Keynote & Plenary Speakers

Praphan Phanuphak, MD, PhD is Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, he undertook a PhD program in Microbiology (Immunology) at the University of Colorado Medical Center. Professor Praphan was certified by the American Boards of Internal Medicine, Allergy and Immunology. His specialty is basic and clinical immunology, allergy and HIV/AIDS.  In February 1985, Professor Praphan diagnosed Thailand’s first three cases of HIV/AIDS and has been involved in clinical care as well as in HIV prevention and treatment research since then. Together with late Professors Joep Lange and David Cooper, Professor Praphan co-founded HIV-NAT (the HIV Netherlands, Australia, Thailand Research Collaboration), Asia’s first HIV clinical trials centre in Bangkok in 1996. Professor Praphan was a member of various national and international HIV/AIDS committees including that of WHO and UNAIDS.  He served as the Director of the Thai Red Cross AIDS Research Centre for 31 years (1989-2020) and is currently the Senior Research and Policy Advocacy Advisor of the Institute of HIV Research and Innovation (IHRI) in Bangkok. 

Professor Adeeba Kamarulzaman is the Pro Vice Chancellor and President of Monash University Malaysia and Honorary Professor of Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Universiti Malaya where she was Dean of Medicine (2011 to 2019). Professor Kamarulzaman has played a leading role in the response to the HIV epidemic in Malaysia and globally, is a past president of the International AIDS Society and member of the Global Council on Inequality, AIDS and the Pandemics. She is the Chair of the Malaysian AIDS Foundation, Vice Chair of the WHO Science Council and Commissioner of the Global Commission on Drug Policy and played a key role in the establishment and ongoing activities and collaborations of a regional HIV research network initiative; TREAT Asia. Professor Kamarulzaman is a strong advocate for HIV prevention, treatment and care programs particularly amongst vulnerable and marginalized communities. Her achievements have been recognized through several national and international awards including Malaysia’s prestigious Merdeka Awards and an Honorary Doctor of Laws from her alma mater, Monash University for her contributions to medicine and as a health advocate. 

Dr. Jennifer Sherwood is the Director of Research at amfAR’s Public Policy Office based in Washington DC. In this role, she leads amfAR’s policy research portfolio focused on protecting evidence-based investments in HIV, cervical cancer prevention, and sexual and reproductive health. Her recent research includes tracking the impact of U.S. cuts to global health funding in an effort to mitigate harm and maintain a global focus on HIV and women’s health. Dr. Sherwood leads the HIV & HPV Coalition for Cancer Prevention (H2C) – a global expert working group of scientists, funders, and policy makers focused on expanding the role of private philanthropy and public funding to eliminate HIV and HPV-related cancers.

Dr. Sherwood holds a PhD and masters from the Population, Family, and Reproductive Health department at the Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Anthropology and Gender Studies from Rollins College. She serves on the board of Funders Concerned about AIDS (FCAA) and on the private foundation constituency of the board for the Global Fund.

Nittaya Phanuphak is Executive Director at the Institute of HIV Research and Innovation in Bangkok, Thailand. Dr Phanuphak received her MD from the Faculty of Medicine at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, and her PhD in Medicine from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

She has deep interest in the establishment and sustainability of the Key Population-Led Health Services (KPLHS) which empower key population lay providers who are members of key population communities to design and co-deliver sexual health, mental health, rights, and other harm reduction services to their peers.

She provides ongoing research support to various implementation science and clinical trial studies as principal investigator or site-principal investigator. She has served as Chair, Co-Chair and member of several WHO Guidelines Development Groups and Strategic and Technical Advisory Committees. She has published over 280 peer-reviewed articles. She is also the International AIDS Society (IAS) Governing Council Representative of Asia and the Pacific Islands, the Deputy Editor of the Journal of International AIDS Society (JIAS), and the Associate Editor of Sexual Health.

As Founder and Co-Director of Chula VRC, Kiat Ruxrungtham conducts vaccine research work and gathering professors and researchers interested in the research and development of vaccines into Center of Excellence in Vaccine Research and Development. He spent more than 30 years exploring HIV treatment strategies, HIV T cell immunology, vaccine development (including dengue, HIV and house dust mite (HDM) vaccine); and strategies to improve DNA vaccine immunogenicity. He has supervised and lead Chula VRC’s effect to rapidly advance the promising HDM vaccine candidates from the lab bench to clinical trial.

Ruxrungtham holds a Professor of Medicine from Department of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University. He is providing teaching and patient care at the King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, and is mentoring junior researchers on vaccine, immunology research and also on clinical trials. He currently is a vice president for research and innovation, Chulalongkorn University.

He has published more than 230 peer review papers on HIV, immunology and allergy. He is a faculty member of the faculty 1000 of Medicine, a chief editor of Asia Pacific J of Allergy and editorial board member of Immunology, ImmunoTargets and Therapy, Asian Biomedicine, and the Scientific Report. He is also a reviewer for > 9 journals.

Richard Roden, PhD, is a Professor in the Departments of Pathology, Gynecology and Obstetrics, and Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He has co-led the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program for 10 years. His research focuses on approaches to prevent and treat cervical cancer through the development of novel vaccines and small molecule proteasome inhibitors. Dr. Roden’s team is currently engaged in the early clinical development of a minor capsid antigen L2-based vaccine that is active against all oncogenic types of human papillomavirus (HPV). He is also working on immunotherapy phase I trials to test their potential to treat HPV infections and dysplasia, thereby interrupting progression to cervical cancer.

Dr. Simon Best is an Associate Professor of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and a surgeon and clinician at the Johns Hopkins Voice Center. His clinical and research career focus is Human Papillomavirus (HPV)-related diseases, particularly Recurrent Respiratory Papillomatosis (RRP), an HPV-related disease that affects the voice and airway in both children and adults. He maintains a surgical practice focused on RRP, seeing patients from across the country with this rare disease, is a leading member of the national RRP Task Force, as well as working with international RRP patient organizations to bridge the gap between patient care, clinical innovations, and basic scientific research.

Elizabeth White earned her PhD at the University of California, San Diego, where her thesis research was on human cytomegalovirus. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, where she used mass spectrometry-based approaches to identify host cell targets of HPV E6 and E7 oncoproteins. Dr. White first established her independent laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania and her group moved to Tufts University Medical School in the fall of 2024. Her research group consists of scientists at all levels of training and past members of her laboratory have continued on to positions in academia, industry, and public service.

Dr. Bian is the Walther and Regenstrief Endowed Chair in Cancer Informatics and serves as Chief Data Scientist at Regenstrief, Chief Data Scientist at IU Health, Associate Dean of Data Science and Vice Chair for Translational Informatics in the Department of Biostatistics and Health Data Science at the IU School of Medicine, Chief Research Information Officer of the IU Melvin and Bren Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI) Regenstrief Institute Deputy Director. Dr. Bian specializes in biomedical informatics and health data science, interdisciplinary fields focused on leveraging data, information, and knowledge to drive scientific discovery, problem-solving, and decision-making, all aimed at improving human health. He has a diverse background in data harmonization and integration, AI/machine learning, causal AI, natural language processing, ontology development and evaluation, and software engineering. Dr. Bian brings extensive experience in developing real-world data infrastructure, informatics tools, and systems, as well as applying advanced AI and data science methods to analyze and interpret multimodal clinical and biomedical data. His work is unified by a focus on harnessing heterogeneous data and knowledge resources and translating them into actionable applications that enhance human health.

Angelika Riemer is heading the Division of Immunotherapy and Immunoprevention at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). She studied medicine and molecular biology at the University of Vienna (Austria), Monash University in Melbourne (Australia) and University of Bristol (UK), and received her MD degree in 2002 and her PhD degree in 2005. 2008/2009 she did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Cancer Vaccine Center of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. She is a board-certified Clinical Immunologist and Dermatologist, and holds a venia legendi in Immunology. Her scientific work focuses on the development of a therapeutic HPV vaccine based on validated target T cell epitopes. This validation step is provided by mass-spectrometry-based direct proof of a peptide being HLA-presented on a tumor cell’s surface, as well as immunogenicity assessment. The group has further developed orthotopic HPV-dependent tumor-models in MHC-humanized mouse strains, to allow preclinical efficacy testing of candidate therapeutic HPV vaccine formulations. Dr. Riemer is a member of the Extended Directorate of the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, and co-coordinates the NCT program Immunotherapy. She is also part of the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), where she co-coordinates the research area Infections of the Immunocompromised Host.

Elliot Androphy M.D. is a dermatologist who began studying papillomaviruses 4 decades ago during his fellowship with Doug Lowy at the National Cancer Institute (NCI/NIH). He has held senior academic positions at the medical schools of Tufts University and University of Massachusetts and is the former chair of the Department of Dermatology at Indiana University, where he continues as Professor. His research lab has characterized the functions of E6 and E2 proteins and is currently developing inhibitors of E6 for use as an antiviral treatment of HPV infections and malignancies. He is the co-founder and Chief Scientist Officer of Kovina Therapeutics Inc.. Dr. Androphy has made fundamental contributions in understanding the molecular pathogenesis and genetics of the neurodegenerative disease spinal muscular atrophy. Their studies of alternative splicing led to the identification and patenting of an antisense oligonucleotide that became the first approved treatment for SMA.

Dr. Guo is an Associate Professor and Chief of the Division of Biomedical Informatics and Data Science in the Department of Health Outcomes and Biomedical Informatics at the University of Florida. He also serves as the Chief Cancer Data Officer, Director of the Cancer Informatics Shared Resource, and Associate Director of the Cancer Quantitative Sciences Division at the UF Health Cancer Center. Dr. Guo has a multidisciplinary background in the analysis of real-world data, including electronic health records (EHRs) and administrative claims, as well as randomized trial and observational study design. His expertise spans predictive modeling (e.g., statistical and machine learning), causal modeling, and the analysis of patient-reported outcomes (PROs). Together, Dr. Guo’s areas of expertise support an overarching research theme: generating real-world evidence to inform healthcare decision-making for disease prevention and control.

Jens Kleesiek is a full professor at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (IKIM) of the University Medical Center Essen, Germany. He studied medicine in Heidelberg, Germany, specializing in radiology and medical informatics. He also studied Bioinformatics and holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Hamburg, Germany. Jens spent several years in management positions developing medical software for consumers and healthcare professionals. At IKIM he’s on the mission to bring AI algorithms into the clinic. To accomplish this ‘code to clinic’ approach, he and his team are working on modern cloud technologies, interoperable data structures, and cutting-edge AI methods.