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Disciplines Invited Speakers Anatomical Pathology Chemical Pathology Haematology Human Genetics Immunology Microbiology Public Health Virology

Dr. Christopher Ealand
Immunology
Dr. Christopher Ealand
Prof. Zaza Ndhlovu
Immunology
Prof. Zaza Ndhlovu
Dr. Melissa-Rose Abrahams
Immunology
Dr. Melissa-Rose Abrahams
Prof. Novel Chegou
Immunology
Prof. Novel Chegou
Prof. Penny Moore
Immunology
Prof. Penny Moore
Dr. Christian Kahusu
Immunology
Dr. Christian Kahusu
Prof. Wendy Burgers
Immunology
Prof. Wendy Burgers
Prof. Mohamed Tikly
Immunology
Prof. Mohamed Tikly

Prof. Wendy Burgers

Prof. Wendy Burgers is a Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Infectious Disease (IDM) at the University of Cape Town (UCT). She is a viral immunologist, studying the human immune response to infections. She established and directs the Cellular Immunology Platform at UCT, a hub for clinical immunology research, vaccine evaluation (preclinical and clinical) and capacity building, for new and existing pathogens and future epidemics and pandemics. In the past her research group has focused on understanding the cellular immune response to HIV and TB. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her research group studied T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination, addressing globally relevant and timely questions on T cell cross-reactivity to viral variants. She led the Cellular Immunity subgroup of the South African National COVID Variants Consortium, and was a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on COVID vaccines. Her group is funded by the South African MRC, Wellcome Trust, European Commission and Gates Foundation. Wendy was awarded the South African MRC Silver Medal for outstanding contributions to science in 2024, and in 2023 was elected a Fellow of UCT in recognition of exemplary scholarly work. Wendy leads a group of 25 postgraduate students, postdoctoral fellows, early and mid-career investigators and laboratory scientists. Her training and mentoring efforts are focused primarily on Black women, who remain severely underrepresented in biomedical science in South Africa. She also teaches infectious disease immunology to undergraduates at UCT.

Dr. Christian Kahusu

Dr. Christian Kahusu is an MD from the Democratic Republic of Congo. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) and KU Leuven in Belgium. He holds an MSc degree in Tropical Medicine & Infectious Diseases from ITM and Immunology of Tropical Infectious Diseases from the University of Antwerp. He is also a Mandela Washington Fellow in Public Management, trained at the University of Minnesota. Currently serving as Laboratory Manager of the Clinical Immunology Department at INRB in Kinshasa, Dr. Kahusu leads the Immunomonitoring Platform and plays a central role as the country Project Manager of the CEPI Centralized Laboratory Network (CLN) at INRB. He oversees multiple research projects focused on immune profiling and emerging infectious diseases, including Ebola, Marburg, Mpox, etc. He has received several predoctoral training at ITM Antwerp, the U.S. CDC in Atlanta, Harvard Medical School, etc.

Prof. Penny Moore

Dr Penny Moore is the South African Research Chair of Virus-Host Dynamics and Research Professor at Wits University and NICD. She is Director of the Antibody Immunity Research Unit, an extramural unit of the SAMRC and a Research Fellow at the Infectious Diseases and Oncology Research Institute. She also holds a joint appointment as Honorary Senior Scientist in Virus-Host Dynamics at CAPRISA, UKZN. Penny directs a research group who work in the fields of HIV and SARS-CoV-2 vaccine discovery, combining Virology, Immunology and Bioinformatics. More recently, the team has expanded to work on Influenza, Cytomegalovirus, Respiratory Syncytial Virus, Adenoviruses and Ebola.

Prof. Novel Chegou

Prof. Novel Chegou is a Professor in the Division of Immunology, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University. He heads the TB diagnostic (biomarker) research laboratory within the Stellenbosch University Immunology Research Group, which is situated in SU’s Biomedical Research Institute. He is currently the acting HOD for the Division of Immunology. Prof Chegou’s work mainly focuses on the discovery of biomarkers for TB, including biomarkers for the diagnosis of TB and biomarkers for monitoring of the response to TB treatment. He currently works on studies that are focused on biomarkers for the diagnosis of TB in both adults and children, with these studies focused on both pulmonary and extrapulmonary TB. He is passionate about the translation of findings from his biomarker work into tools that may be used for the control of TB, and his team has developed two prototype tests for the diagnosis of TB, which are currently undergoing evaluation.

Dr. Christopher Ealand

Dr. Christopher Ealand is a researcher at the University of Witwatersrand (Wits), based at the National Health Laboratory Services (NHLS) in Braamfontein. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cape Town and now specializes in Biomedical Tuberculosis Research – spanning basic, clinical and translational mycobacteriology. This includes the characterization of enzymes involved in peptidoglycan biosynthesis in Mycobacterium tuberculosis; and the development of diagnostic tools and probes for the detection for TB, such as tongue swabs and novel fluorescent stains. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he developed qPCR-based assays for detecting circulating SARS-Cov-2 variants. Dr. Ealand is a recipient of prestigious fellowships from Columbia University, CSIR, NRF, and the South African Medical Research Council and has mentored/graduated several postgraduate students in the faculty of Health Sciences. cademically active and enjoys research. During his post-graduate studies, he collaborated with colleagues at Brigham and Women’s hospital, Boston (USA), with specific work on foetal alcohol syndrome and sudden infant death syndrome. Dan has published in many peer-reviewed journals and has presented at local and international congresses. Dan is a Fellow of the European Confederation of Neuropathological Societies. He is a recipient of National Research Foundation (Desmond Tutu Foundation) fund.

Prof. Zaza Ndhlovu

Professor Zaza Ndhlovu is a leading immunologist whose work integrates T cell immunology and spatial biology to tackle HIV persistence. His research programme includes studies geared towards understanding initial events that contribute to immune dysfunction and subsequent disease progression. He uses excisional lymph node samples from acute and chronic HIV infected patients to interrogate how brief exposure to HIV influences induction and durability of protective immune responses.

Dr. Melissa-Rose Abrahams

Dr. Melissa-Rose Abrahams is a Senior Lecturer in the Division of Medical Virology at the University of Cape Town (UCT), South Africa. Her postgraduate studies in Virology began in the characterization of poxviruses and later transitioned to investigating the HIV transmission bottleneck. She obtained her PhD in 2014, investigating the evolution of transmitted HIV-1 in women from KwaZulu-Natal with differing disease progression profiles. She currently overseas an HIV Cure research program at UCT, which includes studies characterizing the size and timing of establishment of the latent HIV reservoir and identifying viral factors that drive viral persistence, with a particular focus on African women.

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Congress Details
Dates:

02 - 05 October 2025

Venue:

Emperors Palace Convention Centre, JHB

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