EUROPIC 2024

Speakers's Biography

Malin Flodström-Tullberg is Professor and Deputy Unit Head of the Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) at the Department of Medicine of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. She has published over 100 full papers and reviews in peer-reviewed journals. Her research focuses on understanding the causes of the disease type 1 diabetes and contributing to the development and preclinical testing of new preventive measures against the disease. Much of the research efforts is devoted to understanding the relationship between enterovirus infections and type 1 diabetes. This includes the development and preclinical testing of mono- and multivalent Coxsackievirus vaccines, identification of biomarkers and studies on how the virus affect the function of the immune system and the insulin producing pancreatic beta cell with a goal to uncover disease mechanisms and druggable pathways. 

Speakers's Biography

Dr Hankaniemi gained her PhD in biomedicine from Helsinki University, and she has more than 20 years of experience in vaccine development, manufacturing and quality control from academia and several Finnish companies. She has established the Virology and Vaccine Immunology group at Tampere University and the focus and main interest of her group is the establishment of powerful vaccine platforms against pathogens with pandemic potential. They employ protein-based modern vaccine formulae and platforms (mainly virus-like particles, VLPs and recombinant proteins), that would be widely applicable for current and new emerging pathogens. Currently, they focus on vaccine development projects against pandemic viruses such as human corona-, entero- and influenza viruses. In addition to vaccine technology development and preclinical analyses, they actively set up facilities, infrastructure, and research methodology at Tampere University. Dr Hankaniemi and her team is passionate about raising the impact and awareness of vaccine research as well as working towards commercialization of the developed novel vaccine technologies. 

Speakers's Biography

Daniel Hurdiss is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomolecular Health Sciences at Utrecht University. After graduating with a degree in microbiology from the University of Leeds in 2014, he secured a prestigious Wellcome Trust-funded PhD studentship, which allowed him to train as a structural biologist at the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology. During this period, Daniel used cryogenic electron microscopy to investigate the structure of non-enveloped viruses and their interactions with cellular receptors, for which he was honored with the Kendrew and VC Jordan/PR Radford thesis prizes. In 2018, he relocated to the Netherlands, where he obtained a Marie Curie and EMBO fellowship to explore the structure, function, and inhibition of the enterovirus 2C protein. Additionally, he has made significant contributions to research on the antigenic structure, inhibition, and cell entry mechanisms of coronavirus spike proteins. For his research in the Netherlands, Daniel received the Beijerinck Premium and Van Leeuwenhoek Award. Since 2021, Daniel has established his own research group and is funded by the Dutch Research Council. His group is dedicated to gaining mechanistic insights into how positive-strand viruses enter, replicate and assemble within host cell, with the goal of identifying new targets for antiviral inhibition using small molecules or biologics. 

Speakers's Biography

Dr Emma Hodcroft began working in molecular epidemiology, phylogenetics, and modelling in HIV at the University of Edinburgh, where she investigated the heritability of viral load and developed an agent-based model simulating HIV phylogenies during her MSc, PhD, and a post-doc. In 2017, she moved to Basel as a post-doc and joined the Nextstrain project, becoming a co-developer of the project. Prior to the pandemic, Dr Hodcroft worked on projects with tuberculosis, campylobacter, influenza, and RSV, but primarily studied Enterovirus D68, where she has formulated new hypotheses about its evolution and transmission patterns. 

Since February 2020, Dr Hodcroft has worked full-time on SARS-CoV-2, including identifying a key variant that dominated Europe in the summer of 2020 despite not being more transmissible (EU1). This work lead to her website CoVariants.org (recognised as an SIB Remarkable Output), which tracks SARS-CoV-2 variants. Currently her work focuses on better combining modelling & phylogenetics and the post-pandemic-restriction re-emergence of other respiratory viruses. Dr Hodcroft has also been very active in science communication during the pandemic, gaining over 82,000 twitter followers, and contributing to two BBC radio programmes every week in 2020 and 2021. Thanks to a successful Swiss National Science Foundation Starting Grant application, Dr Hodcroft started her own lab at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in November 2023. 

Speakers's Biography

Didier Hober is currently full professor of virology at the School of Medicine of the University of Lille. 

He obtained his MD and PhD in virology from University of Lille and was post-doctoral fellow at UCLA (California, USA). During these years of training he focused on the pathogenesis of HIV infection. Furthermore, he has started investigating the pathogenesis of dengue virus infection when he was staying in French Polynesia as part of his military service, and then has continued for a few years. 

He joined the Department of Medical Virology at Centre Hospitalier et Universitaire (CHU) of Lille, France, as an assistant in 1992. He founded and heads the Department of Virology, at School of Medicine University of Lille and the Research Unit « Laboratoire de Virologie ULR3610 » University of Lille and CHU Lille and he heads the Department of Medical Virology at CHU Lille. 

His research has focused on viral pathogenesis, especially enteroviral pathogenesis of type 1 diabetes and on fighting viruses through various approaches. He and his team studied, among other things, the persistence of coxsackievirus B4 (CVB4), the antibody-dependent enhancement of the infection with CVB4 and the infection of thymus by this virus. 

His laboratory was a partner in European projects of the 5^th, 6^th and 7^th Framework Program EC and of H2020 EC and he has collaborated with various academic centers located in France, in Europe, in other continents, as well as with various companies.  Didier Hober published more than 270 papers listed in PubMed. 

Speakers's Biography

Vincent graduated from Cornell University and received his PhD in the laboratory of Peter Palese studying influenza virus. He was a post-doctoral fellow in David Baltimore’s laboratory where he determined the genome sequence of poliovirus and showed that a DNA copy is infectious. His laboratory made seminal contributions to understanding paralytic poliomyelitis including identification of the cell protein that mediates virus entry and the transgenic mouse model of severe disease. He founded MicrobeTV to produce science podcasts in nine different areas, including This Week in Virology. Racaniello teaches an annual virology course at Columbia University, and posts his lectures on YouTube. He also livestreams every week to answer questions about viruses.

At Europic2024 Racaniello will record an episode of This Week in Virology.

Local Organizing Committee

• Prof. Varpu Marjomäki (University of Jyväskylä)
• Julia Marjomäki, secretary (Econ BA, University of Jyväskylä)
• Congress program secretary (University of Jyväskylä)
• Mira Laajala (University of Jyväskylä)
• Marjo Haapakoski (JUniversity of yväskylä)
• Jun Liu (University of Jyväskylä)
• Ass. Prof. Sofia Singler, Architect, fellow (University of Cambridge)

Scientific Committee

• Prof. Varpu Marjomäki (Jyväskylä)
• Dr. Mira Laajala (Jyväskylä)
• Prof. Heikki Hyöty (Tampere)
• Dr. Olli Laitinen (Tampere)
• Prof. Vesa Hytönen (Tampere)
• MD. Tytti Vuorinen (Turku)
• Dr. Sisko Tauriainen (Turku)
• Dr. Petri Susi (Turku)
• Prof. Sarah Butcher (Helsinki)
• Dr. Carita Savolainen-Kopra (Helsinki)

Congress contact information:

Email: europic2024@jyu.fi

Congress chair: Prof. Varpu Marjomäki

Congress Secretary: Julia Marjomäki