17th Annual Scientific Meeting
Infectious Diseases, Shaping the Future of Care; Patients, Pathogens and Policy
14th & 15th May 2026
The Tower Hotel, Waterford.
Prof. Dara Byrne is the Professor of Simulation at the University of Galway. She is a Fellow of teh Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. She is the Director of Simulation at the Irish Centre for Applied Patient Safety and Simulation and Director of Simulation for the Saolta University Healthcare Group. She is the Clinical Lead for the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland for Simulation and an executive and founding member of the Irish Association for Simulation (IAS). She is a Society for Simulation in Healthcare (SSH) advanced certified healthcare simulation provider (CHSE- A) and accredited by the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH).
Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine, Beaumont Hospital/Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Eoghan de Barra received his medical degree in Dublin and proceeded to gain specialist training in Infectious Diseases and General Medicine in Ireland and South Africa. He completed an MD at the department of Tropical Medicine and International Health at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), Dublin and conducted malaria vaccine research work in Dublin and at the University of Oxford, UK. Thereafter he took up a post at Imperial College NHS Trust, London as a Consultant in Infectious Diseases and General Internal Medicine, where he was the clinical lead for the OPAT programme. In 2017 he returned to Dublin taking up a post as Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Senior Lecturer at Beaumont Hospital / RCSI. Research interests include Tropical Medicine, vaccine development, TB, resource limited acute care, OPAT and antimicrobial prescribing.
Prof Andy Hogan Bio-sketch
Andy is currently Professor of Immunology and a Principal Investigator with the Obesity Immunology Research Group which is based between Maynooth University and St Vincent’s University Hospital (SVUH). He completed his PhD in immunology in 2010 at Maynooth. Before his academic appointment in 2017, Andy was senior scientist with Prof Donal O’Shea’s Obesity Immunology Research Group at St Vincent’s University Hospital. He has also completed fellowships at the National Children’s Research Centre and Harvard Medical School.
Andy’s research focuses on the impact of obesity on the immune system, and the mechanisms underpinning the development of obesity related co-morbidities such as insulin resistance, cancer and susceptibility to infection. His research is also investigating the metabolic requirements of anti-cancer & anti-viral T cells. To date this has resulted in over 65 peer reviewed publications in leading journals including Nature Immunology, PNAS and Science Signaling, and over €5 million in competitive research funding. Additionally, the groups research has informed national and international policy on Obesity.
I am a consultant in paediatric infectious diseases at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Professor of Practice at Imperial College. I lead the congenital infection clinics at St Mary’s Hospital in London. In 2020, with colleagues from around Europe, we set up CCMVNET ccmvnet@gmail.com an international network built around a prospective registry for children with congenital CMV (CCMV), I was the inaugural chair of the network (2020-2023). Our aim is to learn as much as possible about CCMV, and promote collaboration for research into prevention and treatment.
I am a member of the PENTA Network, and have participated in many HIV treatment and prevention trials for children. I have been actively involved in education for Paediatric Infections for many years, working with PENTA and ESPID supporting learning for clinicians, worldwide, particularly on congenital infections.
Fundamentally, I am a front line clinician and I love to bring people together – children, families and peer supporters ,clinicians, laboratory scientists, epidemiologists, virologists, pharmacologists, and trialists,– all the team that we need to change the future for children with congenital infections.
Panelist (2001-2022) and Coordinator (2020-2022), Spanish HIV Guidelines. Panelist (2007-2021) and Co-coordinator (2022-2024), Co-morbidities section, EACS Guidelines.
External consultant on HIV prevention and care for the Departament de Salut, Generalitat de Catalunya, the National AIDS Plan, Ministerio de Sanidad, España, and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Member of the Hospital Medicine Advisory Board, Catalan Institute of Health, Generalitat de Catalunya.
External scientific advisor and reviewer of academic positions, grants, or doctoral theses to Dirección General de Investigación Científica y Técnica (Government of Spain), Agence Nationale de Recherche sur le Sida (France), UK Medical Research Council, Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Germany), HaDEA (European Commission), AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG), South African Medical Research Council, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Brazil), University of New South Wales, University of Dublin, University of Brighton, University College of London, and European AIDS Treatment Group (EATG).
Associate Editor of HIV Medicine and Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. Member of the Editorial Board of AIDS, AIDS Research and Therapy, Clinical Infectious Diseases, HIV Medicine, Journal of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndromes, Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, and Journal of Infectious Diseases.
Martin McNally is Honorary Consultant in Limb Reconstruction at the Oxford Bone Infection Unit in the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford University Hospitals and King James IV Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh.
He has a particular interest in fracture-related infection but is fascinated by all aspects of bone and joint infection, from pathogenesis to diagnosis in prosthetic joint infection to osteomyelitis. He has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers, reviews and book chapters. His current research and clinical studies focus on diagnosis and treatment options together with assessment of outcomes and quality of life for infection patients. He has been a champion of multi-disciplinary working in bone infection. He is Past-President of the European Bone and Joint Infection Society (EBJIS) and the Girdlestone Orthopaedic Society. He is a member of the EFORT Scientific Committee and Co-chair of the International Fracture-related Infection (FRI) Group.
Dr. José M. Miró has been Senior Consultant of Infectious Diseases at the Hospital Clinic – IDIBAPS of Barcelona since 2001. He is Professor of Medicine at the University of Barcelona, IDIBAPS and CIBERINFEC investigator and Director of the Master of HIV/AIDS of the University of Barcelona. His research fields are focused on infective endocarditis (including the experimental model) and HIV/AIDS (Cohort studies, primary HIV-1 infection, opportunistic Infections, late presenters, solid organ transplantation in HIV-1 infection, COVID-19). He has published almost 1,000 articles in peer-review journals (h-index 94).
Dr. Miro was President of GESIDA (1998-99), the Catalan Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SCMIMC, 2005-07), the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC, 2013-15) and currently is President of the International Society of Cardiovascular Infectious Diseases (ISCVID, 2019-27). In 2023 and 2024 he was nominated ESCMID and IDSA Fellow, respectively. In 2024 Dr. Miro was elected Academician of the Catalonian Academy of Medical Sciences (RAMC).
Dr Antonia Scobie completed her undergraduate medical training at Royal Free and University College Medical School in 2007. She completed a Master’s degree in Clinical Microbiology and a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene during her specialist infection training in London. In 2020, she was appointed as a Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Medical Microbiology at The Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust and The Royal National Orthopaedic NHS Trust. Her specialist interests include orthopaedic and implant-associated infections, Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT) and novel antimicrobial therapies including bacteriophages.
She is the research lead for the Bone Infection Unit at Royal National orthopaedic hospital, executive committee member of Phage-UK and Lead for the UK Clinical Working Group for bacteriophage therapy in bone and joint infections.
Yashna Singh is a medical doctor at the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation Clinical Trials Unit in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the site lead on HIV prevention and treatment trials, including novel injectable HIV treatment and PrEP trials and phase 1 analytical treatment interruption studies with broadly neutralizing antibodies.
Yashna has a passion for HIV and sexual health research in young women and gender-diverse people. She has an active role in community and stakeholder engagement and is committed to capacity building to ensure equitable access to novel HIV PrEP products.
Andrej Spec earned his MD at the University of Illinois in Chicago and did his internal medicine training at Rush University Medical Center. He came to Washington University in St Louis for his fellowship, and concomitantly earned his Masters of Science in Clinical Investigation. He stayed on as faculty, where he focused his research and clinical work on invasive fungal infections. He is currently an Associate Professor at Washington University in St Louis, where he also serves as the Associate Director of the Infectious Disease Clinical Research Unit, the Medical Co-Director of the Invasive Mycoses Clinic and the Section Director of Transplant Infectious Disease. He has authored over 80 scientific papers and several book chapters on invasive fungal infections. He has also served as the Interim Co-Editor-in-Chief for Open Forum Infectious Disease and is currently the Deputy Editor. Dr. Spec was elected as a Fellow by the European Confederation of Medical Mycologists and Infectious Disease Society of America in 2019, and 2021, respectively. Finally, he is the developer and lead editor of the Comprehensive Review of Infectious Disease, a bestselling Infectious Disease textbook with a focus on teaching ID and preparing readers for ID boards.
I am a consultant in Infectious Diseases in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital (MMUH) in Dublin and the Deputy Clinical Lead for the National High Level Isolation Unit (NHLIU). I am also the lead consultant of the Education and Training Working Group for the NHLIU and have led national and international simulation exercises coordinating the care and transfer of patients with high-consequence infectious diseases.
Dr Jackson is a specialist in Infectious Diseases and General Medicine working as a consultant physician in Cork University Hospital and the Mercy University Hospital in Cork City, Ireland. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2001. His specialist training included 2 years in Malawi running clinical trials in the area of Cryptococcal meningitis for which he was awarded his MD, and a further year of clinical fellowship in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was awarded his Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from the Gorgas Institute in 2005.
In Cork, as well as general medicine commitments, he is the clinical lead for HIV, running a clinic with over 600 patients receiving antiretrovirals. He is also chairperson of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Committees in Cork University Hospital and the Mercy University Hospital, and is the clinical lead for Outpatient Parenteral Antimicrobial Therapy (OPAT) for the southern region of Ireland. He provides a consultation service for inpatients with respect to general infectious diseases, HIV, antimicrobial management, fever of unknown origin, tropical medicine. His ongoing lecturing commitments are through University College Cork. He has active research interests with multi-centre collaborations in many areas including HIV, Hepatitis B, antimicrobial stewardship, COVID-19.