Richard E. Chaisson, MD
Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology & International Health, Johns Hopkins University
Co-Director, JHU TRAC & CFAR
Chief of Party, SMART4TB Consortium

Dr Florian M. Marx, MD, MSc, PhD
Research Group Leader, Department of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany
Research Fellow, South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Dr. Florian Marx is a physician-scientist, infectious disease epidemiologist, and mathematical modeler at the Department of Infectious Disease and Tropical Medicine, Heidelberg University Hospital. He is an Emmy Noether Research Group Leader funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), with a focus on modeling, impact assessment, and health-economic evaluation to inform global strategies against tuberculosis (TB) and other infectious diseases. With over a decade of experience, his work integrates epidemiological research with mathematical modeling and health-economic analysis to assess the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of novel diagnostics and other interventions, particularly in high-risk populations and settings. His current research includes a 6-year project funded by the DFG aimed at identifying strategies for optimizing outcomes of routine TB treatment using causal inference and mathematical modeling, and a project using modeling to estimate the population-level impact of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s R&D and delivery portfolio for TB in South Africa. He is also co-investigator and lead for the health-economic component of the TSwaY study, a multi-country implementation study funded by the Gates Foundation aimed at evaluating tongue swab-based testing for TB.

Babak Javid is a physician-scientist in the Division of Experimental Medicine at UCSF, where he moved to in 2020. He trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge, completed residency in general (internal) medicine in London and returned to Cambridge as a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Training Fellow for graduate studies under Paul Lehner, investigating cross-presentation by human dendritic cells to cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Following specialist training in infectious diseases, he went to Harvard as an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellow to train with Eric Rubin in mycobacterial genetics, where he first became interested in ‘unique’ aspects of the mycobacterial translation apparatus. From 2011 to 2020 he was Principal Investigator at the Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing, China.

Timothy F. Osborne, PhD
Associate Dean for Basic Research, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital
Director of Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, Johns Hopkins All Children’s
Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, Johns Hopkins All Children’s
Professor of Medicine and Biological Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

Tim Osborne was awarded his Ph.D. in Microbiology with emphasis in Molecular Biology from UCLA. Dr. Osborne subsequently received postdoctoral training at UT Southwestern Medical School, where he chose to extend his training to further his research skills in Molecular Genetics, Metabolism, and Biochemistry. Dr. Osborne was appointed as an Assistant Professor at UC Irvine where he rose to become Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. In 2009 he moved to become founding director of the Metabolic Disease Research Program at the Orlando campus of the Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute, where he continued to pursue his research interest in Metabolic Biology with emphasis on cardiovascular disease and diabetes. He joined Johns Hopkins All Children’s as director of the IFBR in 2018 and in 2021 he was named Associate Dean for Basic Research. Dr. Osborne has been continuously supported with extramural support from the National Institutes of Health since the 1980s, and he has enjoyed additional funding from the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, and the American Cancer Society as well as from private industry.

Dr. Bishai received his MD and PhD degrees from Harvard Medical School in 1989. He did his internship and residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, and received fellowship training in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He was a Howard Hughes Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the laboratory of Nobel laureate, Dr. Hamilton Smith. He joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1994 and is currently a Professor of Medicine in the Dept. of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and serves as Co-Director for the JHU Center for Tuberculosis Research. From 2010-2013 Dr. Bishai served as the founding Director of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)-funded KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for Tuberculosis and HIV (K-RITH) in Durban, South Africa, where he supervised the construction of a $40 M research building and recruited seven world-class scientists to its faculty.

Dr. Bishai’s interests involve tuberculosis pathogenesis, and animal models of pulmonary infections, and bacterial respiratory tract infections. His work in South Africa led to new projects on the genomics of the M/XDR-TB strains, small molecule biomarkers in human tissue and T cell immunology of TB in the peripheral blood and lung compartments of humans. He has authored over 250 papers in peer reviewed journals, and receives grant support from the National Institutes of Health. He has given extensive service on international conference planning committees, study sections, editorial boards, and review panels including 3 years on the WHO Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board.

B. Aletta Nonyane, PhD, MSc
Research Professor of Global Disease and Epidemiology Control
Division of International Health
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

B. Aletta Nonyane, PhD, MSc, applies statistical design and analysis methods to investigate the effect of interventions for improving access to HIV and TB healthcare services.

Igor Kramnik, MD, PhD

Associate Professor of Medicine and Microbiology, Boston University School of Medicine
Investigator, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, Boston, MA

Dr. Igor Kramnik received his MD and PhD degrees from the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences with subsequent training at McGill and Albert Einstein. He joined the faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1999, and subsequently the Boston University School of Medicine in 2009 where he serves as Associate Professor of Medicine and Microbiology. He is internationally recognized for his discoveries on the genetics, immunology, and cell biology of resistance to M. tuberculosis infection as revealed through murine models

Kinari Shah, MSPH

Kinari Shah, MSPH, is a Research Data Analyst working in Dr Cattamanchi’s group at the University of California, San Francisco. She received her BS from the University of Michigan and her MSPH from the GDEC program at the JHSPH. She works on evaluations of novel diagnostics for tuberculosis, and patient preference studies utilizing discrete choice experiments.

Kamila Romanowsk, PhD

Epidemiologist and Postdoctoral fellow

BC Centre for Disease Control, McGill University,

Department of Medicine,  University of British Columbia.

Dr. Kamila Romanowski is an epidemiologist and postdoctoral fellow within McGill’s Department of Global and Public Health. Her research focuses on the intersection of epidemiology and implementation science, with a specific focus on the long-term impacts of tuberculosis.

Gregory Bisson, MD, MSCE

Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology

Perelman School of Medicine

University of Pennsylvania