Ignacio Rubio studied Biochemistry at the universities of
Tübingen, Germany, and London, UK (Queen Mary College). He received his diploma
in Biochemistry from the University of Tübingen in 1992. He performed his PhD
at the Max-Planck research unit Signal transduction of Growth factors at the
University of Jena in the lab of Reinhard Wetzker, working on the interaction
of Ras and PI3K. He spent several years as a postdoc in the same lab and the
lab of Julian Downward, Cancer Research Fund, UK before becoming an independent
group leader at University Hospital Jena, working on mechanisms of small G-protein
activation and signaling with a focus on immune cell biology. In 2011, he took
over the leadership of a junior research group working on the function of
T-cell immunity in sepsis. Since 2015 he has been an independent group leader
at the Institute of Molecular Cell Biology, in the interdisciplinary Center for
Molecular Biomedicine of the University of Jena. He currently heads the Dept. of Experimental Sepsis Research at the University Hospital Jena.
Cristina Mussini has been a Full Professor of Infectious
Diseases at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy since 2011. She
is also the Director of the Clinic of Infectious Diseases, Azienda
Ospedaliero-Universitaria Policlinico. She received her
degree in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Modena in 1987 and
completed a specialization in Infectious Diseases in 1990. She is a
long-standing member of several organizations, including the National AIDS
Committee of the Italian Ministry of Health from 2009 to 2016; the Governing
Board of the European AIDS Clinical Society since 2000; and the Scientific
Committees for the European AIDS Conferences, HIV Glasgow, and the Icona Cohort
Study since 2008. She is Chair of the ESGIE, the ESCMID Study Group for
Infections in the Elderly. She has taught several international courses, including the EACS HIV advanced course, the Izmir advanced HIV course in Turkey, the
HIV course at Nairobi Kenyatta University in Kenya, the San Petersburg HIV
Course, the Irkutsk HIV course in Russia, Teheran and Birjan HIV courses in
Iran, and the Austrian-American Society Salzburg HIV course. In her 30 years in the
field, she also set up collaborations with international colleagues and has published >650 papers in peer-reviewed journals. She organized the first EACS standard of care meeting in Rome, intending to get NGOs, political stakeholders, and clinicians to the same table to discuss HIV in Europe.
Massimo Girardis is the head of the Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Department of the Modena University Hospital and a Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. From October 2021, he was Chair of the Systemic Inflammation and Sepsis section of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM). From January 2019 to December 2021 he was Chair of the educational committee of the Italian Society of Anaesthesia and Resuscitation (SIAARTI). His clinical activity and research are mainly dedicated to intensive care medicine, particularly infection, sepsis, and oxygen transport, from basic pathophysiology to therapy. He participated as a principal investigator or national coordinator for numerous research projects supported by national government funds and scientific societies.
Lara Gibellini is an Assistant Professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy. She received her PhD in Clinical and Experimental Medicine at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in 2010. Her research activity is mainly focused on analyzing mitochondrial biology and cellular metabolism in several physiological and pathological settings and complex cellular responses.
Andrea Cossarizza holds a PhD in Oncology from the
Universities of Bologna and Modena, with a Specialization in Clinical Pathology
and Immunohematology from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. As a
medical student, his interest in immunology led him to the Basel Institute of
Immunology and then to the New York University Medical Center. After working at several different institutions (Charing Cross Sunley Res. Ctr., London; Univ. Cochin,
Paris; University of California at Los Angeles-UCLA), he became Associate
Professor of General Pathology and Immunology at the University of Modena and
Reggio Emilia in 1998 and was appointed Full Professor in 2010. He is also Director
of the School of Specialization in Clinical Pathology and Clinical Biochemistry; he was President of the International Society for Advancement in Cytometry (ISAC) in 2018-2020 and is now Past President. As of January 2024, he has published >440 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, and his current scientific interests are the characterization of the immune response and the search for predictive
markers in patients treated with biological drugs; immune alterations during
different diseases, in particular, HIV and SARS-CoV2 infections and autoimmune
disorders; immunological changes during aging and longevity; the role of mitochondria during apoptosis; and the importance of mitochondrial DNA in a variety
of pathologies.
Sara De Biasi is an assistant professor of General Pathology and Immunology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia School of Medicine (Italy). She obtained a PhD in Clinical and Experimental Medicine (area of interest: Immunology) from the same University in 2013. Since then, she has been working as a post-doc in the lab of Immunology directed by Prof. Andrea Cossarizza. She is an International Society for Advancement of Cytometry (ISAC) Marylou Ingram Scholar and serves on several ISAC task forces. She is very much involved in teaching flow cytometry, and being an active part of the Cyto U task force and of the Live Education Task Force. Most of her work was focused on adaptive immune response during HIV infection, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. In particular, she studied the role of rare cells such as iNKT cells and circulating endothelial cells (CEC) in the aforementioned conditions. More recently, her studies were dedicated to the importance of B and T cell metabolism in different pathophysiological onsets.
