Featured Speakers

Dr. Ahmed is a Professor at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, Vice Chair (Research) for the Department of Medicine and a nephrologist and clinician-scientist with a focus on sex and gender differences in human kidney and cardiovascular outcomes. She is an Advisory Board member for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Gender and Health, the Education Chair for the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences and is the Sex and Gender Champion of the CIHR-funded Canadians Seeking Solutions and Innovations to Overcome Chronic Kidney Disease, a pan-Canadian patient-oriented kidney research network. She completed her MD and internal medicine residency at the University of Toronto, nephrology fellowship at Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospitals and Master’s in Medical Sciences at Harvard University. A strong proponent of the importance of mentorship and fostering excellence in the next generation of kidney researchers, Dr. Ahmed was the recipient of a 2020 American Society of Nephrology Distinguished Mentor Award.

Timothy Caulfield is a Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy, a Professor in the Faculty of Law and the School of Public Health, and Research Director of the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta. His interdisciplinary research on topics like stem cells, genetics, research ethics, the public representations of science and health policy issues has allowed him to publish over 350 academic articles.

David Hunter is Richard Doll Professor of Epidemiology and Medicine and Director of the Translational Epidemiology Unit at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, UK. His early work was on HIV transmission in East Africa and he subsequently went on to research diet and cancer etiology through large-scale prospective studies. He founded the Program in Genetic Epidemiology and Statistical Genetics at Harvard and was co-chair of the steering committee of the Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium at the National Cancer Institute. He was co-director of the NCI Cancer Genetic Susceptibility Markers project focused on genome-wide association studies, and Dean for Academic Affairs at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. He is Chief Scientific Advisor to Our Future Health, the new name for the Accelerating Detection of Disease programme and the Early Disease Detection Research Project UK.

Professor Alan Lopez AC FAHMS is a Melbourne Laureate Professor and the Rowden-White Chair of Global Health and Burden of Disease Measurement at The University of Melbourne. He is also a visiting Professor and Director of the IHME-Big Data Institute Unit at Oxford University and an Affiliate Professor of Global Health at the University of Washington.

Sir George Alleyne, a native of Barbados is a medical graduate of the University of the West Indies (UWI) where he subsequently pursued an academic career. He was appointed Professor of Medicine in UWI in 1972 and Chair of the Department of Medicine in 1976. He joined the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1981, became Director on 1 February 1995 and after re-election in 1998, completed a second four-year term on 31 January 2003. In 2003 he was elected Director Emeritus of PAHO. From February 2003 until December 2010 he was the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean. From 2003 to 2017 he was Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and was a visiting professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University also from 2003 to 2017. Sir George has an extensive scientific bibliography and has given numerous presentations and lectures about a variety of health issues. Sir George has received numerous awards in recognition of his work, including honorary degrees, prestigious decorations and national and international honors. In 1990, he was made Knight Bachelor by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for his services to Medicine. In 2001, he was awarded the Order of the Caribbean Community, the highest honor that can be conferred on a Caribbean national. He is married to Sylvan Chen and they have three children.

Dr. Soumya Swaminathan was appointed as WHO’s first Chief Scientist in March 2019. She heads the Science division that was created to strengthen the organisation’s core scientific work and ensure the quality and consistency of its norms and standards. The Division also promotes the use of digital tools and technologies to help achieve the SDGs and will work on governance frameworks to regulate new technologies like Artificial intelligence and genome editing. The division also will have a foresight function that enables WHO to stay ahead of the curve and will promote research and development that leads to products that meet unmet public health needs.

She was previously Deputy Director-General for Programmes (DDP). A paediatrician from India and a globally recognized researcher on tuberculosis and HIV, she brings with her 30 years of experience in clinical care and research and has worked throughout her career to translate research into impactful programmes. Most recently, Dr Swaminathan was Secretary of the Department of Health Research and Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research. From 2009 to 2011, she also served as Coordinator of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) in Geneva.

She has sat on several WHO and global advisory bodies and committees, including the WHO Expert Panel to Review Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group of the Global TB Department at WHO, and as Co-Chair of the Lancet Commission on TB. She received her academic training in India, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America, and has published more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.