Plenary Speakers

Professor David Hooper
Professor of Medicine (Harvard Medical School)
Chief, Infection Control Unit
Associate Chief and Fellowship Program Director, Division of Infectious Diseases
Massachusetts General Hosptal, United States of America

Professor Peter Hawkey
Professor of Clinical and Public Health Bacteriology and Honorary Consultant
University of Birmingham and Health Protection Agency West Midlands Public Health Laboratory, United Kingdom

Professor David Paterson
Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Queensland
Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician and Microbiologist at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, Australia

ASA Travel Awards

ASA have made funds available for travel awards for delegates to attend Antimicrobials 2008. Awards will be made to ASA members presenting a proffered paper (oral or poster) at the meeting.

The awards consist of a return economy airfare, accommodation and registration.

Applicants should forward a copy of their abstract to the Secretary (Wendy Munckhof : info@asainc.net.au) before Friday 14^th December 2007, which will then be judged by the ASA Executive.

The ASA bioMérieux Identifying Resistance Travel Award

This is awarded to an individual on the basis of a proffered paper (oral or poster) presented during the ASA's Annual Scientific Meeting dealing with the identification of bacterial resistance to antimicrobials in a routine clinical setting.

The applicant must be a financial member of the ASA. The award committee will take into account the quality and originality of the paper.

The award consists of A$1000 cash prize, a commemorative plaque, and the provisions of flights, accommodation and registration for the recipient to attend Antimicrobials 2009.

The award committee will consist of two ASA committee members and a bioMérieux staff member.

Professor David Hooper

David Hooper received his Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Microbiology from the University of Texas at Austin and his M.D. degree from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis. He did two years of residency training in Internal Medicine and a Clinical and Research Fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as well as additional research training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) before joining the faculty at the MGH and Harvard in 1983.

David's research interests focus on the mechanisms and epidemiology of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and he is Principal Investigator on two grants from the US National Institutes of Health on mechanisms of quinolone resistance in Staphylococcus aureus and plasmid-mediated quinolone resistance in Gram-negative bacteria.

David teaches Infectious Diseases at Harvard Medical School and is a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the American Academy of Microbiology. He is the Deputy Editor of the Journal of Infectious Diseases and the former Chair of the Scientific Program Committee of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy of the American Society for Microbiology. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, particularly in the area of antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance.

Professor Peter Hawkey

Peter Hawkey's research interests are largely centred around the molecular evolution of ß-lactamases, aminoglycoside inactivating enzymes and the TET(M) family of transposons. He also have interests in molecular typing methods and the molecular epidemiology of nosocomial bacteria. Current projects include the selective effects of different antimicrobials on the molecular evolution and epidemiology of extended spectrum ß-lactamases in the U.K., India and China. Recently his group described mini satellite strain typing in S.aureus for the first time and are evaluating PCR based clinical diagnostic tests for MRSA. Over the last 5 years Peter has applied denaturing HPLC to high throughput screening for mutations in both -lactamase genes and gyrase (fluoroquinolone resistance) to enable accurate molecular epidemiology in clinical settings. His group has also developed VNTR (variable number tandem repeat) typing for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and is running a national pilot strain typing project for the Department of Health.

Peter is a member of several editorial boards and international advisory groups, and an advisor for the WHO Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring Programme. Recently, he was elected to the Council of British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and the Clinical Microbiology Group Committee of the Society for General Microbiology. He is the Health Protection Agency's regional microbiologists' representative on the Specialist Advisory Committee for Antimicrobial Resistance (SACAR) responsible to the Department of Health.

Professor David Paterson

David Paterson is a newly appointed Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Queensland, and Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician and Microbiologist at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital. His prior appointment was Director of the Antibiotic Management Program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He is the author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in the field of infectious diseases and clinical microbiology. His specific areas of interest are in antibiotic resistance in Gram negative bacilli and optimisation of antimicrobial use in the critically ill and the immunocompromised. He was the winner of the American Society for Microbiology's Merck Irving Siegal Award awarded at ICAAC 2000 and has been an advisor to the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI).