Kalpana Balakrishnan, PhD obtained her doctoral degree in biophysics and subsequent post-doctoral training in Environmental Health Engineering both at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Her fields of specialization include occupational and environmental health risk assessment, exposure assessment, industrial hygiene, and industrial toxicology. As Head of the Department Environmental Health Engineering in Chennai, India, her responsibilities include coordination of all activities of the department with special emphasis on management of extramural grants, execution of all major research projects, industrial consultancy, and administration of academic and short-term training. She is a well-recognized international expert in environmental health and serves many reputed organizations including the World Health Organization, World Bank, the Indian Council for Medical Research, and the Tamil Nadu State Pollution Control Board in multiple technical capacities.

Dr. Heidi J. Larson is an anthropologist and Director of The Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP); Professor of Anthropology, Risk and Decision Science, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, LSHTM; Associate Professor, Department of Global Health, University of Washington; and Chatham House Centre on Global Health Security Fellow. Dr. Larson previously headed Global Immunisation Communication at UNICEF, chaired GAVI’s Advocacy Task Force, and served on the WHO SAGE Working Group on vaccine hesitancy. The VCP is a WHO Centre of Excellence on addressing Vaccine Hesitancy.

Dr. Larson’s research focuses on the analysis of social and political factors that can affect uptake of health interventions and influence policies. Her particular interest is on risk and rumour management from clinical trials to delivery – and building public trust. She served on the FDA Medical Countermeasure (MCM) Emergency Communication Expert Working Group, and is Principle Investigator of the EU-funded (EBODAC) project on the deployment, acceptance and compliance of an Ebola vaccine trial in Sierra Leone.

Dr. Sherine Shawky is a medical doctor who graduated from Ain Shams University in 1980, has a Doctorate in Public Health from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium in 1992; MPH in Epidemiology from the Catholic University of Louvain; and MPH in “Statistics, Epidemiologic and Operational Methods Applied in Medicine and Public Health” from the Free University of Brussels.

She has joined SRC as Research Professor in 2003. She was Associate Professor in Department of Family and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, 1996-2003. She worked as physician at Kigali Central Hospital and lecturer of Paediatrics in the School of Assistant Doctors as part of the Egyptian/Rwandan Cooperation Program, Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1983-1988. She participated in the continuing medical education program in Saudi Arabia and in the Super-course web Tele-prevention program of the University of Pittsburgh.

She has participated through video-conferencing in teaching developing research proposals to trainees enrolled in “The Middle East Research Ethics Training Initiative (MERETI), Summer Course 2010”. She is on the board of examiners for the “Arab Board in Community and family Medicine” provided by the Arab Board of Medical Specializations, Council of Arab Health Ministers, Arab League. She is the author of the chapter on Goal 6 in Egypt National MDGs Monitoring Report 2006 and 2010 and also of the chapter on HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections in the ICPD+15 National Report.

At SRC, she is the coordinator of the annual 3-month workshop entitled “Research Methods for Guiding Policy and Evaluation with Special Application to Population and Health” and teaches over 50% of its lectures and all the practical sessions on developing research proposal, secondary analysis and developing M&E indicators and log frame. She has developed many educational material related to research methods, measuring inequities in health, HIV/AIDS surveillance and program evaluation. She has worked and published extensively on many health issues including prenatal health, maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.

Dr. Jeanette Vega is the Director of Fonasa, the National Chilean Public Health Insurance Agency (FONASA) since March 2014. Dr Vega, has over 20 years of experience in international health. Her areas of expertise include social determinants of healthy, health equity and health systems. Prior to being appointed as Director of Fonasa by President Michelle Bachelet, Dr. Vega served as Managing Director of Health at the Rockefeller Foundation. She was Vice Minister of health in Chile, between 2008 and 2010, leading the country’s 13-step agenda for equity in health. Before that, Dr. Vega served as a Director at the World Health Organization in Geneva, where she led the equity in health agenda, looking at the social determinants of health and health systems. Dr. Vega started her career as a medical doctor in Chile specializing in Family Medicine. She has a master’s degree in Public health from the Universidad de Chile and a Ph.D. in Public Health from the University of Illinois at Chicago.