Dr Elke Leuridan is an Associate Professor at the Vaccine & Infectious Diseases Institute, Centre for the Evaluation of Vaccination, University of Antwerp, Belgium. She completed her M.D. degree from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and obtained a PhD at the University of Antwerp, working on vaccine preventable diseases and maternal antibodies.

As postdoctoral researcher, she supervises several projects on all aspects of pertussis vaccination during pregnancy in Belgium and abroad (Vietnam, Thailand). She is the promoter of several PhD students on the topic, is involved in the training of medical students and supervises yearly several master and advanced master theses. She is member of the Belgian National Health Council, working group vaccination, and participates in the decision-making process on current and future immunization programs in Belgium.
Since 2015, she combines working in research with general practice.

Dr Marta Nunes is a Reader, Associate Professor, at the Vaccine Preventable Diseases Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Marta developed her PhD work at the Department of Neurology & Neuroscience, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, USA and obtained her PhD from the University of Lisbon, Medical College, Portugal.

After her post-doctoral training at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, where she developed different projects aimed at understanding the cell biology of Plasmodium falciparum and to identify molecular candidates for malaria vaccines for pregnant women, she moved to South Africa in 2009.

To approach the problem of infant morbidity and mortality related to infections she is exploring the potential of intervening through vaccination of pregnant women to protect the women and their babies against infections. This also includes the evaluation of this intervention in reducing adverse birth outcomes.

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