Webinar: H5N1

Position: Professor of Vaccinology at the Department of Microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (New York, USA) and Professor of Infection Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna (Austria). 

Florian Krammer, PhD, graduated from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. He received his postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Palese at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York working on hemagglutinin stalk-based immunity and universal influenza virus vaccines. 

In 2014 he became an independent principal investigator and is currently the endowed Mount Sinai Professor of Vaccinology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is also the co-director of the Center for Vaccine Research and Pandemic Preparedness (C-VaRPP). Furthermore, since 2024, Dr. Krammer is Professor for Infection Medicine at the Ignaz Semmelweis Institute at the Medical University of Vienna. 

Dr. Krammer's work focuses on understanding the mechanisms of interactions between antibodies and viral surface glycoproteins and on translating this work into novel, broadly protective vaccines and therapeutics. The main target is influenza virus but he is also working on coronaviruses, flaviviruses, hantaviruses, filoviruses and arenaviruses. He has published more than 400 papers on these topics. Since 2019, Dr. Krammer has served as principal investigator of the Sinai-Emory Multi-Institutional Collaborative Influenza Vaccine Innovation Center (SEM-CIVIC), which develops improved seasonal and universal influenza virus vaccines that induce long-lasting protection against drifted seasonal, zoonotic and future pandemic influenza viruses.

Richard Webby is a Member of the Department of Infectious Diseases at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals. He has a research program, funded by ALSAC, the fundraising arm of St Jude, and the US National Institutes of Health, that focuses on influenza viruses at the human-animal interface. This work involves virologic and serologic surveillance activities in animal and human populations to determine the prevalence of influenza viruses present.

Further laboratory-based research sets out to understand the mechanisms behind various viral phenotypes. His expertise is in influenza virology and he has substantial experience in vivo and in vitro models of influenza virus replication, pathogenicity, and transmission. Data collected through the above activities feeds into the WHO GISRS system for risk assessment of circulating influenza viruses and, where appropriate, subsequent pandemic preparedness activities such as candidate vaccine virus production and distribution.

Seema Lakdawala is an Associate Professor in the Microbiology and Immunology Department at the Emory School of Medicine. Her lab studies epidemiological success of influenza A viruses to better predict future pandemics. Specifically, Lakdawala Lab is interested in intracellular assembly of influenza viruses and person-to-person transmission of viruses. They combine biochemistry and sophisticated microscopy tools to define where, when and how assembly of influenza genomic RNA occurs. This research has broad implications for understanding the reassortment potential of circulating animal influenza viruses and may lead to the development of new antiviral targets. 

In addition, airborne transmission of influenza viruses is critical for rapid spread of the virus during epidemics and pandemics. They have established a method to study the viability of influenza viruses in expelled aerosols and droplets at different environmental conditions, as well as the airborne transmissibility of influenza viruses in the ferret model. These studies will define the viral and environmental properties that promote the spread of influenza. Combining these two areas of research, they will be able to develop a comprehensive surveillance system to determine the pandemic potential of circulating zoonotic influenza viruses, which will be useful in all areas of pandemic preparedness.