2019

Roberto Viau Colindres, MD is Assistant Professor in Geographic Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the Tufts University School of Medicine’s Center for Integrated Management of Antimicrobial Resistance. His research is aimed at gram negative resistance and antibiotic stewardship. Dr. Viau Colindres received his undergraduate degree and MD from the Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala, and his internal medicine residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed an infectious disease fellowship at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the Cleveland VA Medical Center. His ultimate goal is to decrease antimicrobial resistance by increasing effective antibiotic stewardship.

Maroya Spalding Walters, PhD, ScM is an Epidemiologist and leads the Antimicrobial Resistance Team in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC). Dr. Walters completed a B.A. in Chemistry at Carleton College, and a Master of Science in Epidemiology and Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, both from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  She joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the CDC in 2011 and continued at CDC as a staff epidemiologist. Dr. Walters and her team prevent the spread of emerging antibiotic resistance like bacteria harboring carbapenemase enzymes and the drug resistant yeast Candida auris through disease surveillance and public health response activities.

Kelli Palmer, PhD is Associate Professor of Biological Sciences and Cecil H. and Ida Green Chair in Systems Biology Science at the University of Texas at Dallas. She received her BS in Microbiology from the University of Oklahoma, and her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics and Microbiology from the University of Texas at Austin.  She then completed her postdoctoral work in Ophthalmology and Microbiology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Palmer works to understand the molecular basis of drug resistance in pathogenic bacteria, with particular focus on the interactions of resistance plasmids with CRISPR-Cas systems.

Paul Turner, PhD, is the Elihu Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University, and faculty member in Microbiology at Yale School of Medicine. He studies the evolutionary genetics of viruses, particularly bacteriophages that specifically infect bacterial pathogens, and RNA viruses that are vector-transmitted by mosquitoes. Dr. Turner received a Biology degree (1988) from University of Rochester, and Ph.D. (1995) in Zoology from Michigan State University. He did postdoctoral training at National Institutes of Health, University of Valencia in Spain, and University of Maryland-College Park, before joining Yale’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department in 2001. His service to the profession includes Chair of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Division on Evolutionary and Genomic Microbiology, as well as membership on the ASM Committee on Minority Education, and multiple National Research Council advisory committees. Dr. Turner was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, and Councilor of the American Genetic Association. Dr. Turner has served as Director of Graduate Studies and as Chair of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at Yale, as well as Yale’s Dean of Science.