2025 UK-ICN Annual General Meeting

23rd – 24th July 2025

University of Liverpool, Main Campus, UK

Our final UK-ICN annual general meeting will take place in summer of 2025, and is scheduled to be hosted at the University of Liverpool. We invite you all to join us one last time to engage with a unique cross-disciplinary networking opportunity. Scientific sessions to include oral presentations (15 mins), flash talks (3 mins), interdisciplinary panel discussions, poster sessions and plenty of networking time

Keynote Speakers

Professor Volker Thiel

Institute of Virology and Immunology, University of Bern, Switzerland

Keynote: Translating basic coronavirology to application

Volker Thiel has studied Biology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Already during his master thesis he started to work on coronaviruses at the Institute of Virology in Würzburg and has then completed his PhD in 1998. One of the major achievements is the establishment of reverse genetics system for various coronaviruses, including Human Coronavirus 229E, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 and he was the first to report a molecular clone for a human coronavirus. In 2003 he moved to the Kantonal Hospital in St.Gallen, Switzerland, where he was leading a research group at the Institut of Immunobiology. He habilitated in Virology at the Vetsuisse Faculty in Zürich and moved 2014 to University of Bern where he is Professor and chair in Virology at the Vetsuisse Faculty Bern and head of the division Virology at the Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI).

Professor Patty Kostkova

Professor of Digital Health, University College London, UK (Virtual)

Keynote: Digital Tools and Social Media – experience from
the COVID-19 pandemic

 Prof Patty Kostkova is Professor in Digital Health and the Director of UCL IRDR Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies. Patty was appointed ISI Foundation Fellow for her research into digital epidemiology. She was a consultant at WHO, ECDC, Telefonica and Foundation Merieux. Over two decades, Prof Kostkova has been an internationally leading researcher in the novel interdisciplinary domain of digital public health. Her research includes mobile gamified training and education interventions to improve health awareness and health capacity, and big data early-warning and prediction systems for infectious outbreaks and epidemics in Brazil, south Africa, Nigeria, Nepal, Middle East and Europe.  Patty has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. She is the Editor in chief of the Frontiers in Digital Public Health, and the General and Scientific Chair of the International Digital Public Health Conference series since 2009 (www.acm-digitalhealth.org). Her research was extensively covered by international media including the Medi1TV, BBC, AFP, Vancouver Sun and Malaysian Insider.

Professor Christian Drosten

Director of Virology, Charite – Universitatsmedizin Berlin, Germany

Keynote: Ongoing evolution of MERS-CoV

Christian Drosten studied medicine at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt. He received his doctoral degree in 2003 with a thesis on establishment of high throughput blood donor screening for HBV and HIV-1 in transfusion medicine.  His laboratory group “Molecular Diagnostics” at Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM) focused on virus discovery and molecular diagnostics in tropical viral diseases. From 2007, Drosten founded and headed the Institute of Virology at University of Bonn Medical Center. In 2017, he and his team moved to Charité in Berlin, where he is currently the Director of the Institute of Virology and co-director of the Centre for Global Health (together with Professor Beate Kampmann). Drosten codiscovered the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV), for which he also developed one of the first diagnostic tests in 2003. He contributed studies on all aspects of disease ecology and natural history of MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) and more recently SARS-CoV-2. As early as January 2020 he presented the first diagnostic workflow for COVID-19 diagnostics that was initially adapted in many countries before the wider availability of commercial tests. During the ongoing pandemic, he has been consulting German federal and state authorities and was appointed to the European Commission’s advisory panel on Covid-19.

Professor Paul Duprex

Director of the Center for Vaccine Research, University of Pittsburgh, USA

Keynote:  Jumping strands: negative to positive

Paul Duprex is an expert in measles and mumps viruses and studies viral spillover from animals to humans, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. He has directed the Center for Vaccine Research (CVR) at the University of Pittsburgh since 2018. Paul also serves as the director of the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory, a high-security facility embedded in the CVR that allows scientists to safely contain and examine potentially dangerous pathogens. He has served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of General Virology since 2020.

Prior to working in Pittsburgh, Prof. Duprex was at Boston University School of Medicine as the director of National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) Imaging. He also taught as a professor in microbiology and pathology and laboratory medicine at Boston University. Prof. Duprex also worked as a senior lecturer at Queen’s University in Belfast and served as the principal scientist and head of department at TransForm Pharmaceuticals, Johnson & Johnson.

Outbreak Scenario Exercise

A 90 minute interactive exercise will be delivered to address how different sectors prioritise what should be communicated during an outbreak scenario (details to be provided on the day). Delegates will be split into small groups (chosen by themselves) and work with one of our invited panellists to discuss how to engage/communicate about a pre-defined scenario. We are asking participants to discuss with a leader from each stakeholder group and provide a round-up at the end of the session:

Science communication

Dr David Schley
Sense About Science

Dr Carrie Heitmeyer: I work at the  intersection of research and policy, and am interested in the ways in which legitimacy and authority are ascribed to different forms of evidence and knowledge in the policymaking process. I am currently Head of Social Science in the Government Office for Science and have previously worked as a Senior Science Advisor for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) Covid response, focusing on social and behavioural science. I have also worked in energy decarbonisation and reproductive health policy. Prior to joining the Civil Service, I conducted research in India, with a focus on the interface between state and civil society in health initiatives, regulation and governance of stem cell research and therapy and the impact of collective violence on identity.

Dr Fiona Lethbridge: Fiona Lethbridge is a Senior Press Manager at the Science Media Centre.  She has worked at the SMC since 2012 when she started as Press Office Assistant.  Before that she did a PhD in evolutionary biology at the University of Edinburgh.  The Science Media Centre is an independent press office working with the scientific community and the UK national news media, and believes that scientists can have a huge impact on the way the media cover scientific issues, by engaging more quickly and more effectively with the stories that are influencing public debate and attitudes to science.  The SMC’s objective is to try and ensure media coverage of science is as accurate, measured and evidence-based as possible.  The SMC works on topics that are big news or controversial, such as Covid, GM, diet, statins, bird flu, e-cigarettes, and antidepressants – running press conferences and sending out written comments from scientists in response to new science or breaking news.

Dr Josephine Adekola: Dr Josephine Adekola is Senior Lecturer in Management. She is a member of the Strategy and Technology Management Research Cluster, an Associate of the School of Health and Wellbeing, and an Affiliate Researcher at the Cogito Epistemology Research Centre. Josephine is also an Interdisciplinary Research Theme Lead for Global Health and Environment and an Associate Editor for Sustainable Environment Journal.

Dr David Schley: David is passionate about evidence-based policy and decision making, and engaged with Sense about Science as a researcher, scientist and communicator for many years before joining as Deputy-Director in 2022. Having previously worked to develop the evidence base for policy decisions, he now seeks to ensure science and evidence are used appropriately in public life and that people are empowered with knowledge, leading on campaigns and communications for the organisation. David lectured at the University of Southampton, the University of Surrey and the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, and has been a schoolteacher, youth worker and provider of vocational training for journalists. His research portfolio includes modelling and epidemiology at Southampton Hospital and the Pirbright Institute. He has delivered high impact advocacy campaigns, including for Challenging Heights, a prominent child-rights NGO in Ghana, and led on communications of research and science for the MS Society and the Marine Stewardship Council. He has a PhD in Mathematics and is a Fellow of the IMA , a Chartered Scientist, a Chartered Mathematician and Chartered PR Practitioner.

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