Dr. Mitsakakis is a Physicist with an MSc in Nanoscience & Nanotechnology. He acquired his doctoral degree (2010) in Materials Science & Technology working on the development of a multi-analyte acoustic biosensing platform for cardiac markers. He joined Hahn-Schickard in 2011 as a post-doctoral Fellow. He currently coordinates the H2020 project “DIAGORAS” and is partner in the H2020 projects “DMC-MALVEC” and “SuperPests”.

He is currently Head of the International Business Development Group of Hahn-Schickard and is in contact with several organisations for the translation of the research outcomes from lab to clinic/end-users.

Dr Hays’ main area of expertise relates to the translation (development, evaluation and validation) of new technologies to combat the growing threat of global antibiotic resistance. He is an associate professor in the Dept. of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at Erasmus MC, the Netherlands, but has also worked at CSL, York and at CPHL in London, UK having gained a PhD in Microbiology at Erasmus MC and a PhD in Virology from the University of Leicester, UK.

Dr Hays is a member of the European scientific advisory board for GenePOC. He is also a member of the Committee in Microbial Sciences and Country Ambassador (the Netherlands), both for the American Society for Microbiology.

Alex van Belkum, PhD, fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, has been primarily involved in research on molecular epidemiology, molecular and culture-based diagnostics and antimicrobial resistance testing in clinical microbiology. A scientific director of microbiology research at bioMérieux, a diagnostics company based in France.

He moved to industry 7 years ago where he is a microbiologist in the Data Analytics Unit with an interest in next generation sequencing and the use of data-rich technologies in clinical microbiology.

Dr. Miller is a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and the Director of the Clinical Molecular Microbiology Laboratory for UNC Health Care in the U.S. She has broad research interests spanning from the epidemiology of drug resistant organisms to accurate and cost-effective molecular detection of viral infections.

She is currently the Chair of the Professional Practice Committee for the American Society for Microbiology.

Gijs Elshout is a general practitioner and assistant professor who received his PhD in 2015 on the topic ‘febrile children in primary care’ with special interest in the antibiotics treatment of these children. In addition, he is an author of the revised Dutch GP-guideline for children with fever.