Academy of Sciences
Dr Mateusz Hasso-Agopsowicz
World Health Organization
Dr Mateusz Hasso-Agopsowicz is a Technical Officer in Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals at the World Health Organization. In his role, Mateusz is focusing on articulating the full value of vaccines to inform making decisions around vaccine development, introduction and use. He leads WHO activities to articulate and communicate the role and value of vaccines in preventing antimicrobial resistance. Within that programme, he is currently focusing on finalising a global assessment of value of vaccines in preventing AMR, developing a guidance on methodologies for vaccines to prevent AMR, and developing a research roadmap for vaccine candidates with high potential in preventing AMR.
Mateusz is also involved in evaluating the full value of vaccines for enteric pathogens, such as against ETEC or Shigella, pathogens that cause mortality and long-term morbidity. He is leading an expert working group on microarray patches, promising innovations for easy delivery of vaccines such as measles and rubella. Preceding his appointment with WHO Mateusz was conducting research in comparing immune responses to BCG vaccine and investigated the link between epigenetics and the immune response at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where he gained his PhD.
Prof Mical Paul
Israel Institute of Technology
Mical Paul is a clinician heading The Infectious Diseases division at Rambam Health Care Campus and a full Professor at the Faculty of Medicine, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Her research is clinical and epidemiological and she has led numerous Cochrane and other systematic reviews. Her research expertise involves multidrug resistant Gram-negative bacteria, hospital-acquired infections, phase IV antibiotic trials and her methodological expertise concerns study design, risk of bias assessment, meta-analysis and evidence grading.
She has participated in previous WHO guideline development groups on iron supplementation (nutritional action group), the advisory committee the clinical development pipeline of antibacterial treatments and the scientific group developing target product profiles for needed antibacterial treatments. She is an editor with Clinical Microbiology and Infection and the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group, member of The Israeli National Academy of Science in Medicine, a European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID) fellow, past chairperson of ESCMID’s study group on infections in the elderly, an ESCMID guidelines sub-committee member and a methodologist support WHO and ESCMID guidelines development.
Dr Alessandro Cassini
Swiss Public Health Department and Lausanne University Hospital
Alessandro Cassini is a medical doctor specialized in public health, preventive medicine and epidemiology, with an MSc in Health Policy Planning and Financing from LSE & LSHTM. During his 10 years at ECDC he was responsible for estimating and expressing the health burden of infectious diseases, developing risk ranking methodologies, and exploring knowledge translation solutions between scientific research and decision-makers. He has also been responsible for country visits to evaluating the response to the increasing AMR threat and for managing the EUCAST project. In March 2019,
Cassini joined the World Health Organization in the Infection Prevention and Control Technical and Clinical Hub, which is also responsible for the coordination of activities related to sepsis. As part of this work, he led the first WHO report on sepsis epidemiology and burden and is finalising a study on the cost-effectiveness of IPC. He also worked in the WHO Antimicrobial Resistance Division on strategies to control and respond to AMR. In 2022 he joined the Swiss healthcare system as the Deputy Cantonal Doctor of Vaud as well as the Lausanne university Hospital. He has been deployed several times as a field epidemiologist as part of response teams during many outbreaks including Ebola and COVID-19.
Dr Charlie Weller
Wellcome
Charlie Weller is Head of Prevention in the Infectious Diseases Area at Wellcome. Since 2016, she led a team to develop new and improved vaccines & antibodies, gaining a better understanding of protective immunity and strengthening the connection between research and decision makers. Charlie joined Wellcome in 2014 and led the funding response to the Ebola epidemic of 2014-2015 and managed the epidemics research activities. Charlie was involved in founding CEPI and currently chairs CEPI Investors Council and contributes to a number of national and international advisory committees in vaccines and epidemics.
Before joining Wellcome, Charlie gained over 16 years of research experience in both academic and pharmaceutical environments, ranging from host pathogen interactions to cellular and molecular immunology, and including leading target identification and validation for LMW and biologics in the respiratory disease area at Novartis. Prior to this, Charlie investigated cell localization and function in health, respiratory disease and parasite infections as a postdoctoral fellow at Imperial College London. She holds a PhD in Immunology at Imperial College London.