Invited Speakers

Dr. Anna J. Henningsson is a specialist in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology with a position as senior consultant in Region Jönköping County, Sweden, and also as senior associate professor at Linköping University. Since 2016, she is the Medical Director of the Department of Clinical Microbiology, Region Jönköping County, and leader of the Swedish National Reference Laboratory for Borreliosis and Other Tick-Borne Bacteria in Jönköping. She has pursued research in the field of tick-borne diseases for over 20 years and has a special interest in laboratory diagnostics and immune response in borreliosis. She has been a member of the ESGBOR Executive Committee since 2020 and currently serves as its Chair.

Sara Gredmark Russ is an Adjunct Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor at the Center for Infectious Medicine at the Karolinska Institutet. She is also an Infectious Diseases Physician at the Karolinska University Hospital. During her career, she has worked within the field of virology and immunology. Her present research include projects to increase the general knowledge on the immune cell role in the neuropathology of Tick-Borne Encephalitis (TBE), to develop a deep understanding of the long-term immune response in individuals affected by TBE to optimize TBE vaccination and contribute to novel diagnostic methods, and to identify clinical and epidemiological risk factors to optimize preventive and treatment recommendations for TBE. In addition, her research aim to identify and further map human host cell factors important for TBE virus infection, to further dissect the pathogeneis of the disease and to facilitate the development of treatment strategies.

Dr. Belova is a Leading Research Scientist in the Laboratory of Arbovirus Biology at the Chumakov Federal Scientific Center for Research and Development of Immune-and-Biological Products of Russian Academy of Sciences (Institute of Poliomyelitis) (Moscow, Russia). Her work focuses on the ecology of arboviruses, including those pathogenic to humans, and on the properties of natural foci of vector-borne diseases transmitted by ticks and blood-sucking insects. She is specifically interested in how viruses influence the behavior and physiology of their vectors, and in how interspecies and intraspecies differences in tick biology, ecology and life cycle shape vector competence. Currently, she is studying the interactions between different tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) genotypes and various ixodid tick species.