2022

Alfredo Torres, PhD, MS

Dr. Torres is the Herman Barnett Distinguished Professor in Microbiology and Immunology, and Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at UTMB. He is a peer-recognized bacteriologist/vaccinologist with extensive experience in the study of bacterial pathogens causing diarrheal disease, such as pathogenic Escherichia coli or Shigella, or biodefense-related organisms, such as pathogenic Burkholderia species. Dr. Torres has published more than 140 peer-reviewed articles, 15 book chapters and 2 books on topics related to microbial pathogenesis, food safety, therapeutics, and vaccine development. In education, he is involved in teaching and mentoring a diverse group of trainees at the local, national, and international level as well as being involved in the support and development of faculty at UTMB and in Latin America.

A recording of his talk can be found here.

Julie Bettinger, PhD, MPH

Dr. Bettinger is a Professor at the Vaccine Evaluation Center in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia.  She is an infectious disease epidemiologist whose research interests include vaccine safety and vaccine preventable diseases, as well as attitudes and beliefs around immunization uptake and use.  Dr. Bettinger is the data center director for the Canadian Immunization Monitoring Program, Active (IMPACT), an active surveillance network for vaccine preventable diseases and vaccine adverse events in 12 tertiary care pediatric hospitals across Canada and the principal investigator for CIRN’s Canadian National Vaccine Safety (CANVAS) network, which monitors the safety of influenza vaccines each year and is monitoring COVID vaccines.

A recording of her talk can be accessed by the SEU community here.

Alex De Figueiredo, PhD, MSci, MSc

Dr. De Figueiredo is a Research Fellow in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Statistics Lead at the Vaccine Confidence Project. His primary research interests lie in estimating, forecasting, and mapping global, national, and local trends in vaccine confidence and coverage, as well as understanding the link between vaccine behaviours and socio-demographic group and vaccination policies. Alex received his undergraduate and PhD degrees from Imperial College London and an MSc from the University of Oxford.

A recording of his talk can be found here.