Scientific Committee
Silvia Bofill Mas
Sílvia Bofill-Mas is an environmental virologist at the University of Barcelona, where she also serves as a professor of virology. She obtained her PhD in 2003, when she first described the presence of human polyomaviruses in urban wastewater samples and proposed their use as indicators of human fecal contamination in environmental samples. Since then, her work has focused on environmental virology, contributing to the development of sensitive methodologies for viral surveillance in the environment, helping to improve water quality monitoring and public health protection. A significant part of her research involves the use of human and animal viruses as indicators of fecal pollution. Her work in metaviromics has contributed to the characterization of viromes in human and animal environmental samples. She is also committed to optimizing viral surveillance methods in low-income countries.
Gloria Sanchez
Gloria Sánchez, Ph.D., is a Tenured Scientist and Scientific Deputy Director at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Tecnology (IATA-CSIC) in Spain, where she leads the Environmental Virology and Food Safety Laboratory (VISAFELab). Dr. Sánchez received her Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Barcelona. After leading the enteric virus group at the Nestlé Research Center in Switzerland, she joined IATA-CSIC in 2008. Dr. Sánchez’s research focuses on the detection, characterization, and control of food- and waterborne viruses, including norovirus, hepatitis A, and hepatitis E viruses. Her work includes the development of molecular detection methods, the application of next-generation sequencing, and the evaluation of food processing and water treatment technologies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her team developed a widely adopted wastewater-based method for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles (H-index 50), authored numerous book chapters, and led multiple national and international research projects. Dr. Sánchez serves on several international standardization and advisory committees, including ISO working groups and the FAO/WHO expert panel on microbiological risk assessment, and is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition.
Nasheri Neda
Neda did her Masters and PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Ottawa, studying different viruses such as mumps, and hepatitis C virus. During her post-doc studies, she worked on foodborne viruses such as hepatitis A, E and norovirus. Since January 2018, she has joined the Bureau of Microbial Hazards, at Health Canada, as a research scientist, and the Head of the Food Virology Laboratory. She continues her research on a variety of viruses, and runs a reference service for detection of viruses in food, clinical and environmental samples. She is also an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa. Her research interests and projects include detection, genomic characterization, and inactivation of viruses.
Prof. Annalaura Carducci
Graduated in Biology and Specialist in Hygiene and Public Health. Former Full Professor of General and Applied Hygiene at the university of Pisa. Formerly head of the Laboratory of Hygiene and Environmental Virology and of the Health Communication Observatory of the Department of Biology, at the Univerity of Pisa. Research and teaching activities in environmental hygiene, epidemiology and prophylaxis of infectious diseases, environmental and food virology, wastewater based surveillance, microbiological risk analysis for food, water, life and working settings, One Health approach, health and risk communication. Author of more than 360 extended publications in international journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. Member of Restricted Board of Health and Environment of the Italian Society of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine (SItI), delegate of SItI in the Health and Environment group of the World Federation of Public Health Associations. Responsible and participant in national and international projects, member of editorial board and reviewer for international journals and for national and international projects. European Commission Expert for projects evalution and monitoring.
Ioannis Karakasiliotis
He graduated from the Department of Biology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2004). He then completed his doctoral dissertation at Imperial College London in the field of Virology, supported by a scholarship from his home university. Following postdoctoral research at the Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming” and the Hellenic Pasteur Institute on inflammatory and viral diseases, as a fellow of the Bodossaki Foundation and the State Scholarships Foundation, he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at Democritus University of Thrace (2016). Since 2021, he has been Director of the Laboratory of Biology at the Medical School of Democritus University of Thrace. His research focuses on the molecular basis of viral and other diseases, aiming to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis. He has published 40 papers in international journals (h-index = 13) and 369 original sequence entries in the international GeneBank database. Over the past five years, he has been the scientific coordinator of six competitive research programs, through which he developed the Genomics Unit and the Biosafety Level 3 Unit of the Laboratory of Biology.
Prof. Apostolos Beloukas
Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Virology at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of West Attica. He is Director of the established Research Laboratory of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology and has served as Vice Chair of the Department of Biomedical Sciences since September 2023. He was Scientific Head of the National AIDS Reference Centre for Southern Greece from 2021 to 2025 and previously served as Honorary Senior Lecturer in Virology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Liverpool from 2018 to 2023. He holds a degree in Biology, an MSc in Applications of Biology in Biomedicine, and a PhD in Molecular Virology and Molecular Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. After completing his doctoral studies, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and subsequently at the University of Liverpool, where he later held the position of Senior Research Fellow. His research interests focus on molecular microbiology, molecular virology, molecular epidemiology of infectious diseases, bioinformatics, pathogen genetic diversity, host–pathogen interactions, antimicrobial and antiviral resistance, and the application of molecular biology and epidemiology to public health. His work also extends to evidence-based biomedical research and the study of viral epidemics, including emerging viral infections. He has authored or co-authored more than 130 scientific publications in high- impact international journals and has received more than 23,000 citations, with an h-index of 42.
Dimitrios Paraskevis
Dimitrios Paraskevis is a graduate of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He holds a Master of Science (MSc) in Molecular Biology from the Department of Biology at the University of Crete and completed his PhD in the molecular epidemiology of viral infections at the Laboratory of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics of the Medical School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He subsequently worked for two years as a scientific associate (postdoctoral researcher) at the Laboratory of Clinical and Evolutionary Virology of the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Leuven, Belgium. Since 2020, he has been actively involved in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic as a member of the Committee for the Management of Public Health Emergencies due to Infectious Agents of the Greek Ministry of Health, as well as a member of the Public Health Experts Committee. In parallel, he has participated and continues to participate in national and international committees on public health-related issues.
Dr. Efi Papafragkou
Dr. Efi Papafragkou is a Research Scientist in the Human Foods Program at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Washington, D.C., where she leads nationally- and internationally recognized initiatives to advance research on foodborne viruses. She received her Master of Science in Food Science from University of Delaware and her Ph.D. at North Carolina State University. Having a fellowship from the American Society of Microbiology she completed her postdoctoral training at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA. Dr. Papafragkou joined FDA in 2010 and was instrumental in setting up the food virology research program in her office. Her research initiatives focus on method development (molecular and cell culture based) for virus detection and control in foods and the environment. Her work involves directing multidisciplinary research priorities, leading outbreak investigations, providing regulatory support and coordinating interagency initiatives as science advisor in foodborne viruses. She also serves as a technical expert on the International Standards Organization Technical Committee on Food Microbiology, the Center for Produce Safety, the Codex Committee on Food Hygiene, AOAC’s Emergency Response panel, FDA’s Microbiological Methods Validation subcommittee and Institutional Biosafety Committee.
Prof. Panagiotis Kalatzis
Professor Panagiotis Kalatzis holds a BSc and MSc from the University of Crete and a PhD from the University of Copenhagen in Biology, with a specialization in microbiology and bacteriophages. His professional experience spans both academia and the corporate world, and his vision has consistently been to bring applied research close to real-world problems, delivering tangible solutions. Over the years, he has participated in scientific consortia and collaborations with partners from Chile, Georgia, the USA, Denmark, China, Norway, Finland, and Greece, developing an extensive international network. His research focuses on bacteria–phage interactions and on the potential of bacteriophages as a sustainable weapon against pathogenic bacteria, with results disseminated through contributions to international peer-reviewed journals and numerous international conferences. He is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen, where his primary work targets necrotizing soft-tissue infections caused by Streptococcus pyogenes using phage-based strategies, in joint efforts with Danish hospitals and the Becky Mayer Center for Phage Research in Leicester, UK.
Prof. Albert Bosch
Albert Bosch (Emeritus Professor of Microbiology, and and coleader of the Enteric Virus Laboratory, UB) has over 40 years of experience in Virology and has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles on enteric viruses in scientific journals, as well as complete books (h-Index=71, Google scholar, April 2026). In the last years he has been fully committed to water-based epidemiology studies of SARS-CoV-2, enteroviruses, including poliovirus, and other health-significant viruses.He has been ranked among the top 2% scientists in Microbiology, according to the updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators, PLOS Biology, 2021, and Stanford Rankings, 2023 and 2025. He was the the President of the Spanish Society for Virology (2013-2024) and the President of the Assembly of the International Society for Food and Environmental Virology; he is the former President of the Water Microbiology section of the Spanish Society for Microbiology. He is member of numerous scientific committees, notably the scientific committee of the Spanish Food Safety Authority, the European Standardization Committee (CEN) of the EU on standardization of molecular methods for virus detection in foods; he also belongs to the scientific panel Food and waterborne diseases of the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC). He acted as Chairman of the Astrovirus Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). He is the Chief Executive Editor of “Food and Environmental Virology and Associate Editor of “Journal of Applied Microbiology”. He was also formerly Senior Editor of “Letters in Applied Microbiology” and Editor of “Viruses”. The Enteric Virus Laboratory was the first university laboratory in Spain to be certified for compliance of Good Laboratory Practices and received the Acreditation for standard UNE-EN ISO/IEC 17025.
Petros A. Kokkinos PhD
Dr. Petros A. Kokkinos is Molecular Biologist and Associate Professor (Sustainable wastewater management technologies with emphasis on environmental virology), at the School of Science and Technology of the Hellenic Open University (HOU). He has studied Biological Sciences at the University of Trieste, Italy, and holds a PhD from the Polytechnic School of the University of Patras. He is currently member of the Laboratory of Sustainable Waste Management Technologies and the Director of the Postgraduate Study Program ‘Cultivations under cover-Hydroponics’ of the HOU. He has received nine scholarships and has conducted research in UK, USA, Spain, and Switzerland. He has participated in 17 research projects (VITAL, BioNFate, INVALOR, UV-Leach, etc). He has published 64 peer reviewed scientific papers (Google Scholar: 2906, h-index: 28, i10h-index: 49, 05/05/2026), and more than 100 publications in international and Greek conferences, a scientific book and a chapter of a scientific book. He is Editorial Board member of “Environments“, Guest Editor of 4 Special Issues, and Associate Editor in Environmental Water Quality (specialty section of Frontiers in Water). He is Guest Editor of a Discover Viruses Special Issue (Springer Nature) on “Wastewater and Sewage Sludge Treatment Technologies for Virus Removal”. His research interests include Water Pollution, Wastewater Reuse, Biology of Wastewater Treatment, Environmental Virology, and Public Health.
Professor Artur Rzeżutka
Professor Artur Rzeżutka is a senior scientist at Department of Microbiology of Food and Feed of the National Veterinary Research Institute in Puławy, Poland. Prof. Rzeżutka graduated in Veterinary Medicine and obtained a PhD degree in the field of veterinary virology at he National Veterinary Research Institute. His research encompasses activities focused on methods development for virus detection in food as well as their validation and accreditation according to ISO17025. In addition, he also conducts monitoring studies of food for the presence of viruses as well as foodborne protozoan parasites. Except food-borne viral pathogens he studies emerging and zoonotic viruses with a special interest in virus prevalence in farm and wildlife animals. In the Institute, from 2012 to 2025 he was heading the National Reference Laboratory for monitoring of viral contamination of bivalve molluscs (currently the Reference Laboratory for foodborne viruses in food of animal origin) and the Department of Food and Environmental Virology. He was a member of several scientific committees and professional bodies (Codex Alimentarius Commission, ISO, CEN, Med-Vet-Net Association, COST FA Committee, European Commission’s Food and Veterinary Office, Polish Society for Veterinary Sciences) related to the field of food virology. He also participates in EFSA working group. He was involved in several national and international research projects (EU FP 6, 7, Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe) on viruses in animals, food and the environment. He acts as an editorial board member for national and international journals such as Veterinary Medicine, Food and Environmental Virology, Food Analytical Methods, BMC Microbiology and BMC Infectious Diseases. Prof. Rzeżutka is a registered specialist in food hygiene in Poland.
Dr Leena Maunula
Dr Maunula is an experienced researcher in food and waterborne viruses, focusing particularly on their transmission through various routes, including food, water, animals, and air. Based at the University of Helsinki Department of Food Hygiene and Environmental Health, Dr Maunula and her group have made notable contributions to the field, including studies on norovirus detection, transfer, and inactivation on surfaces, as well as their detection in berries. They have also researched the presence of hepatitis E virus (HEV) in humans, pigs, and other animals. The current research explores the stability of norovirus surrogates in berry drinks, virus contamination in river water, survival of enteric viruses in water and beverages, and the inactivation of HEV in food processes. Dr Maunula has also collaborated on studies examining airborne virus spread. In addition to her research, Dr Maunula is dedicated to mentoring the next generation of scientists. When not in the lab, she enjoys reading and spending time with her cat.