Professor Nick Daneman is a Clinician Scientist in the Division of Infectious Diseases, in the Department of Medicine, at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, at the University of Toronto, and senior scientist at ICES and infection prevention physician at Public Health Ontario. His research program is focused on optimizing the prevention and treatment of health care associated infection, with particular interest in Clostridium difficile infections, infections of critical care, surgical site infections, and antibiotic stewardship. 

Evan is the Chief Scientific Officer of Asep Medical Inc., a company dedicated to addressing antibiotic failure through the development of novel therapeutics and medical diagnostics. In addition, he is a Research Associate working with Bob Hancock at the University of British Columbia developing synthetic peptides for pharmaceutical applications as well as novel diagnostics for sepsis. He is currently working on advancing the company’s proprietary synthetic antibiofilm peptide technology towards clinical applications to address hard-to-treat biofilm-associated infection. In addition, he is part of the team developing a novel sepsis diagnostic assay capable of aiding in the risk assessment of patients for progression to severe sepsis as the enter the emergency department or intensive care unit of a hospital. Evan holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Calgary and has authored or contributed to 52 peer-reviewed publications, four book chapters and is a co-inventor on two patent families. 

Charu Kaushic, PhD, FCAHS, is the Scientific Director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)-Institute of Infection and Immunity. She is a tenured Full Professor in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. In her role at CIHR-III she is responsible for making decisions nationally and internationally for CIHR’s strategic investments. She is currently Chair of GloPID-R, a global consortium of funders in pandemic preparedness and emergency response research. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has been involved in shaping CIHR’s research response to the pandemic and served on Canada’s COVID-19 National Immunity Task Force and Health Canada’s Variants of Concern Leadership Group. Dr. Kaushic manages a large interdisciplinary research program in women’s reproductive health, specifically basic, clinical and translational research examining susceptibility and immune responses to sexually transmitted viruses, HIV-1 and HSV-2. She has received numerous national and international awards for her research and leadership. Recently she was inducted into the Government of Canada’s Women of Impact Online Gallery and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. 

Dr. Wojcik is academically trained as a scientist, with a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Calgary and a BSc in Cellular, Molecular and Microbial Biology. Her PhD focused on elucidating antimicrobial resistance mechanisms of a Cystic Fibrosis opportunistic pathogen. Following her PhD, for 6 years, Kasia worked as an educator and Intravital Microscopy Specialist supporting the research of investigators in the Live Cell Imaging Facility, at the Snyder Institute for Chronic Diseases, University of Calgary. She specialized in fluorescence microscopy for imaging of inflammatory and chronic disease models. She consulted on study design, developed methods and taught surgical approaches, sample preparation, and microscopy. During this time, she also achieved her Project Management Professional (PMP) designation, with the Project Management Institute. This allowed her, to make a transition to industry, where for over 5 years she served as a Medical Scientific Liaison in the Respiratory then Cardiology Franchises at Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada. In 2022, Dr. Wojcik joined bioMerieux Canada and works as an infectious diseases Medical Science Liaison.