governance

He is the Executive Secretary/CEO of the East African Health Commission www.eahealth.org appointed by the Council of Ministers of the East African Community www.eac.int and he is a professor of medicine at KCMC, Tanzania.

Gibson Kibiki graduated in medicine (MD) in Bulgaria in 1996. He specialized in internal medicine (MMed) in Tanzania in 2003. Between 1998 and 2005 he undertook training programmes in interventional and advanced endoscopy (bronchoscopy, and digestive system endoscopy) in Germany, the Netherlands, and USA. He conducted a series of bronchoscopy-based (basic and clinical) research on co-infection between pulmonary Tuberculosis and Human Immunodeficiency Virus for his PhD thesis, which he completed in 2006 and was awarded a PhD in Medical Sciences at Radboud University, The Netherlands.

Throughout his career he has been immensely involved in clinical services, academics, research, capacity building, and management in the health sector: he established the first in the region endoscopy unit for advanced endoscopic treatment at KCMC, he led the establishment of Kilimanjaro Clinical Research Institute www.kcri.ac.tz as an academic centre for evidence based-medical interventions, he has supervised/mentored more than 70 MSc, MMed, PhD, and Post-Doc fellows from Tanzania and from overseas universities. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers. He served as an adjunct Professor at the University of Virginia, USA, and a visiting Lecturer for the Diploma in Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (DTM&H) course at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK. He is a PhD supervisor for Radboud University in the Netherlands, and KCMC in Tanzania. He serves as an external examiner for PhD candidates for various overseas universities.

Prof Kibiki is a member of the Executive Group of PanACEA consortium and a member of various expert committees e.g. the Expert Advisory Panel of the European COMPARE Consortium; Advisory Board of THRiVE consortium, Clinical Trials Technical Committee of Tanzania FDA, member of Data Safety Monitoring Boards of various clinical trials in TB, and HIV. He has led various regional and international research consortia.

Prof Diacon leads Task Applied Science and Task Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa. TASK is an institution specializing in clinical and microbiological TB research and particularly first-time evaluation of novel antibiotics in tuberculosis patients. The TASK clinical team has research sites in the community, at TB hospitals and at a private hospital specialized in tuberculosis research. The laboratory team aims at validating and improving markers for tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment effects.

Amongst other achievements, Prof Diacon was awarded a Rector’s Award for Outstanding Research at Stellenbosch University, the Swiss TB Research Award and the Scientific Prize from the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease for his exceptional contribution towards research.

Associate professor Rod Dawson is the Managing Director of the University of Cape Town Lung Institute (UCTLI). He is also the Clinical Research Unit Head of the Centre for Tuberculosis Research Innovation (CTBRI) at the UCTLI. Prof Dawson is a Consultant Pulmonologist and holds the position of Honorary Senior Consultant in the Division of Pulmonology Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town. He was elected to the Board of the UCT Lung Institute in 2012 and was appointed Managing Director of the UCTLI since 2016.

The Centre for Tuberculosis Research Innovation was established by Prof Dawson in 2008 and is now established as a leading high volume research site for investigational studies for new drugs in TB and HIV, having conducted more than 30 pivotal TB treatment studies. Prof Dawson’s main research interests are: New TB drug development, Counselling interventions to improve compliance in Drug resistant TB (DR-TB), Standardized chest radiography reading and Interventional TB and HIV cohort studies. Prof Dawson has established an extensive collaborative research network and manages two prospective research cohorts including the “Longitudinal Pulmonary HIV” and the “TB Bio-storage” cohorts, that have established the basis of a novel self-funded research program which has supported 2 PhD students. He has published 54 manuscripts in PubMed-listed international peer reviewed journals. Prof Dawson’s total citation count on 1st May 2017 is 1976 with a Scopus h-Index of 26.

Prof Gavin Churchyard is a specialist physician, internationally-renowned for his contributions in tuberculosis (TB). He is the founder and CEO of The Aurum Institute NPC, an independent, not for profit, proudly South African, public benefit organization that focuses on TB and HIV service delivery, management and research. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Witwatersrand, School of Public Health and an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine. He is the Chair of the WHO/TDR Disease Reference Group for TB, Leprosy and Buruli Ulcer (2009-2012) and a member of the WHO Stop TB Research movement, both of which set global research priorities for TB.  He is also the Chair of the WHO Task Force for developing policy for new TB drugs, a member of the WHO Strategic Technical Advisory Group for TB that advises WHO on policy for TB, a member of the WHO expert committees for TB preventive therapy and TB screening and a member of the WHO Working Groups for TB/HIV, MDR TB and infection control. He is the co-Chair of the NIH HIV Vaccine Trials Network-TB vaccine working group, Vice Chair of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group Transformative Science Group for TB, Co-Chair of a Fogarty Global Infectious Disease training grant for MDR TB.  He is the principal investigator on a number of TB trials being conducted in South Africa.  He has contributed to industry, national and international guidelines for TB and HIV, and has published widely in the areas of TB and HIV treatment and prevention.

Michael Hoelscher is the director of Global Health & Infectious Diseases at the Department for Infectious Diseases & Tropical Medicine at the Medical Center of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. He studied Medicine in Munich and joint the Department of Infectious Diseases & Tropical Medicine thereafter. During his internal medicine and microbiology training he took several sabbatical leaves and worked at the US Walter-Reed-Institute and the Mbeya Referral Hospital in Tanzania. In 2010 he was appointed as Professor and Director of the Global Health & Infectious Diseases.

Professor Gillespie was appointed at the Foundation Sir James Black Chair of Medicine at the University of St Andrews in 2010. His main research is to try to improve tuberculosis treatment and has published more than 200 papers in peer reviewed journals.  His work includes being the coordinating investigator for TB Alliance trials including REMoxTB, the first regulatory pivotal trial of two treatment-shortening regimens and the STAND trial. His current work in St Andrews includes research developing novel diagnostic assays including a molecular bacterial load assay that can quantify the number of live organisms in less than four hours and innovative drug susceptibility tests that speed the time to result more than 60 times.  He works closely with colleagues in applied mathematics and computer science to develop innovative agent based and network models of tuberculosis treatment.  He has developed a range of tools to determine the phenotypically antibiotic resistant cell state of M tuberculosis cells that may open new avenues for better treatment.

Martin Boeree is Associate Professor in lung diseases, especially tuberculosis and non-tuberculous mycobacteria. He studied medicine at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and specialized as a pulmonologist at the University Medical Centre in the same town. He then went to Blantyre, Malawi in Africa to join the College of Medicine at the University of Malawi as a Senior Lecturer. He headed the Department of Medicine from 1996-2000. There, he built experience with the treatment and research of tuberculosis especially related to HIV. He served as advisor for the National TB Program. In 2000, he returned to the Netherlands where he joined the Department of Lung Diseases at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre. He was concurrently Director of the University Centre for Chronic Diseases and TB referral hospital Dekkerswald from 2005-2010. He was Chair for the Dutch Society of Tropical Medicine and the Federation of the European Societies of Tropical Medicine and International Health. He acts as one of the national consultants TB and NTM for KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation and the Dutch Thoracic Society. Martin Boeree has more than 150 publications focusing on drug treatment of tuberculosis and non-tuberculous mycobacterial infections. He was Chief Investigator of the HIGHRIF consortium within the PanACEA consortium focusing on the quest to find the “right” dose of rifampicine in its potential to shorten the duration of drug sensitive TB. He acts as Coordinator for the PanACEA II consortium.