10^th International Congress on Clinical Virology & Infectious Diseases December 4-5, 2017 Dubai, UAE

Professor Huseyin Yilmaz was graduated from the Veterinary Faculty of Istanbul in 1984, and PhD in immunology from the Veterinary School at University of Bristol in 1993. Professor Huseyin joined Department of Microbiology of Istanbul Veterinary Faculty in 2001 and established the Department of Virology in the Veterinary Faculty of Istanbul in 2006. As a principal investigator, Professor Huseyin led a number of research projects and established research infrastructure to improve detection, epidemiology and prevention of major viral diseases and emerging viral infections affecting animals and public health. These projects were funded by TUBITAK and the University of Istanbul. He also established national and international collaboration with Turkish and European Union institutions through COST actions. Recently, we also established a bilateral research link between The Pirbright Institute and Department of Virology has been funded by the British Council concerning the viral livestock diseases related to food security. After recent outbreaks of lumpy skin disease in Turkey, he is also working on detection and prevention of transboundary emerging infections like LSD and is collaborating with the researchers in the Pirbright Institute, UK to apply a project to Horizon 2020 on LSD.

Detection and prevention of Trans boundary Emerging Infections like LSD

Professor Nuri Turan is currently working at the Department of Virology, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey. Nuri obtained Veterinary Medicine and MSc degrees in 1987 and, a PhD in Veterinary Microbiology in 1995 in Turkey. He has been for 3 months to study some immunological techniques at University of Bristol, Veterinary Medicine in 1990. He has been working as research scientist and senior lecturer -teaching viral diseases - at Istanbul University since 1998. He has taken part in a number of research projects and has had about 40 publications in peer reviewed international journals on bacterial and viral infectious diseases with particular interest in Zoonotic and vector-borne diseases. He has been at K-State University, USA for one year (2011-12) to conduct a project about avian influenza.

Zoonotic and Vector-Borne Diseases

I was graduated from the Veterinary Faculty of Istanbul in 1995. After graduation, I have finished PhD at the Veterinary Faculty of Istanbul. I have joined to TUBITAK – MAM food science and technology and worked there 7 years. I have been an audit for Turkish accreditation for more than 7 years. I worked in Cevre Analyses Laboratory for 10 years as a technical manager. I have recently joined to Department of Virology in the Veterinary Faculty of Istanbul and currently working on veterinary and zoonotic viruses.

Veterinary and Zoonotic viruses

Dr. Sabiha Imran is a Medical Microbiologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Engineering and Science, Manav Rachna University, Faridabad, INDIA. She has more than 20 years research and teaching experience She earned her PhD in Medical Microbiology from JN Medical College, Aligarh Muslim University .She published research papers in reputed journals and presented papers in many national and International journals .She received best paper presentation award from All India Medical Sciences .She is a gold medalist and a qualified Registered microbiologist of Canadian College of Microbiology(RMCCM).Her area of research interest is the study on Bacteriocin as an anticancer, antiviral agent and an alternative to antibiotics and immunochemotherpeutic approach for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis

Study on Bacteriocin as an anticancer, antiviral agent and an alternative to antibiotics and immunochemotherpeutic approach for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis

Nahla is a very interested and positive person who did her best to fulfill the project goals, and succeeded in doing so. Nahla was also a positive factor in my group, and was liked by all of us. I am a very enthusiastic, active, and eager to learn. As well I have a broad experienced in the development and performance of clinically useful real-time PCRs and molecular tools in clinical virology aspects.

Molecular tools in Clinical Virology

Dr. Nassiri is a former Associate Dean of Global Health at the Michigan State University (MSU). He also served as MSU director of Institute of International Health. He is currently Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Professor of Family and Community Medicine, and, lecturer in Global Health, Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine. He currently works on international public health issues and has expertise in global health. He has made contributions in various fields of medical sciences including clinical investigation and health education. On the basis of his extensive experience and expertise in HIV/AIDS, TB and antimicrobial resistance, he developed clinical research programs in Brazil, South Africa, Haiti, Dominican Republic and Mexico. He had served as editorial board member for the journal of HIV and AIDS Review. He is currently on editorial board member for AIDS Patient Care and STDs. Prof. Nassiri has delivered seminar presentations on Viral Diseases, Tropical Medicine, HIV/AIDS, TB, Global Health and public health interventions in numerous national and international conferences and workshops. He is internationally recognized for his work in the areas of building effective international partnerships particularly in global health, community health, clinical care capacity building, and technical assistance mechanism. He is the founder of Michigan State University Osteopathic and Primary Health Clinic in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. He has developed academic and research partnership programs with Federal University of Para Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belem, Brazil.

Clinical Pharmacology of HIV/AIDS & TB, antibiotic resistance, prevention and control of infectious diseases, neglected tropical diseases, community health, global health, socio-ethical determinants of health, and community-based public health interventions. In collaboration with his Brazilian colleagues, he conducts research in the eastern Brazilian Amazon population on incidence and prevalence of HIV, TB, Hepatitis C, HPV, and antimicrobial resistance.

He was born on 17th March 1970 in Erbil, Iraq, Obtained his Ph.D. from the HMU, College of Medicine. Since 2001 he is working as instructor of Parasitology class for third stage students in the college of Medicine. He published (9) papers in the field of Parasitology and Immunology in different scientific journals and attended (6) scientific conferences and workshops. Currently he is supervising one M.Sc. student, teaching postgraduate students and working as research reviewer for an international scientific journal, Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences ((www.interesjournals.org/jmms )).

His research interests are Parasitology and Immunology.

PhD Institution :University of Hyderabad Host Institution :ILS, Bhubaneswar Biology has always fascinated me. Beginning from the enthusiasm of making a herbarium or dissecting small animals at school and college and the captivating symmetry of the flora and fauna, my interest in biology has grown ever since. Although biology was a difficult choice, due to my inherent interest I opted to pursue M.Sc. Biotechnology from Andhra University and subsequently Ph.D. Biochemistry from University of Hyderabad. During my PhD I was introduced to the concept of cellular stress response and how the various stress transducers coordinate an integrated response to alleviate stress. Further intriguing reality was that most often it is not the stress but the dysfunction of the response that leads to the pathogenesis of many disease. Post PhD, I joined Dr. Siddiqui’s lab in University of California, San Diego to pursue research on endoplasmic stress response during viral infections. Dr. Siddiqui is among the leading scientist in the field of hepatitis B and C viruses (HBV & HCV) with major focus on the underlying mechanisms that trigger liver disease pathogenesis in chronic hepatitis B & C patients. Owing to their limited genome viruses completely rely on the host cell machinery for their proliferation. Hence viruses have evolved strategies to usurp or exploit host signaling to aide their proliferation. While exploring the consequences of mitochondrial injury on mitochondrial function & metabolism in chronic viral hepatitis we discovered that both HBV and HCV upregulate mitochondrial quality control by modulating mitochondrial dynamics and mitochondria-selective autophagy, to sustain viability of infected cells and facilitate viral persistence. Mitochondria serve as the hub of multiple signaling pathways and are primary target of many viruses due to their multitasking capacity. Recent finding implicate mitochondrial dynamic as the integral cellular process that defines cellular response to physiological stress and invading pathogens. Mitochondrial dynamics during viral infections is a newly evolving field with many unknown facets. As a scientist in the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, Infectious Disease Biology group, initially I will focus on characterizing the virus-mediated alteration to cellular mitochondrial dynamics and elucidate the functional significance of these alterations in viral life cycle and disease pathogenesis. With the funding from Wellcome-DBT, I will initiate these studies in the Flavivirus Dengue which is more prominent in the Indian-subcontinent and later explore other viruses. Host factors that aide viral proliferation and survival are attractive targets for the development of specific antivirals which will be more resilient to emergence of viral resistance.

The ultimate goal is to identify these specific targets and transition these discoveries into potential therapeutics against viral infections and associated diseases.

Teaching: Experimental Phycology during 1974-79 for M.Sc. (Botany) at Banaras Hindu University Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics and Applied Molecular Biology and Virology for M.Sc. and RNA Biology for M.Phil students at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University since 1990. Awards & Honours JRF (UGC), SRF (UGC), RA (DST), Post-doctoral Scientist (Swiss National Fond)

RNA Biology, Cancer Molecular Biology, Virology

Dr. Chen currently is the Deputy Director of Alaska State Public Health Virology Laboratory and an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology and Wildlife and Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Dr. Chen's research activity focuses on the diagnosis and research of public health related viral infection in Alaska. His Virology Laboratory is a joint effort between State of Alaska Public Health Division and University of Alaska Fairbanks. Current research projects involve both clinical and basic virology research. Dr.Chen obtained his Ph.D. Degree in Virology at Osaka University Medical School in Japan and his post doctorate training at University of British Columbia at Vancouver, Canada.

The clinical research focuses on molecular diagnosis of viral infections, as well as technology development for the diagnosis of emerging human pathogens. The basic research in this lab involves in the virus-human cell interaction and the role of tumor virus in human tumorigenesis.

Zhidong's research career has been focusing throughout on molecular pathogenesis, immunology and diagnosis of viral diseases of veterinary importance. After his PhD, Zhidong joined in FAO/OIE World Reference Laboratory for Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) as a Veterinary Virologist in Pirbright Institute (Formerly, Institute for Animal Health), UK, where he successfully identified the cellular site for FMD virus persistence in persistently infected cattle. He then became a senior Veterinary Virologist at Pirbright Institute to study molecular pathogenesis of FMD, swine vesicular disease (SVD), and experimental epidemiology of FMD virus. He revealed the correlation of the presence of viral RNA in tissues of the bovine dorsal soft palate with the presence of infectious virus in oesophago-pharyngeal fluid samples. In 2004, he established Pathogenesis of Vesicular Disease Group funded by UK BBSRC and Defra grants at Pirbright Institute. Under his leadership, a consistent change was found in the B-C loop of VP2 observed in FMD virus genes from persistently infected cattle, which implies for association with virus persistence and a strand-specific quantitative RT-PCR was successfully developed to analyze FMD virus replication in vitro. From a collaborative project with Royal Veterinary College, UK, it was found that FMD virus is able to cross the placenta and causes death in fetal lambs, and the tissue tropism of FMD virus in fetal and young lambs has also been identified. Since 2008, Dr. Zhang was a member of Academic Committee of the Pirbright Institute. In 2010, he moved to National Centers for Foreign Animal Disease, Canada, as Head of Section of Vesicular diseases, where he worked on development of novel serological and molecular diagnostic assays for detection FMD virus, vesicular stomatitis virus, Seneca Valley virus, SVD virus and Schmallenberg virus. In addition, he was responsible for management of diagnostic service delivery and staff, providing scientific advice to internal and external clients. He was also a member of the Canadian Science Centre for Human and Animal Health Animal Care Committee and CFIA foreign animal diseases working group. In 2013, he, as a China “1000-Plan” Scholar, joined Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, CAAS and was appointed as Chief Scientist for Viral Diseases in Grazing Animals Team.

Veterinary Medicine, Animal Virology, Immunology, Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Massimo Ciccozzi is currently working as researcher at Department of biostatistics and viruses evolution, National Institute of Health. Previously he worked as P.I. scientific in cooperative project (2009-12). He published various articles in international journals.

Dr. Massimo Ciccozzi research is mainly focused on epidemiology, biostatistics and viruses’ evolution, epidemiology and surveillance systems, molecular epidemiology and phylogeny on HIV, evolutionary studies on SARS and Avian Flu.

Present working as faculty for Horticulture (BSc), full-time and professional faculty as a lecturer, taught the subject: plant biotechnology majoring in Plant Medicine (MSc) The biotechnology safety, legal and ethical issues (lecturer) majoring in agricultural biotechnology (MSc) and lecturer in vocational subjects taught: Organic and biochemistry

Molecular characterization of cryptic plant viruses. Examination cryptic plant proliferation and endornavírusok horticultural crops. Changes in wheat apoplast fehérjemintázatának or frost. a result of fungal infection. non-invasive examination of woody plants.

I gained a PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1984 and worked at Imperial College, London from 1984 to 1986. I also have a first class Honours degree in mathematics and a distinction in Part III Mathematics. I am currently a member of the Population Modelling and Epidemiology research Group at University of Strathclyde and have been a member of Strathclyde in the Departments of mathematics, Statistics and Modelling Science and Mathematics and Statistics since 1986.

My research interests involves mathematical and statistical techniques applied to biological problems, in particular mathematical and statistical modelling in epidemiology. I have over eighty papers in high quality refereed journals and have supervised or co-supervised almost twenty research students, seventeen at PhD level. I am regularly invited to speak at international conferences including as keynote and plenary speaker. Application areas of interest include HIV/AIDS, both heterosexual spread and spread amongst intravenous drug users, dengue vaccination, hepatitis A, hepatitits C, mumps and rubella. I have extensive overseas collaborations including Brazil (Professor E. Massad), India (Professor J. Chattopadhyay), Oman (Professor Q. J. A. Khan), Germany and The Netherlands.

He was born on 17th March 1970 in Erbil, Iraq, Obtained his Ph.D. from the HMU, College of Medicine. Since 2001 he is working as instructor of Parasitology class for third stage students in the college of Medicine. He published (9) papers in the field of Parasitology and Immunology in different scientific journals and attended (6) scientific conferences and workshops. Currently he is supervising one M.Sc. student, teaching postgraduate students and working as research reviewer for an international scientific journal, Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences ((www.interesjournals.org/jmms )).

His research interests are Parasitology and Immunology.

Biology has always fascinated me. Beginning from the enthusiasm of making a herbarium or dissecting small animals at school and college and the captivating symmetry of the flora and fauna, my interest in biology has grown ever since. Although biology was a difficult choice, due to my inherent interest I opted to pursue M.Sc. Biotechnology from Andhra University and subsequently Ph.D. Biochemistry from University of Hyderabad. During my PhD I was introduced to the concept of cellular stress response and how the various stress transducers coordinate an integrated response to alleviate stress. Further intriguing reality was that most often it is not the stress but the dysfunction of the response that leads to the pathogenesis of many disease. Post PhD, I joined Dr. Siddiqui’s lab in University of California, San Diego to pursue research on endoplasmic stress response during viral infections. Dr. Siddiqui is among the leading scientist in the field of hepatitis B and C viruses (HBV & HCV) with major focus on the underlying mechanisms that trigger liver disease pathogenesis in chronic hepatitis B & C patients. Owing to their limited genome viruses completely rely on the host cell machinery for their proliferation. Hence viruses have evolved strategies to usurp or exploit host signaling to aide their proliferation. While exploring the consequences of mitochondrial injury on mitochondrial function & metabolism in chronic viral hepatitis we discovered that both HBV and HCV upregulate mitochondrial quality control by modulating mitochondrial dynamics and mitochondria-selective autophagy, to sustain viability of infected cells and facilitate viral persistence. Mitochondria serve as the hub of multiple signaling pathways and are primary target of many viruses due to their multitasking capacity. Recent finding implicate mitochondrial dynamic as the integral cellular process that defines cellular response to physiological stress and invading pathogens. Mitochondrial dynamics during viral infections is a newly evolving field with many unknown facets. As a scientist in the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, Infectious Disease Biology group, initially I will focus on characterizing the virus-mediated alteration to cellular mitochondrial dynamics and elucidate the functional significance of these alterations in viral life cycle and disease pathogenesis. With the funding from Wellcome-DBT, I will initiate these studies in the Flavivirus Dengue which is more prominent in the Indian-subcontinent and later explore other viruses. Host factors that aide viral proliferation and survival are attractive targets for the development of specific antivirals which will be more resilient to emergence of viral resistance.

The ultimate goal is to identify these specific targets and transition these discoveries into potential therapeutics against viral infections and associated diseases.

Teaching: Experimental Phycology during 1974-79 for M.Sc. (Botany) at Banaras Hindu University Microbiology, Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics and Applied Molecular Biology and Virology for M.Sc. and RNA Biology for M.Phil students at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University since 1990.

RNA Biology, Cancer Molecular Biology, Virology

Professor of Medicine - University of Dammam - since 2010 to date. Associate Professor - University of Dammam - 2002--2010. Consultant Internist/Infectious Diseases,-University of Dammam - since1997. 1. Infectious Diseases consultation from various clinical departments in the hospital. 2. Runs Infectious Diseases Outpatient clinic 3. In-­‐charge of General Medicine Unit I on rotation basis since 1991. 4. Head of infection control Department

1. MRSA and susceptibility to vancomycin 2. Multiresistant pseudomonas, risk factors and treatment options