Otto Cars became a specialist in infectious diseases in the early 1970's at the Medical Faculty, Uppsala University where he holds a position as Professor of Infectious Diseases since 2003. His research has focussed on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of antibiotics, optimal antibiotic dosing regimens, rational use of antibiotics and resistance epidemiology. He was one of the founders and the second president of the International Society of Anti-infective pharmacology (ISAP). Otto Cars is the chair of Strama (the Swedish strategic programme against antibiotic resistance) since its inception in 1995. He has been actively involved in numerous European and international initiatives in the area of antimicrobial resistance. Since 2004 Otto Cars has been engaged in building an international network with focus on the global aspects and consequences of antibacterial resistance React, Action on Antibiotic Resistance (www.reactgroup.org).

 

Craig Boutlis is an infectious diseases physician from Wollongong, NSW. He is the director of the Infection Management and Control Service, a combined clinical infectious diseases and infection control department for a network of nine geographically related hospitals south of Sydney.

 

Kirsty Buising is an infectious diseases physician working at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne. She is also a clinical research physician at the Victorian infectious diseases service based at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. She completed her doctorate of medicine in the use of computerized decision support for antimicrobial stewardship at the University of Melbourne. She was one of the clinical developers of the Guidance software, which is currently being used in several Australian hospitals to support antimicrobial stewardship.

 

Allen Cheng is an infectious diseases physician at the Alfred Hospital and in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at Monash University. He is a member of the Australasian Society of Infectious Diseases Clinical Guidelines and Clinical Research Committees, and the Advisory Committee on Prescription Medicines advising the Therapeutic Goods Administration.

 

Keryn Christiansen is a Clinical Microbiologist within PathWest Laboratory Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia and is the Clinical Head of the Gram Positive Typing and Research Unit where all MRSA from the State of Western Australia are epidemiologically typed in order to inform public health action. Her other areas of interest are antibiotic resistance management, pharmacodynamics and infection control. She is responsible for the management of the infection control program at Royal Perth Hospital.

Geoff Coombs is the Principal Scientist of the Department of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases PathWest Laboratory Medicine - WA, Royal Perth Hospital and the Western Australian Gram-positive Bacteria Typing and Research Unit. He is a co-founder and Committee Member of the Australian Society of Antimicrobials and holds an Executive position on the Australian Group for Antimicrobials Resistance. His current major research areas are investigating the molecular evolution of antimicrobial resistance and toxin determinants of community MRSA in Australia.

 

Bart Currie is an Infectious Diseases Physician at Royal Darwin Hospital and Professor in Medicine at the Northern Territory Clinical School, Flinders University. He is also Head of the Tropical and Emerging Infectious Diseases Division of the Menzies School of Health Research at Charles Darwin University. Areas of interest include clinical and epidemiological aspects of tropical and emerging infections, development of treatment guidelines and clinical toxicology.

 

John Ferguson is a Microbiologist and Infectious Diseases Physician with Hunter New England Health and a Senior Lecturer with the University of Newcastle. His interests include healthcare-associated infection and antibiotic resistance. He is on the Writing Group for the National Antibiotic Guidelines and is the Chair of the Healthcare-associated infections Committee at the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Healthcare. He is currently Director, Infection Prevention and Control for Hunter New England Health.

 

Tom Gottlieb is a senior specialist in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology at Concord Hospital in Sydney and Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. He is the current president of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases and President-elect of the Australian Society for Antimicrobials (ASA). His interests are in management of hospital infection and antimicrobial resistance. He is on of the executive of the Australian Group on Antimicrobial Resistance (AGAR).

Dr David Looke
David Looke is an Infectious Diseases Physician and Clinical Microbiologist at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane and Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Queensland. He is Chairman of the Antibiotic Subcommittee of the Queensland Health Medicines Advisory Committee, the Vice-President of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases and is a member of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Working Party of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. He has been involved with the Therapeutic Guidelines continuously since 1998.

Graeme Nimmo is State Director of Microbiology for Pathology Queensland and Associate Professor in the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research. His research interests include healthcare-associated and community-associated MRSA, the epidemiology of antimicrobial resistant pathogens and molecular typing methods for healthcare-associated and community-associated pathogens. He is President of the Australian Society for Antimicrobials, Chair of the Australian Group for Antimicrobial Resistance, and a member of the National Pathology Accreditation Advisory Council. He serves on the editorial boards of Pathology and the European Journal of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. He is a member of the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute Working Group on Analysis and Presentation of Cumulative Antimicrobial Susceptibility Data and of the MRSA Working Group of the International Society for Chemotherapy.

 

David Paterson is an Infectious Diseases Physician at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital and Professor of Medicine at University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research (UQCCR). He is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed articles in the field of Infectious Diseases, particularly pertaining to antibiotic resistance. He was the winner of the 2008 Frank Fenner Award for Advanced Research in Infectious Diseases, awarded by the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases. In 2010 he was awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Achievement Award as the highest ranked NHMRC Practitioner Fellowship applicant.

 

Michael Richards is an Infectious Diseases Physician with particular interest in hospital-acquired infections and clinical infectious diseases. He is the Director of the Victorian Infectious Diseases Service at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Since 2002 he has also been the inaugural Director of the VICNISS Coordinating Centre. In this period, this centre has established a standardised statewide surveillance program for hospital infections in 120 Victorian public hospitals, and has research activities including surveillance methods, risk adjustment, surgical antibiotic prophylaxis, costs of hospital acquired infections, and prevention inteventions. He is a member of the Victorian State Advisory Committee on Infection Control, the Surveillance Committee of the Australian Commission for Safety and Quality in Healthcare, and co chair of the ASID working party on Clostridium difficile.

 

John Turnidge is Clinical Director of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases for SA Pathology, based at Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide. He is Infectious Disease Physician and Microbiologist who has had a long career in Adelaide and Melbourne working with antibiotic resistance and appropriate antibiotic use. He is involved with many societies and committees both nationally and internationally dealing with issues of antibiotic resistance and their management. He was inaugural president of the Western Pacific Society of Chemotherapy, and co-founded the Australian Society for Antimicrobials. He was president of the 20^th International Congress of Chemotherapy in Sydney in 1997. He has served on the scientific program committees of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, and the European Congress for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. He is currently a voting member of the Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing subcommittee of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. At a local level, Professor Turnidge has been involved with a range of committee related to the management of antimicrobial resistance, including JETACAR (the Joint Expert Technical Advisory Committee on Antimicrobial Resistance) and the Expert Advisory Group on Antimicrobial Resistance of the NHMRC.