Dr Bruno Ciancio is a medical epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist. He worked as infectious disease epidemiologist at national level in Italy and in the UK. After completing the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET), he joined the ECDC in 2006. He worked as influenza expert for several years, supporting surveillance activities and pandemic preparedness, establishing the I-MOVE network for monitoring influenza vaccine effectiveness, and developing guidelines on influenza prevention. Since 2011 he leads the Surveillance section which is responsible for the collection, analysis and dissemination of infectious disease data at EU/EEA level, for global epidemic intelligence, and for microbiology. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr Ciancio led the ECDC COVID-19 team and the development of surveillance guidance and outputs.

FRANCESCA COLOMBO, M.Sc., is Head of the Health Division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. In this capacity, she leads OECD work on health, which aims at providing internationally comparable data on health and health systems and applying economic analysis to health policies, advising policy makers, stakeholders and citizens on how to respond to demands for more and better health care and make health systems more resilient and people centred. Major activities of the OECD Health Division cover the response to the COVID-19 crisis and solutions to make health systems more resilient; trends in health spending; measuring of health care outcomes, activities and inputs; health care quality policies; assessing health system efficiency and value for money; health workforce; long-term care systems and ageing; the economics of public health; pharmaceutical policies, new technologies, big data and Artificial Intelligence in health (http://www.oecd.org/health). Ms Colombo is a member of the Lancet Commission on COVID-19, the Advisory Committee of the European Health Forum Gastein, the French government’s Commission des comptes de la santé, and served as co-chair of the WEF Global Future Council on Health and Health Care, and other international advisory panels. Mrs Colombo has over 25 years of experience leading international activities on health and health systems. Over her career, she travelled extensively in Europe, South America and Asia, advising governments on health system policies and reforms.

Emer Cooke is as of 16 November 2020 the new Executive Director of the European Medicines Agency, based in Amsterdam. She also takes the role of Chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA). She was the Director responsible for all medical product-related regulatory activities at the World Health Organization in Geneva between November 2016 and November 2020. In this role, Ms Cooke was responsible for leading WHO's global work on regulation of health technologies (medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, vector control products and devices), coordinating the regulatory teams (Prequalification, Regulatory Systems Strengthening, and Safety), and working with member states and international partners to assure the quality, safety and efficacy of appropriate health technologies. Ms. Cooke is a pharmacist with Masters degrees in Science and Business Administration from Trinity College Dublin. She has over 30 years' experience in international regulatory affairs and spent 14 years (2002 to 2016) in management positions at the European Medicines Agency as Head of Inspections and Head of International Affairs respectively. From September 1998 to July 2002, she worked in the Pharmaceuticals unit of the European Commission.