• Sandra Gewehr, a biologist with an MSc in Public Health and Health Policy, is the Director of R&D at Ecodevelopment SA, Greece’s leading mosquito control company. She serves as President of the European Mosquito Control Association from 2023 to 2025 and chairs its Working Group on Best Practices for Mosquito Control. Sandra contributed to the EYWA system, which won the 1st EIC Horizon Prize on Early Warning for Epidemics and has worked as a technical expert for WHO on West Nile virus. She has more than 25 years of experience in mosquito control, disease outbreak preparedness and response.

Chair of Scientific Committee

Co-chair of Organizing Committee

  • Prof. Ruth Müller is the head of the Unit of Entomology at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium and associate professor at the University of Antwerp. She is an expert in vector ecology and specially interested in the behavior, ecological plasticity, genomic adaptation and ecotoxicology of Aedes, Culex and Anopheles mosquitoes. She has worked on the development and implementation of innovative vector control tools aimed at reducing the impact of vector-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria on public health, contributing to advancements in integrated vector management and environmental sustainability in mosquito control efforts.

Chair of Organization Committee

Co-chair of Scientific Committee

Scientific Committee

  • Leen Delang is a professor in virology at the University of Leuven in Belgium. She received her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Leuven in 2011, working on new antiviral drugs for hepatitis C virus. As a postdoctoral researcher, she identified new antiviral drugs for the chikungunya virus and elucidated their mechanism of action. In 2016, she was a visiting postdoc at the Pasteur Institute in Paris in the laboratory of Prof. Anna-Bella Failloux, where she studied the transmission of drug-resistant chikungunya viruses by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. In 2019, Dr. Delang started her own research group in Leuven, focusing on understanding interactions between arboviruses, their mosquito vectors and the mammalian host, and translating this work into new antiviral strategies.

  • Francis Schaffner, PhD, is a French medical and veterinary entomologist specializing in mosquitoes, biting midges, sand flies, and biting flies. Early in his career, he focused on sustainable mosquito control and taxonomy in France. From 2007 to 2013, he conducted vector research at the University of Zurich and worked with Avia-GIS (2009–2016) developing vector surveillance tools. Since 2016, he has been a freelance consultant for international bodies like WHO and ECDC, with 39 years of experience in vector surveillance, control, and disease transmission across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. He is a leader in mosquito taxonomy.

  • Javiera obtained her Veterinary Medicine degree from Universidad Mayor, Chile, and a Master’s in Public Health - Epidemiology and Biostatistics from Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2007. After a traineeship at the European Commission, she worked as an epidemiologist at the Belgian Institute of Public Health (Sciensano). In 2010, she joined the ECDC-funded EPIET program in Dublin. Since completing EPIET in 2022, she rejoined Sciensano’s Infectious Diseases Epidemiology department. Javiera focuses on zoonoses, mosquito-borne diseases, epidemic intelligence, and risk assessment, and coordinates the MEMO+ project for Aedes albopictus surveillance in Belgium.

  • Dr. Olivier Briët is Expert Medical Entomology at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and manages an international network of entomologists. Before joining ECDC in 2018, he was Senior Malariologist at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute where he analyzed and optimized malaria control strategies, providing country support. His research focuses on evaluating vector control interventions, with a strong interest in quantitative methods. Previously, he supported Rwanda’s Ministry of Health in developing a disease surveillance system and worked on malaria forecasting in Sri Lanka.

  • Andreas Rose is co-founder and member of the board of directors of Biogents AG, a company specialized in the development and production of mosquito traps and attractants, and in the study and evaluation of mosquito repellents. Andreas studied biology at the University of Regensburg, Germany, and at the University of Colorado in Boulder, USA. His diploma and doctoral theses were on the olfactory host finding behaviour of the blood-feeding kissing bug Triatoma infestans. He then worked as a research scientist in the University of Regensburg’s mosquito research laboratory, before taking a position in the research and development of a producer of essential oils and plant extracts in France. After three years, he moved back to Regensburg to found Biogents AG together with Martin Geier. Andreas speaks German, English, and French.

  • Cedric Marsboom (MSc, Ing) is the CTO and head of R&D at Avia-GIS, with 10 years’ experience as an environmental engineer specializing in remote sensing, spatial modeling, and machine learning for vector-borne diseases. He coordinates projects in decision support tools, IoT monitoring, and data quality control for vector networks. Notable contributions include dengue hotspot mapping and AEDESRISK, a decision support system for vector control. Cedric leads work packages in EU projects like e4WARNING and MOBVEC, and coordinates VECTORNET3. Since 2024, he has been a scientific collaborator at SpELL, contributing to ongoing research projects.

  • Isabelle Kramer earned her PhD from the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, specializing on the cold tolerance of  mosquitoes sampled along an altitudinal gradient in Nepal. Her doctoral research covered medical entomology, experimental ecology, public health and population genomics. Her subsequent postdoctoral role at the Goethe University focused on social science and public health, particularly through a stakeholder analysis of West Nile Virus prevention and control in Germany. Currently, she is a researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Belgium as well as the Goethe University in Frankfurt. Her primary focus is understanding mosquito adaptation to climate warming and their potential responses to future climate change scenarios, with a specific emphasis on mosquitoes from Nepal and Germany.

  • Dr. Wim Van Bortel, a medical entomologist with over 25 years of experience, specializes in vectors and vector-borne diseases across Europe, Africa, and Asia. He earned his MSc in Biology from the University of Antwerp and specialized in Medical Entomology at the Institut Pasteur. He obtained his PhD in 2002. From 2010 to 2016, he was Senior Expert in vector-borne diseases at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Since 2017, he has been a senior researcher at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp, focusing on vector-borne disease prevention and outbreak control strategies.

Organizing Committee

  • Marco Brustolin

    Institute of Tropical Medicine Belgium

  • Eleonora Flacio

    La Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana Switzerland

  • Francoise Pfirsch

    EMCA Treasurer, EMCA Headquarters France

  • Mahi Slavi

    EMCA Secretary Greece

  • Sofia Vielma

    Institute of Tropical Medicine Belgium

  • Greet Borremans

    Institute of Tropical Medicine Belgium

  • Ann Muësen

    Institute of Tropical Medicine Belgium

  • Anna Schneider

    Institute of Tropical Medicine Belgium