Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Nagasaki University, Japan;

Department of Infectious Disease, Imperial College London, UK;Goedele Maertens is a Professor in Retrovirology and Head of Section of Virology at Imperial College London, UK. She received her BSc in Chemistry and MSc in Biochemistry from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL, Belgium). During her PhD in Biochemistry at the KUL, with two years training in the Engelman lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School (Boston, MA), she investigated the interactions between HIV-1 integrase and its host factor LEDGF/p75. Following a four-year postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Oncology at Cancer Research UK (London, UK) she joined the Cherepanov lab at Imperial College London where she trained in structural virology. Since 2011, Maertens runs her laboratory at Imperial College London. Her research focuses on retrovirus biology, particularly the molecular mechanisms governing HTLV-1 replication, integration and virus-host interactions. Her laboratory combines structural, biochemical, and virological approaches to understand how retroviruses exploit host cellular machinery and to identify new antiviral targets. In addition to her research, she is actively involved in international collaborations aimed at improving the prevention and control of HTLV-1 and advancing global awareness of this neglected human retrovirus. Together with Dr Fabiola Martin (Associate Professor at Canberra Health Services and Clinical Associate Professor at Australian National University) she chairs the International Retrovirology Association HTLV-1 Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) working group.

Department of Biointeraction, Bahian School of Medicine and Public Health, Brazil;

National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID), Japan;Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS), Japan;Tetsuro Matano worked as an Orthopaedic surgeon for five years from 1985 and then started basic research on Virology. He obtained Doctor of Medical Sciences (D.M.Sc.) at Graduate School of Medicine, Univ. Tokyo in 1994. He started his study on AIDS pathogenesis using monkey AIDS models at NIAID, NIH, and reported crucial evidence indicating the importance of CD8+ T cell responses in immunodeficiency virus control. He has been a Professor at Institute of Medical Science, Univ. Tokyo since 2006. He was appointed as the Director of AIDS Research Center in NIID in 2010, and the Deputy Director-General in NIID in 2022. At the establishment of the new organization, Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS), in April, 2025, he was appointed as the Director-General of NIID in JIHS. He was a co-chair of AIDS Panel in U.S.-Japan Cooperative Medical Science Program in 2014-2023. He has been a Governing Council member of IAS and a co-chair of HIV Vaccine Industry Partnership Group since 2024, and the President of JSAR since 2026. He has established a unique AIDS model using MHC-defined rhesus macaques for analysis of HIV/SIV-specific T cell responses and developed a novel CTL-based HIV vaccine system using Sendai viral vectors, whose clinical trial phase I at Rwanda, Kenya and U.K. in collaboration with IAVI confirmed its safety and immunogenicity. He is now working on virus-host immune interaction, microbiome, and development of vaccines against HIV-1, HTLV-1, and respiratory virus infection. He also plays a key role in facilitating human resource development and international cooperation in JIHS.