17th Annual Scientific Meeting
Infectious Diseases, Shaping the Future of Care; Patients, Pathogens and Policy
14th & 15th May 2026
The Tower Hotel, Waterford.
Dr. Máirín Boland MB BCh BAO, MD, MPH, DCH, FRPCI, FFPHMI is a Consultant in Public Health Medicine and
National Clinical Lead of the Health Threats Preparedness Programme within the newly established HSE National Health Protection Service.
Dr Boland graduated from UCD and following higher specialist training with the Faculty of Public Health Medicine she worked in the Eastern region (population 1.2 million) for 16 years, leading on Emergency planning, and managing multidisciplinary teams in COVID response in multiple settings, including Port Health Network through the pandemic.
Dr Boland’s role encompasses ‘all-hazard’ emergency planning and cross border health security. Recent collaborations include EU Healthy Gateways (point of entry/cross-border preparedness and response) and EU SHARP (Strengthening International Health Regulations). She is a member of the HERA Advisory Forum, the ECDC EU Health Task Force Advisory Group, and is the ECDC National Focal Point for Preparedness and Response. She is co-chair of the HSE HCID Steering Group which coordinates HCID preparedness activities.
After studying medicine at the University of Basel (MD 1998 - 2004, PhD thesis 2006 - 2008) at the University of Basel, he went abroad for a Clinical Fellowship “Transplant Infectious Disease” as well as a Post-doctoral fellowship, Li Ka Shing Institute for Virology (2010 - 2011), both at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Back in Switzerland, he became a fellow in Clinical Microbiolgy (FAMH) (2012 - 2015) at the University Hospital of Basel. During the same time (11/2014 - to date) he became Research Group Leader Applied Microbiology Research” Laboratory in the Department of Biomedicine of the University of Basel.
From 2015 to 2022 he was the Head of the Clinical Bacteriology and Mycology at the University Hospital Basel. Since August 2022, he is the Director of the Institute of Medical Microbiology at the University of Zurich.
Monica Gandhi MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine and Associate Division Chief (Clinical Operations/ Education) of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/ San Francisco General Hospital. She also serves as the medical director of the HIV Clinic at SFGH ("Ward 86").. Dr. Gandhi completed her M.D. at Harvard Medical School and then came to UCSF in 1996 for residency training in Internal Medicine. After her residency, Dr. Gandhi completed a fellowship in Infectious Diseases and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies, both at UCSF. She also obtained a Masters in Public Health from Berkeley in 2001 with a focus on Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
Dr Claire Gordon is a consultant in Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology and is deputy unit head of the UKHSA Rare and Imported Pathogens Laboratory, which is the UK’s frontline laboratory for the diagnosis of rare, unusual and dangerous viral and bacterial infections. Her early medical training was in Northern Ireland, before higher specialty training in ID/microbiology in London and then Oxford, where she also completed a DPhil in the use of Whole Genome Sequencing for investigating disease due to Staphylococcus aureus. Following completion of training she worked at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya. In 2018 she moved back from Kenya to take up the post of lead clinical microbiologist for the UK Department of Health Fleming Fund programme, which supports development of AMR surveillance in low- and middle-income countries. She moved from the Fleming Fund to UKHSA in 2020.
Dr Tara McGinty graduated in medicine from University College Dublin, Ireland and completed her subsequent specialist training in infectious diseases. She was awarded a PhD in 2021, her research spanning HIV immunology, the immunopathogenesis of co-morbidity and bone disease, investigator-led clinical trial management and cohort methodology. In 2019, she set up and is the clinical lead for the Inclusion health service at the Mater Hospital. This service aims to tackle health inequalities experienced by marginalised and socially excluded groups by delivering patient centred, integrated health and social care. Including and engaging marginalised voices who are under-represented in research is an area of particular interest and Tara is an active researcher within the National ID CTN and All Ireland ID cohort and collaborates with many National and international researchers in the areas of inclusion health, social determinants of health and integrated healthcare delivery alongside her involvement in HIV clinical trials and research.
Dr Morley is dual trained consultant in Infectious Disease and Intensive Care medicine at the Mater Hospital. She is clinical lead of Ireland’s High Level Isolation Unit, with experience from Royal Free, London. She completed Higher Specialist Training in Infectious Disease in 2017. She completed JFICMI and EDIC intensive care examinations and is on the speciality register of Intensive Care Medicine since 2020
Ilan Schwartz MD PhD FRCPC is an Infectious Diseases physician and researcher at Duke University, where he is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of the Clinical Research Unit in the Division of Infectious Diseases. Dr Schwartz’s research interests are in emerging fungal infections, dimorphic fungi, and immunocompromised hosts. He has published >100 peer reviewed manuscripts. He is a contributor to several clinical management guidelines, including the European Confederation for Medical Mycology (ECMM) OneWorld guidelines on diagnosis and treatment of the endemic mycoses and diagnosis and treatment of candidiasis, and Infectious Diseases Society of America guidelines for histoplasmosis. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Mycoses Study Group Education & Research Consortium, and he is a Fellow of both the ECMM and IDSA. He is an editor of Clinical Infectious Diseases and Mycoses.
Binta Is a Consultant in Inclusion Health, the first in the NHS, currently based at Mortimer Market Centre in London and is the inclusion health lead within the trust, CNWL, where she leads peer-centred outreach programmes of work for inclusion health populations
Binta is Chair of the National Clinical Network of Sexual Assault and Abuse Services at NHS England and Clinical Lead for Hepatitis C in Health Inequalities and Inclusion Health at Transformation Partners In Healthcare, Royal Free NHS Trust
Binta is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Health at UCL, where she focuses on co-production and mixed methods research in inclusion health
Binta is one of the founding members of the Women's Inclusion Health Collective
Dr Liz Whittaker is Senior Clinical Lecturer in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology. She divides her time between Imperial College London and the Department of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology, St. Marys Hospital, London where she is a Consultant.
Dr. Whittaker is the Director of Research for West London Children's Healthcare (WLCH), working closely with the Board of WLCH and Imperial College's Centre of Paediatrics and Child Health (PAECH) to ensure research is embedded in every patient's journey.
Dr Whittaker is the Clinical Lead for Paediatric Infectious Diseases and the co-lead for HCID (high consequence infectious diseases) at St Marys, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. She is the Convenor of the British Paediatric Allergy Infection and Immunity Group (BPAIIG; BPAIIG). She is on the steering committee of the British Association of Paediatric Tuberculosis (BAPT) and works closely with international colleagues in Europe and beyond to improve diagnosis and outcomes in children with TB, through the PTBNET group amongst others.
Dr. Timo Wolf is an Infectious Diseases specialist currently with the Infectious Disesases Department of Frankfurt University.
He is working in a scientific and clinical position in the Infectious Diseases Department of Frankfurt University since May 2001. Since 2009, he is the lead clinician of the Infectious Diseases ward and since January 2016 of the high-level isolation unit for highly contagious diseases, in which he treated patients with SARS-CoV-1 and 2, Lassa fever and Ebola Virus disease. He was an active member of ETIDE (“European Training in Infectious Diseases Emergencies”) as “co-opted expert”. He also servers as a speaker for the “permanent working group of competence and treatment centres for high consequence diseases” (STAKOB), associated with the Robert Koch Institut, Berlin. He was involved in the development of therapy recommendations and guidelines on tularemia, plague, Ebola, Lassa and CCHF and was an advisor to the WHO STAC committee for Ebola Virus Disease.
His inaugural lecture as an associate professor was held on January 25th, 2017 on the topic of Diagnostic advances in the care of acute and chronic viral diseases, and he is since teaching at Frankfurt University Hospital. He has a scientific interest in emerging infections and HCID and conducted clinical studies on the topics of Malaria, travel-associated diseases, HIV treatment and opportunistic infections as well as SARS-CoV-2.
Dr Jackson is a specialist in Infectious Diseases and General Medicine working as a consultant physician in Cork University Hospital and the Mercy University Hospital in Cork City, Ireland. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2001. His specialist training included 2 years in Malawi running clinical trials in the area of Cryptococcal meningitis for which he was awarded his MD, and a further year of clinical fellowship in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was awarded his Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the Gorgas Institute in 2005.
In Cork, as well as general medicine commitments, he is the clinical lead for HIV, running a clinic with over 600 patients receiving antiretrovirals. He is also chairperson of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Committees in Cork University Hospital and the Mercy University Hospital, and is the clinical lead for Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT) for the southern region of Ireland. He provides a consultation service for inpatients with respect to general infectious diseases, HIV, antimicrobial management, fever of unknown origin, tropical medicine. His ongoing lecturing commitments are through University College Cork. He has active research interests with multi-centre collaborations in many areas including HIV, Hepatitis B, antimicrobial stewardship, COVID-19.