Pre conference course E - Basics in Biosecurity - Instructors
Pre conference course E - Basics in Biosecurity
About the speakers
-
Douwe Kuperus
Biosafety / Biorisk Officer
Douwe Kuperus is working in the biosafety-field for about 25 years. As biosafety/biorisk officer he has responsibility for the High Containment Unit of Wageningen Bioveterinary Research (WBVR) in Lelystad. WBVR is part of Wageningen University and Research and is an internationally renowned independent knowledge organisation within the domain of human and animal health and is national reference laboratory for various animal diseases.
Douwe was involved in several refurbishment-projects in containment-laboratories, animal rooms, waste-water treatment systems, HVAC-utilities, a vaccine production facility and has experience in validating and commissioning.
He is the acting chair of the International Veterinary Biosafety Workgroup (IVBW) and is member of the European Biosafety Association (EBSA). He was a member of EC FVO-inspection teams and advisor in WHO inspection visits. He is member of the FAO/EuFMD Special Committee on Biorisk Management (SCBRM).Academic Education and Degrees
Bachelor’s degree Safety & Security -
Kathrin Summermatter
Head of Biosafety Center
Managing Director of the Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory, Institute for Infectious DiseasesThe Institute for Infectious Diseases of the University of Bern combines diagnostics, teaching and research under one roof and covers the entire spectrum of microbiological diagnostics.
Kathrin Summermatter is heading the Biosafety Center and is the managing director of the BSL3 at the Institute for Infectious Diseases. She has been involved in Biosafety for more than 20 years. From 2002 -2019 she was the head of the biosafety department and the deputy director of the Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI), the Swiss reference lab for highly contagious animal diseases (Biosafety Level 3 and 3Ag Laboratories). In addition, she was the coordinator of BIOSAFETY-Europe. She has been a long-standing member of the European Biosafety Association (EBSA) and the American Biosafety Association (ABSA). In 2003/2004 she was the president of EBSA. She is a member of the International Veterinary Biosafety Workgroup and a board member of the Swiss Biosafety Network (SBNet). She is the chair of the Technical Advisory Biosafety Board (TAG-B) of the WHO and a member of the WHO's Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO). She is also the director of the WHO-Collaborating Center for Biosafety and Biosecurity.Academic Education and Degrees
PhD in Biology