Ilaria Capua, D.V.M., Ph.D., is currently head of the Virology Department at Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie, Padova, Italy, and head of the National, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) Reference Laboratories for avian influenza (AI) and Newcastle disease. She has been involved in managing several AI outbreaks on a global scale, and in particular, her group has supported African and Middle Eastern countries affected by the H5N1 crisis. She is currently coordinating two European Union– (EU–) funded projects. She is a partner in an additional four EU-funded projects and is a Work Package leader in the EU Network of Excellence for Epizootic Disease Diagnosis and Control, EPIZONE. Dr. Capua is currently the chair of OFFLU, the joint OIE-FAO veterinary network of expertise on avian influenza. In 2006, she ignited an international debate on sharing genetic information and launched the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data, endorsed by 70 medical and veterinary virologists and 6 Nobel laureates. In 2008, Dr. Capua was among the winners of the Scientific American 50 prize for leadership in policy for promoting sharing of information at an international level.

Dennis Carroll, Ph.D., is currently director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Avian and Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Unit. Dr. Carroll was initially detailed to USAID from the U.S. CDC as a senior public health advisor in 1991. In 1995, he became the Agency’s senior infectious diseases advisor and was responsible for the Agency’s programs in malaria, tuberculosis, antimicrobial resistance, disease surveillance, and emerging infectious diseases. He officially left CDC and joined USAID in 2005, when he assumed responsibility as director of the API Unit. Dr. Carroll has a doctorate in Biomedical Research, with a special focus in Tropical Infectious Diseases, from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He was a research scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, where he studied the molecular mechanics of viral infection. Dr. Carroll has received a number of performance awards from both CDC and USAID, including the 2006 USAID Science and Technology Award for his work on malaria and avian influenza, and the 2008 Administrators’ Management Innovation Award for his management of the Agency’s API program.

Peter Cowen, D.V.M., Ph.D., has served in the North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine’s department of Population Health and Pathobiology as an assistant and associate professor of epidemiology/public health since 1985. He directed the school’s WHO/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) Veterinary Public Health Consulting Center for graduate and residency programs in veterinary public health from 1990