Speaker Bios

Sarah Cleaveland
Prof. Sarah Cleaveland is a veterinary epidemiologist based at the University of Glasgow, U.K, who leads an inter-disciplinary One Health research programme in East Africa.  After training as a veterinarian at the University of Cambridge, she carried out her PhD at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine focusing on rabies, which continues to be an area of interest.  Her research in Tanzania now also addresses a wide range of other zoonotic and livestock disease problems affecting human and animal health, rural livelihoods and wildlife conservation.

Prof. Cleaveland is involved in several graduate training programmes and One Health capacity-strengthening initiatives with partner institutions across East and West Africa.

Prof. Cleaveland was a founding director of the Alliance for Rabies Control.  She is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society and a member of the US Academy of Medicine.

Salome Dürr
Salome Dürr is a veterinary epidemiologist currently holding an assistant professorship position at the University of Bern, Switzerland, with 15 years of research experience at universities in Switzerland and Australia. She conducted her doctoral thesis on rabies control and surveillance in N’Djaména, Chad, affiliated at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, in which a new diagnostic test was implemented, a pilot rabies vaccination campaign was tested and a dog population survey was performed. After a training phase at the University of Bern, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sydney, Australia, where her research contained the development of a rabies transmission model to be used to estimate the impact of a potential rabies incursion into Australia. Nowadays, besides modelling of highly infectious animal diseases, rabies is still Salome Dürr’s main research interest, focusing on dog ecology and behaviour. Currently she leads a project aiming to investigate social networks in free roaming dogs in Chad, Indonesia, Guatemala and Uganda, from which she will present at the Dialogue Days 2019.

Grace Alobo
Dr. Grace Alobo currently is a research coordinator for a domestic dog ecology project at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Animal Resources and Biosecurity (COVAB) at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. After a Bachelor of medicine and surgery (MBChB) at the Université Paris-Sud, France, and a Master in International Public Health and Global Security at Sheffield University, UK, she completed her doctoral thesis on prevalence and risk factor analysis of schistosomiasis in humans. While completing her Master, she was the central supervisor of Neglected Tropical Diseases with the Vector Control Division of the Ministry of Health and the Research Triangle International in Uganda. Before starting her current position, she was a research assistant on “Occupational exposure and infection by Leptospira bacteria among slaughter men and other workers in the abattoir” in Central and Northern Uganda.

Milo Puhan
Prof. Milo Puhan serves as chair of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Zurich and as director of the EBPI since 2013. After completing medical school at the University of Zurich and working as an internal medicine resident at the Zurich Höhenklinik in Wald, Switzerland, and as a Research Fellow at the University of Zurich’s Horten Center, he earned a PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2006. Immediately following, Prof. Puhan was a PROSPER fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. From 2008 to 2012, he was a tenure track Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. Milo Puhan’s main research interest are in prevention and management of chronic diseases and in the development of tools to support preference-sensitive health care. He is currently principal investigator of the Swiss MS Registry, the LuftiBus-Swiss National Cohort, and of several other studies. Milo Puhan is currently the president of the National Research Program 74 Smarter Health Care of the Swiss National Science Foundation, vice-president of the Swiss School of Public Health and directs the PhD program in Epidemiology & Biostatistics of the Life Science Zurich Graduate School. In 2014 he received the COPD Research Award of the European Respiratory Society and in 2017, he received the prestigious Ig Nobel Prize for his work on the didgeridoo for treating obstructive sleep apnea and snoring.

Fabio Wyrsch
Dr. Fabio Wyrsch is an internal medicine resident at the hospital Oberengadin in Samedan, Switzerland. After his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the Swiss Institute of Technology ETH he obtained his master of medicine at the University of Zurich in 2017. Dr. Fabio Wyrsch completed part of his doctoral thesis at the Infectious Diseases Institute in Kampala, Uganda, where he has been working on various non-communicable diseases projects with a special focus on diabetes mellitus in tuberculosis-HIV coinfected patients.

Rejani Lalitha
Dr. Rejani Lalitha is a physician with training in Internal Medicine subspecialized in Pulmonary Critical Care Medicine, a bronchoscopist, a researcher, and a trainer of undergraduate and postgraduate trainees at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, as well as Liberia College of Physicians and Surgeons via the Yale Global Health program. After completing her postgraduate training from Makerere University College of Health Sciences with an elective fulfilled from McMaster University, Canada, she did her specialty training from Yale University, USA.
Dr. Rejani’s main research interests are pulmonary hypertension, tuberculosis, tuberculosis complications, sepsis and antibiotic stewardship. She is currently doing her PhD on pulmonary hypertension in a HIV cohort with the IDI-UZH collaboration and coordinating a study on gestational diabetes in HIV positive women at the Makerere Infectious Diseases Institute. She is also involved in research with UCSF and Case Western Reserve University in collaboration with Makerere University.

Christoph Lübbert
Prof. Christoph Lübbert is a professor for internal medicine and infectious diseases at the University of Leipzig and the head of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine within the Department of Gastroenterology and Rheumatology of the University Hospital Leipzig, Germany. After medical studies at the Universities of Kiel (Germany), Zurich (Switzerland) and Durban (South Africa), he acquired his doctor’s degree on cytomegalovirus infection. Immediately after, he completed clinical training in internal medicine, gastroenterology, infectious diseases and tropical medicine including a DTM&H at the Liverpool School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. Prof. Christoph Lübbert is on the scientific advisory board and the board of the German Society of Infectious Diseases and received various awards.

Christine Sekaggya-Wiltshire
Dr. Christine Sekaggya-Wiltshire is an internal medicine physician at Mulago National Referral Hospital and a clinical scientist at the Infectious Diseases Institute in Kampala, Uganda, who also leads the tuberculosis clinic. She conducted her PhD research under the IDI-UZH collaboration and now has a PhD from Makerere University. She completed 1 year of post-doctoral research under a Fogarty research grant with Johns Hopkins University and is now an investigator in dose optimizing, drug-drug interaction and biomarker studies for tuberculosis drugs and anticoagulants.

Maurice Koller
Maurice Koller completed his medical studies at the University of Zurich and is now working as an internal medicine resident in Wetzikon, Switzerland. As part of his doctor’s thesis, he went to Kampala, Uganda, for six months to work on the topic of antimicrobial resistance in urinary tract infections.

David N. Bresch
David N. Bresch is professor for Weather and Climate Risks at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich and at MeteoSwiss, Switzerland. His research focuses on the impacts of weather and climate on socio-economic systems. Combining numerical (open-source) modelling of weather and climate risks with the engagement of decision makers and end- users, his research aims to explore ways to strengthen their resilience and create a shared understanding of their weather and climate susceptibility. Such an integrated view along the chain of impacts also opens new perspectives and approaches to the treatment of uncertainty in decision-making. He has conducted many case studies across the globe, applying a worldwide consistent, yet locally specific methodology to strengthen climate resilience while integrating adaptation with economic development and sustainable growth.

Andrea Farnham
Dr. Andrea Farnham is is an epidemiologist working at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health institute specializing in migration and health and innovative data-driven analyses. She is currently working on a project evaluating the community health impacts of large natural resource extraction projects in four countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Lena Fischer
Lena Fischer has a Master of Science in Environmental Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH with a major in Human Health, Nutrition and Environment. She has been working in the field of Public Health, including research and Health Policy, for several months.