Speakers

Dr. Pawan Kumar is the Additional Commissioner at Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India. Prior to this, he was Additional Director at Directorate of Health Services, Government of NCT of Delhi, having experience of 23 years at various positions in health sector. He has rich experience of working in Health Care Management/Public Health ranging from Primary Health Care to the State & National level (Planning, Policy, Implementation, Supervision and Monitoring). His areas of interest are Public Health, Epidemiology, Research Methodology and Scientific Writing. 

Dr. Nivedita Gupta currently serves as a the Head of Division of Communicable Diseases at ICMR. Her areas of specialization are Virology and Vaccinology. After a degree in medicine, she obtained a PhD and a post graduate diploma in Epidemiology. She holds memberships in the National Academy of Medical Sciences, Indian Virologocial Society and Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists.

Prof. William Moss is a Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology, International Health and Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Executive Director of the International Vaccine Access Center, and a Deputy Director at the Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute. He is a pediatrician with subspecialty training in infectious diseases, and has worked in Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and India among other countries. His broad research interests are the epidemiology and control of childhood infections in resource-poor countries. The specific focus of his current research is in understanding the impact of the HIV epidemic on measles control and eradication, the epidemiology and control of malaria in southern Africa, the use of serosurveillance to guide immunization programs, and the care and treatment of HIV-infected children in rural Zambia. 

Prof. Matthew Ferrari is a Professor of Biology and the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Global Health at The Pennsylvania State University. His research combines his background in Fisheries and Wildlife Management, Statistics, and Ecology to develop quantitative models and methods to build computational models to understand the dynamics, persistence, and control of vaccine preventable diseases of humans and animals. His primary focus has been the control and elimination of measles and rubella. He has worked as an advisor to the World Health Organization; Gavi, the vaccine alliance; Medecins Sans Frontieres and national Ministries of Health to develop models and analysis to support routine and outbreak response vaccination for measles and other outbreak prone infections. In addition to his research activities, Dr. Ferrari is the Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics (CIDD)  at Penn State. CIDD is an organization of over 70 academic laboratories across academic units at Penn State that study infectious disease biology at scales ranging from proteins to pandemics.

Dr. Niket Thakkar is a Principal Research Scientist at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Institute for Disease Modeling. A mathematician by training, Niket's current research focuses on developing and applying quantitative methods to open questions in immunization and vaccine delivery. In his role at the Gates Foundation, Niket has worked closely with a variety of global partners including the World Health Organization, the Vaccine Alliance, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a number of governments. In those collaborations, his research has been used to design and advocate for immunization efforts that increase vaccine access and limit the burden of preventable diseases. Generally speaking, Niket's mathematical interests range across problems in probability, discrete math, and stochastic processes, and his research career has touched on topics in nanoscale optics, statistical physics, information theory, signal processing, and epidemiology.  

Prof. Rama Pal is an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Her primary research area is development economics with a focus on inclusive development. Currently, she is working on regional disparity in learning, child health, immunization, migration, human capital formation and intergenerational mobility. She is also the convener of the vaccine-preventable disease (VPD) group of the National Disease Modelling Consortium (NDMC) anchored at IIT Bombay. Her research has been published in reputed international academic journals.