The EURL-PH-VBV consortium consists of:

 

Our team

Chantal Reusken works as principal expert Virology at the Centre for Infectious Disease Control (CIb) of the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM). She chairs the WHO Collaborating Centre on Laboratory preparedness & response for high threat pathogens and biorisk at RIVM.  

She participates amongst others in the lab technical working group in the WHO-Elimination of Yellow Fever epidemics programme and is an appointed member of the WHO technical working group on arboviruses.  She is a founding member of the European society for Arbovirus Research (ARES). Her activities focus on emerging viral disease laboratory preparedness and response and on pathogens moving at the animal-human interphase including arboviruses and rodent-borne viruses. 

Remi Charrel is MD and PhD. He is a specialist in vector-borne and zoonotic viral diseases, as well as respiratory viral infections.  He is one of the 3 deputy directors the "Unite des Virus Emergents" (Unit of Emerging Viruses) where he supervises Preparedness and Response activities against Emerging viruses through co-leading the European Virus Archive Marseille ISO-13485 diagnostic platform.

He was trained in Aix Marseille Medical School and went for 2 years for post-doctoral fellowship in the WHO Reference Centre for Tropical Diseases at University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, Texas. He is the author of  more than 360 peer-reviewed articles, 24 book chapters, and was coordinator or PI for 24 projects funded by NIH, European Commission, the French Research Agency and Industry companies. He is the Head of the Nosocomial Infection Control Committee of the University Hospitals of Marseille.

Anna Papa-Konidari, Professor Emiritus, is leading the National Reference Centre for Arboviruses and haemorrhagic fever viruses. She was the former Director of the Department of Microbiology in the Medical School of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Her major interests focus on molecular diagnostics, epidemiology and immune response of emerging viral diseases.

She is President of the International Society on Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever and member of the Management Team of EVD-LabNet (European expert laboratory network for emerging viral diseases) supported by ECDC. She participates in several EU European Union (European Union ) projects, mainly on preparedness of emerging viral diseases. She has published 347 scientific articles included in PubMed with h-index 56 and 12,500 citations.

Tatjana Avšič-Županc is Professor of Medical Microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She works as a scientific advisor and principal expert at the Institute of Microbiology and Immunology in Ljubljana. She has more than 40 years of experience in clinical diagnostics and research of zoonotic vector-borne diseases, mainly arboviruses and viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHF).

She has established a laboratory for the diagnosis of zoonoses with BSL3+ facility, which serves as a reference centre at national and international level. She is a member of the European Society for Arbovirus Research (ARES) and the American Committee on Arthropod-Borne Viruses and Zoonotic Viruses (ACAV). Her activities focus on emerging viruses in the context of host-vector-human relationships.

Miša Korva is Assistant Professor, Senior Researcher, Head of Laboratory for diagnostics of zoonoses, COVID-19 and BSL-3+ laboratory at the Institute of Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. 

She is a member of the European society for Arbovirus Research (ARES). Her activities focuses on the development of molecular methods, pathogen isolation and characterisation, genetic variability of emerging pathogens in the context of their host-vector-human relationship. 

Luisa Barzon is Associate Professor in Biotechnology and Methods in Laboratory Medicine at the Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Padova, Padova, Italy. She is also Medical Director with High Specialty in Molecular Diagnostics at the Microbiology and Virology Unit of Azienda Ospedale - Università di Padova (AOUP).

She coordinates the section on emerging viruses and vector-borne pathogens of the Veneto Region Reference Laboratory (since 2005). Her clinical and research activities are focused on emerging and re-emerging infections (including epidemiology, genetics, pathogenesis, and diagnosis of emerging pathogens); in vitro disease modelling to investigate pathogen-host interactions; innate and adaptive immune responses to viral infections and vaccines; applications of new biotechnologies in diagnostic microbiology.