Transdisciplinary Approaches for Pandemic Preparedness

Nationality: British

Position: Professor, MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research

Research fields: Molecular biology of influenza viruses

ESWI member since 2015

Prof. Hutchinson received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and was then a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Oxford from 2009 – 2016. In 2016, he set up a research group at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, where he is now Professor of Molecular and Cellular Virology.

Hutchinson’s research looks at the factors that make influenza and other respiratory viruses infectious, including the morphology and composition of virus particles, the way in which viruses interact and spread within the host and how these factors shape the course of a respiratory infection. He was named ‘Young Microbiologist of the Year’ by the Microbiology Society in 2007 and has held fellowships including a Junior Research Fellowship at Worcester College Oxford (2010 – 2014) and an MRC Career Development Award (2016 – 2021).

Hutchinson has an ongoing interest in science communication, winning the 2008 Biosciences Federation’s New Researcher Science Communication Award and the 2021 Microbiology Society’s Microbiology Outreach Prize, and in the training of postgraduate research students and early-career researchers. As well as being a member of ESWI since 2015, he sits on the Microbiology Society’s Virus Division and leads the Steering Group for the UK’s Influenza Update Meetings.

Nationality: German

Position: Head of Department, Leibniz Institute of Virology (Germany); and Professor of Virology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany

Research fields: Interspecies transmission and pathogenesis of influenza A viruses; High-risk groups of influenza (pregnancy, asthma, obesity); New antiviral strategies against influenza

ESWI member since 2009

Gülşah Gabriel is head of the department Viral Zoonoses - One Health at the Leibniz Institute of Virology (LIV) in Hamburg and professor for Viral Zoonoses at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Her research focus is to understand the molecular basis of influenza A virus interspecies transmission from birds to humans as well as pathomechanisms in high-risk groups.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, her research group was among the first to identify key pathomechanisms that are currently discussed to contribute to long-term consequences after acute respiratory infections. These include SARS-CoV-2 replication in human adipose tissue (Zickler et al., Cell Metabolism 2022) and altered sex hormone metabolism in COVID-19 patients (Schroeder et al., Emerging Microbes & Infections 2021; Stanelle-Bertram et al., Cell Reports Medicine 2023).

In 2009, Gülşah Gabriel was the first winner of the ESWI Best Body of Work Award. She was elected Vice Chair of ESWI in 2014. She has received many prestigious awards for her research, e.g. the Robert-Koch Förderpreis awarded from the Robert-Koch Foundation, the Best Minds Award from the Leibniz Association and the DZIF Award for Translational Infection Research from the German Center for Infection.

Since 2024, Gülşah Gabriel is speaker of the newly established Leibniz Lab Pandemic Preparedness: One Health, One Future that combines the expertise of 41 Leibniz Institutes from various disciplines with practical knowledge to develop evidence-based strategies that permanently strengthen the pandemic resilience of science and society.

Nationality: Dutch

Position: Professor, Molecular Virology

Ron Fouchier is currently a professor in Molecular Virology at Erasmus MC Rotterdam, where he is also the deputy head of the Viroscience department. He obtained a PhD in 1995 for HIV/AIDS research at the University of Amsterdam with Hanneke Schuitemaker and Han Huisman and continued HIV work at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine as a postdoc with Michael Malim. Late 1998 he started a Molecular Virology research line on respiratory viruses, in particular influenza, at Erasmus MC.

Ron Fouchier’s team contributed substantially to the identification and characterization of various “new” viruses, such as human metapneumovirus, human coronavirus NL63, SARS coronavirus, MERS coronavirus, and influenza A virus subtype H16. Currently, his research is focused on respiratory viruses of humans and animals, antigenic drift, and influenza virus zoonoses, transmission and pandemics.

Ron Fouchier is elected member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW), the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW) and Academia Europeae. In 2006 he received the Heine-Medin award of the European Society for Clinical Virology and in 2013 the Huibregtsen award for top innovative science with societal impact. Fouchier is a web-of-science Highly Cited author.