Welcome to the 65th ITM Colloquium!

Ellen Mitchell is a public health epidemiologist whose work focuses on clinical trials, diagnostic innovation, and the design and testing of practical tools to improve tuberculosis (TB) detection and care in low-resource settings. With a background in infectious disease epidemiology and international health, her career centers on the application of experimental and operational research methods to real-world public health problems.

She is part of the Unit of Mycobacterial Diseases and Neglected Tropical Diseases at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, where she leads and contributes to multi-country clinical studies that test novel TB diagnostics and implementation strategies. She served as Principal Investigator of the 3V Trial, a crossover study evaluating the use of the Lung Flute ECO device to improve sputum collection among populations with historically low TB test yield. She is also part of the leadership team for the newly funded FLUTTE study, which is testing the Lung Flute ECO in children, health care workers, and people living with HIV. Her current interests are on making low cost tools for bioaerosols capture that can improve indoor air quality and be leveraged for antimicrobial surveillance.

Ellen’s work emphasises iterative, field-based testing of tools and procedures—combining epidemiologic rigor with an interest in usability, acceptability, and systems integration. Over the past decade, she has led or collaborated on research involving mobile X-ray screening with AI-supported triage, alternative sample types for GeneXpert testing, and studies of false-positive rifampicin resistance in paucibacillary TB cases. She is also involved in the development of social scientific methods to evaluate TB stigma and its impact on health-seeking behavior and care quality.

This bio needs to be added.

Elias Ter Tiero Dah graduated as a medical doctor at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso in 2008. He trained in Public Global Health, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Bordeaux school of Public Health (2010-2014) and completed a PhD in Public health and Epidemiology at University of Montpellier (2021). His doctoral research was titled “Evaluation of the HIV test and treat strategy in Men who have with men in West Africa”.

Between 2009 and 2015, Elias worked as a clinician in the largest community based-medical clinic (Centre Oasis) of Burkina Faso in Ouagadougou, where he was managing people living with HIV-AIDS. He developed there the first prevention and care program tailored to the needs of MSMs, including sexual and reproductive health. From 2016 to 2022, he has been involved as the national coordinator and the principal investigator in the main prevention and care research program for MSM in Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Mali (CohMSM-PrEP). Some of the findings of that program, particularly those in oral HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), have guided the implementation of this innovative prevention tool by the HIV National Programs in West African countries. Since May 2023, in collaboration with researchers of the unit of Sexual and Reproductive Health including HIV of the ITM, he is conducting an oral PrEP research project among female sex workers (FSWs) in Burkina Faso. Since June 2021, he has been recruited as an associate professor and a lecturer at a young university named “Université Lédea Bernard Ouedraogo of Ouahigouya,” in which I am the head of the public health department.

He has authored and co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed scientific publications.

Thijs Reyniers obtained his Master's degree in Sociology (Major: Sociology of Health) from Ghent University (2009) and, one year after, finished the Teacher Program there. After that, Thijs quickly found his way back to science and started conducting research concerning the appropriateness and avoidability of end-of-life hospital admissions within the End-of-Life Care Research Group at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and Ghent University. Four years later (2015), he obtained his PhD in Social Health Sciences from VUB and his PhD in Health Sciences from Ghent University.

Thijs is currently a senior researcher in the Unit of Sexual Health including HIV at the Department of Public Health of ITM, with a particular interest in health sciences and social sciences. Thijs’ research focuses on HIV prevention and sexual health, more particularly PrEP implementation among populations such as men who have sex with men and female sex workers, primarily in Belgium (and EU as a whole) and West-Africa.

Dr Antoine Nkuba is a senior researcher at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale and an Associate Professor at the University of Kinshasa. He completed a PhD in Health Science at Montpellier University, France, an MPH at Yonsei University, South Korea, and an MD at the University of Kinshasa, DRC. With a background in clinical practice, medical biology, public health and emerging infectious diseases, he contributed to outbreak responses for Yellow Fever, Chikungunya, Ebola, and COVID-19. He also trained at Harvard and is currently a researcher at the University of Montpellier.

He has authored and co-authored more than 20 scientific publications.

Joachim Mariën is a disease ecologist with expertise in rodent- and vector-borne zoonoses. He currently leads the Unit of Virus Ecology at ITM, where he focuses on the ecological and evolutionary drivers of pathogen transmission. He holds a PhD from the University of Antwerp, where he studied the ecology of arenaviruses in Tanzania and Guinea. After his PhD, he joined the ITM Outbreak Research Team, contributing to outbreak investigations and serosurveys for Chikungunya and SARS-CoV-2 in Africa and Belgium. He later held an FWO postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Antwerp and a FED-tWIN fellowship jointly at the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the University of Antwerp.

His research integrates field studies, serology, and mathematical modeling to inform zoonotic disease control strategies. He has coordinated several international One Health projects in Central and West Africa and teaches on infectious disease ecology at the University of Antwerp.

Liselotte Hardy is Professor and Head of the Tropical Bacteriology Unit at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp. She is a biomedical scientist specialised in bacterial diagnostics. After a few years working in clinical studies for the pharmaceutical industry, she moved to ITM’s department of public health coordinating projects on vaginal health in sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Inspired by this, she did her PhD research at ITM’s Reference Laboratory for Sexually Transmitted Infections led by Tania Crucitti, on characterising the bacterial biofilm in bacterial vaginosis.

After her PhD, Liselotte worked at the Photonics Research Group of Ghent University for a few years. Here she co-developed a lab-on-chip platform to diagnose infectious diseases, leading to the spin-off company Antelope Dx. Just before Antelope Dx’s incorporation, Liselotte moved back to ITM to the Unit of Tropical Bacteriology of Jan Jacobs. In the past decade, she has set up its research line on the development and implementation of adapted diagnostics for low-resource settings. In September 2024, she succeeded Jan as head of unit and professor Tropical Bacteriology.

Her research focus is on field-approriate bacterial diagnostics and local production of culture media building on the unit’s longstanding work on AMR surveillance.

Faridath Massou is a pharmacist and clinical biologist specialising in bacteriology and molecular biology. She is currently a PhD candidate in bioinformatics and molecular biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, under joint supervision by the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp and the Mycobacteria Reference Laboratory in Cotonou, Benin.

Her research focuses on the evaluation and implementation of innovative molecular diagnostic tools for tuberculosis, with a strong emphasis on making these technologies more accessible to those who need them most. She is also actively involved in strengthening diagnostic networks to improve equity in access to care across resource-limited settings.

Tom Decroo graduated as a medical doctor at the University of Ghent (2000), holds a MSc in Public Health from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp (2013) and obtained a PhD in Medical Sciences from the University of Antwerp (2017). His doctoral research was titled “Community-based ART in sub-Saharan Africa: lessons learnt from Community ART Groups in Tete province, Mozambique”.

Between 2003 and 2012, he was based as a clinician, researcher and coordinator for MSF-OCB in Africa (Mozambique, Burkina Faso). From 2014 to 2016, he worked as Operational Research Programme Officer for MSF-OCB. In 2016, he joined ITM’s Unit of HIV and Tuberculosis in the Department of Clinical Sciences. He obtained an FWO post-doctoral mandate for the period 2018-2021. He now works as senior researcher. His main research interests include HIV community participation and the diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant TB. He is passionate about supporting research projects led by Master's and PhD students.

He has over 120 Pubmed-cited publications.

Nguyen Thi Mai Phuong is a global health professional with over a decade of experience in the programmatic management of drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) in Vietnam. She currently serves as an DR-TB Program Officer with the Vietnam National Tuberculosis Control Program, where she leads key initiatives supported by the Global Fund and contributes to national policy development, clinical coordination and operational research. With a master’s degree in Global Health from Maastricht University and ongoing PhD studies at Ghent University and the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, her work bridges research and practice in TB control. Phuong has published and led or coordinated multiple studies on new TB treatment regimens, contributing to national and international TB control efforts.

Dionicia Gamboa is a biologist with a Master's in Biochemistry, both degrees from Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH). She obtained her PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands, within a programme supported by the Belgian cooperation from the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp. Currently, she is Full Professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering (FACI) at UPCH. She is also member of the Institute of Tropical Medicine “Alexander Von Humboldt” (IMTAvH) – UPCH. She is Director of the Malaria: Parasites and Vectors Laboratory that belongs to the Laboratorios de Investigación y Desarrollo (LID – FACI – UPCH).

She carries out research projects in the area of health and tropical infectious diseases, specifically malaria in the Peruvian Amazon region. Her projects include the development and use of specialised molecular tools for diagnosis, genetic charactersation, and surveillance of the parasites and vectors. She has more than 100 publications and more than 45 students (under- and postgraduate) from Peru (UPCH and other universities) and other countries.

Since 2008, she is member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH), she is also member of the Peruvian National Academy of Science (ANC). Currently she is part of the ANC board directory.

Anna Rosanas-Urgell is a Professor and Head of the Malariology Unit at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp. She is a molecular epidemiologist and geneticist with over 19 years of experience in researching Plasmodium parasites. She completed a MSc in Experimental research at the University of Barcelona and a MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, followed by a PhD in Genetics (University of Barcelona). Her postdoctoral work at the University of São Paulo and the Hospital of Tropical Medicine in Manaus focused on investigating P. vivax spleen evasion mechanisms and monitoring the malaria surveillance system in the region.

In 2007, Prof Rosanas-Urgell joined ISGlobal in Barcelona and the Institute of Medical Research (IMR) in Papua New Guinea, where she supervised field and the molecular work for a longitudinal cohort study to investigate the burden of infection and disease caused by P. vivax. In 2009, she became Head of the Molecular and Epidemiology Unit at IMR, where she developed and led the malaria molecular epidemiology program, focusing on the association of red blood cells polymorphisms with malaria susceptibility and the epidemiology of P. falciparum and P. vivax. In 2012, Prof Rosanas-Urgell was appointed Head of the Malariology Unit at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp.

Fundamental research questions at the core of Prof Rosanas-Urgell’s unit continue to be solidly grounded in field-research providing a rare bridge between in vivo and in vitro studies. Current activities span Plasmodium research in Africa, South America, South-East Asia and Oceania. By using state-of-the-art molecular and cell biology technologies, Prof Rosanas-Urgell’s unit aims to gain understanding on how malaria parasites (P. falciparum and P. vivax) adapt to the environment for parasite evasion and survival. The unit focus on how host factors such as genetics, exposure to drugs and immunity can modify individual risk and modulate parasite decision to replicate or reproduce. The unit uses genomic epidemiology studies to investigate how parasite adaptation (through selection pressure on parasite phenotypes) is moderated at the genomic and transcriptomic level. In complementarity with this and closely connected to the ongoing disease-elimination efforts, the unit aims to contribute to the development of innovative surveillance tools and improved strategies.

Gorik Ooms is a distinguished human rights lawyer and scholar with a primary focus on the right to health. In September 2024, he was appointed as professor of international health policy and head of the Unit of Health Policy in the Department of Public Health of the Institute of Tropical Medicine.

Ooms graduated with a Licentiate in Law from the Catholic University of Leuven in 1989. His early career was marked by significant contributions to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), where he served in various roles, including as Executive Director of MSF Belgium/Operational Centre Brussels from August 2004 to 2008. In 2008, he earned a PhD from the University of Ghent with a thesis titled “The Right to Health and the Sustainability of Healthcare: Why a New Global Health Aid Paradigm is Needed.” Following a postdoc position at ITM Antwerp and a year as a global justice fellow at Yale University, he joined the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) as a professor of global health law and governance.

Ooms is internationally recognised as a thought leader on the right to health and global health equity. His advisory roles have included work with the World Health Organization on universal health coverage and the right to health, UNAIDS on HIV and human rights, and the United Nations Development Programme on access to medicines and the right to health, among others. He served on the advisory committee to the board of Friends of the Global Fund Europe and has been a member of the Lancet and University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health and the Lancet and O’Neill Institute of Georgetown University Commission on Global Health and the Law. Additionally, he convened the Lancet Commission on synergies between universal health coverage, health security, and health promotion.

Ooms’ current research is focused on international health policies, with a particular interest in policies that entail international financing, and how they interact at national level – synergetic or not.