Dr Kontoyiannis is the Texas 4000 Distinguished Endowed Professor For Cancer Research and Deputy Head in the Division of Internal Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is also an adjunct professor at Baylor College of Medicine and University of Houston College of Pharmacy in Houston Texas. He received his medical degree Summa Cum Laude from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece. Dr Kontoyiannis also completed a post-doctoral clinical research fellowship in the Section of Infectious Diseases at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, followed by training in Internal Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX, where he served as a Chief Medical Resident. He was subsequently trained as a clinical fellow in Infectious Diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital and obtained a Master in Clinical Sciences from Harvard Medical School in Boston. He spent 3 years at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Sciences/Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a fellow in the Harvard MIT Clinical Investigators Training Program.
Dr Kontoyiannis has authored more than 450 peer-reviewed manuscripts and been invited to give over 150 lectures at international conferences and prestigious institutions in the US and abroad. He serves as an associate editor for Mycoses and Journal of Infection and sits on the editorial boards of Antimicrobial Agents & Chemotherapy, Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Transplant Infectious Diseases and he is a reviewer for several other peer-reviewed journals in infectious diseases, oncology, and hematology. An international expert in clinical and experimental mycology, he is one of the top 3 most highly cited investigators in the area of mycology, with over 25,000 citations.
He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He is the recipient of many awards, such as the 2004 American Society for Microbiology Award for Outstanding Research in the Pathogenesis of Microbial Diseases (mentor); The America's Top Physicians from Consumer’s Research Council of America; The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center: 2004 Faculty E. N. Cobb Scholar Award; Faculty Achievement Award, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, 2007; The Distinguished Clinical Faculty Mentoring Award of at MD Anderson Cancer Center, 2012; The Billy Cooper Memorial Award from The Medical Mycology Society of Americas, 2013; and the Drouhet Medal from the European Confederation of Medical Mycology, 2015. He is the president elect of Immunocompromised Host Society (2016-2018).
Dr Russell E. Lewis received his doctorate of pharmacy at the University of Kansas, followed by clinical residency training at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Washington University Medical Center, in St. Louis, Missouri. He then pursued an infectious disease research fellowship focused in antifungal pharmacology in the colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. From 1999 to 2011, he was on the faculty at the University of Houston College of Pharmacy and a clinical pharmacist and adjunct faculty member in the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
In 2011, Dr Lewis moved to Bologna, Italy, and was appointed Associate Professor in Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medical Sciences and Surgery at the University of Bologna. He also serves as a clinical pharmacologist for the Infectious Diseases Unit at S. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital in Bologna.
Dr Lewis has authored or co-authored over 200 papers and book chapters on the topics of antifungal pharmacology and infections in neutropenic cancer patients. He serves on the editorial board of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy and is a deputy editor for Mycoses. His research focuses on the pharmacology and immunological activity of antifungal agents. Recently his work has shifted to the development of clinical risk models to support diagnostic and treatment decisions for invasive fungal diseases and multidrug-resistant bacteria.
Dr Andes is Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases there. He completed medical school at University of Missouri, Columbia, and his internal medicine residency training at the University of Wisconsin, where he served as Chief Resident. He completed his infectious disease fellowship at the University of Wisconsin as well as post-doctoral research training in molecular biology/mycology under the mentorship of Bernard Weisblum and Bruce Klein. This was followed by studies of molecular mycology at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Wood’s Hole. He is editor of Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, PLoS One and is on the editorial boards of Journal of Infectious Diseases, Eukaryotic Cell, Faculty of 1000, Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Virulence, Medical Mycology, Pharmaceutics, and Frontiers in Mycology.