Molecular Medical Microbiology

Dr. Yi-Wei Tang is currently the Chief of the Clinical Microbiology Service at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, USA. He was a Lecturer and Clinical Fellow at the Mayo Clinic and Assistant Professor, Associate Professor to Professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. He has been engaged in medical and molecular microbiology translational researches, aimed at developing and evaluating new and advanced microbiological diagnostic testing procedures. Dr. Tang ranks among the top of the scientific field in clinical and molecular microbiology, as evidenced by his election as an Editor for the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, an Associate Editor for the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, and a Fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology and of the Infectious Disease Society of America. Dr. Tang has been recognized for his extraordinary expertise in the molecular microbiology diagnosis and monitoring with 156 peer-reviewed articles and 68 book chapters in this field during the past 20 years. Dr. Tang is a chief editor of a Springer book “Advanced Techniques in Diagnostic Microbiology” and a co-editor of two ASM Press books “Molecular Microbiology: Diagnostic Principle and Practice” and “Diagnostic Microbiology in Immunocompromised Host”.

Dongyou Liu, PhD, undertook his veterinary science education at Hunan Agricultural University, China, and pursued postgraduate training at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Over the past two decades, he has worked at several research and clinical laboratories in Australia and the United States of America, with focuses on molecular characterization and virulence determination of microbial pathogens such as ovine footrot bacterium (Dichelobacter nodosus), dermatophyte fungi (Trichophyton, Microsporum and Epidermophyton) and listeriae (Listeria species) as well as security sensitive biological agents. He is the first author of >50 original research and review articles in various international journals, the contributor of 122 book chapters, and the editor of recently released “Handbook of Listeria monocytogenes” (2008), “Handbook of Nucleic Acid Purification” (2009), “Molecular Detection of Foodborne Pathogens” (2009), “Molecular Detection of Human Viral Pathogens” (2010), “Molecular Detection of Human Bacterial Pathogens” (2011), “Molecular Detection of Human Fungal Pathogens” (2011), and “Molecular Detection of Human Parasitic Pathogens” (2012), all of which are published by CRC Press.

Dr Andrew Sails is a Consultant Clinical Scientist at the Public Health England Microbiology Services Laboratory in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he is Head of Molecular Diagnostics and Research and Development. He graduated in Biology from Manchester University in 1991 and began his clinical microbiology career at Preston Public Health Laboratory. Further postgraduate study resulted in a Masters degree in Biomedical Science from Manchester Metropolitan University and a PhD in Medical Microbiology from the University of Central Lancashire. He carried out postdoctoral research the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, USA research into the development of DNA sequence-based subtyping of Campylobacter and other pathogenic foodborne bacteria. He returned to the UK in 2003 to take up his current post at Newcastle, where is Head of Molecular Diagnostics and leads the development and evaluation of new technology and methods for microbiological diagnosis, identification and typing of microbial pathogens. In 2004 he was awarded the W.H. Pierce Memorial Prize for outstanding contributions to bacteriology by The Society for Applied Microbiology.

He has worked extensively in the area of molecular diagnostics and molecular epidemiology of infectious disease (M. tuberculosis, Campylobacter and C. difficile in particular) and has published in these areas. His current research interests include the detection and fingerprinting of pathogens and the application of molecular biology to clinical microbiology to aid the diagnosis and management of infectious disease. He has served on the editorial board of several journals including Applied and Environmental Microbiology, the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and the Open Microbiology Journal. He is a member of several learned societies including Society for Applied Microbiology, The Federation of Clinical Scientists, The Association of Clinical Biochemistry and Laboratory Medicine and is an affiliate member of the Royal College of Pathologists. Since 2005 he has been a member of The Society for Applied Microbiology Executive Committee and is currently serving as its Honorary Meetings Secretary. He was also recently appointed as a Visiting Fellow at Northumbria University where he is contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and PhD supervision.

Paul Spearman, MD is the Albert B. Sabin Professor and Director of Infectious Diseases at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. His laboratory studies fundamental aspects of HIV biology and develops new vaccines for human pathogens. HIV assembly processes are a major focus of the laboratory, including the trafficking of the HIV envelope glycoprotein and its interaction with essential host factors. A related project studies how HIV interacts with macrophages and microglia. Dr. Spearman and his colleagues in the CCHMC Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU) are engaged in the design and performance of clinical trials for new vaccines in adults and children, with a special interest in employing cutting-edge technologies to define innate and adaptive immune responses to vaccines. Dr. Spearman is currently leading trials for Ebola and RSV vaccine development. Dr. Spearman serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors for NCI, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee for the FDA, and is Past President of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (PIDS). Beyond his research interests, Dr. Spearman is a Pediatric ID clinician and enjoys caring for children and mentoring future leaders in Infectious Diseases.

Jingren Zhang was educated at Gansu Agricultural University and National Standard Institute for Veterinary Bio-Products in China followed by a PhD from the University of Texas Health Science Center and a postdoctoral fellowship at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. He served as Assistant Professor at Albany Medical College before taking his current post at Tsinghua University School of Medicine.