Presenters

Esther Oiknine-Djian | Author

estherd@hadassah.org.il;
Esther Oiknine-Djian, PhD is the supervisor of the Clinical Virology diagnostic laboratory at Hadassah Medical Center. She has facilitated the clinical implementation of the pooling strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequently for universal newborn screening of congenital CMV. In her PhD studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the European Marie Curie programme, she investigated a novel antiviral compound against human CMV, using cell- and unique organ culture systems.

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Noa Ofek Shlomai | Author

noaofek@hadassah.org.il;
Noa Ofek Shlomai, MD is the head of the Department of Neonatology at Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital campus of Hadassah Medical Center. Her research focuses on feeding and growth in preterm infants, as well as the preterm infant’s microbiome, in relation to short term and growth outcomes. She is actively involved in the diagnosis and research of congenital CMV infection outcomes.

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Tal Sido | Author

talsido@hotmail.com;
Tal Sido completed her undergraduate studies in Mathematics and is currently an MD student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She works at the Hadassah Medical Center Clinical Virology laboratory, contributing to congenital CMV research at the intersection of data analysis and clinical precision.

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Oren Gordon | Author

orengo@hadassah.org.il;
Oren Gordon, MD, PhD is a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Hadassah Medical Center and principal investigator of the Bone Infection Research Laboratory at the Goldyne Savad Institute of Gene Therapy. He is actively involved in the treatment and monitoring of congenital CMV. He studies pathogen resistance and persistence at the site of infection by developing novel microbiological and molecular assays as well as utilizing state-of-the-art imaging modalities, in both animal models of infection and in human patients. As a practicing Pediatric Infectious Diseases specialist, he aims to translate findings from bench to clinical practice to benefit patients.

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Colin Kunzweiler | POC-Point of Contact, Author

colin.kunzweiler@modernatx.com;
Colin Kunzweiler, PhD is a Director and Epidemiologist for Moderna’s mRNA-1647 CMV vaccine candidate. Colin supports several epidemiology efforts within Moderna’s CMV development program including long-term outcome studies, natural history studies, real-world feasibility assessments, administrative claims analyses, mathematical modeling, and literature reviews. He received his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Illinois-Chicago School of Public Health.

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Adva Gadoth | Author

adva.gadoth@modernatx.com;
Adva Gadoth, PhD is an Associate Director and Epidemiologist for Moderna’s early stage and latent virus vaccines, including cytomegalovirus (CMV), herpes simplex virus (HSV), and mpox clinical development programs. Adva also supports epidemiologic evidence generation and non-interventional study implementation for Moderna’s global public health efforts, building off years of experience conducting complex cohort and disease surveillance studies in low- and middle-income countries. She received her PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

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Laura Hendrix | Author

Laura.Hendrix@modernatx.com;
Laura Hendrix is a Senior Manager in the Real-World Analytics team at Moderna, providing biostatistical and epidemiological expertise to support the latent virus program and other therapeutic areas. With an MS in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, she brings 15 years of experience across academic and industry settings, specializing in evidence generation to inform clinical development and regulatory strategies.

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John Diaz-Decaro | Author

John.Diaz-Decaro@modernatx.com;
John Diaz-Decaro is a Senior Director and Lead Epidemiologist at Moderna, where he leads epidemiologic strategy for the development of vaccines targeting Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and other latent viruses. His work supports clinical development for Moderna’s EBV and CMV vaccine programs. Dr. Diaz-Decaro plays a key role in advancing non-interventional studies to assess disease burden, including EBV-associated conditions such as infectious mononucleosis, multiple sclerosis and post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder. He also contributes to Moderna’s CMV epidemiology research portfolio supporting work on studies focused on investigating infant outcomes associated with congenital CMV, as well as CMV transmission dynamics in daycare settings.

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Yosefa Hefter | Author

YosefaH@medisonpharma.com;
Yosefa Hefter, MD is a medical affairs manager at Medison Pharma, focusing on vaccines. Yosefa is a pediatric infectious diseases physician. She received her MD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and completed post-graduate training at New York Medical College and Children’s National Hospital. Prior to joining Medison in 2021, she served as a clinical reviewer in the Office of Vaccines Research and Review at the US Food and Drug Administration.

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Moran Yassour | Author

Moranya@mail.huji.ac.il;
Moran Yassour, PhD is an Associate Professor and Principal Investigator at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, jointly appointed at the Faculty of Medicine and the School of Computer Science and Engineering. As an expert in data science, she has analyzed large-scale data derived from pooled universal screening of congenital CMV. Dr. Yassour earned her Ph.D. in Computational Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and completed her postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard Medical School. In her lab, she combines computational analyses with experimental approaches to study host-microbiome interactions, aiming to uncover mechanisms that shape the microbiome in infancy and its long-term health implications. Dr. Yassour is a recipient of the Azrieli Faculty Fellowship and other honors recognizing her contributions to microbiology research and computational biology.

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Smadar Eventov Friedman | Author

smadaref@hadassah.org.il;
Smadar Eventov Friedman, MD, PhD is the head of the Division of Neonatology at Hadassah Medical Center and a Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her current main research focuses on congenital CMV, including universal screening, advanced laboratory diagnostic techniques, biomarkers and demographic characteristics of maternal infection. Together with Prof. Wolf she has implemented universal congenital CMV screening at the two hospital campuses of Hadassah Medical Center.

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Dana Wolf | Primary Presenter, Author

danaw@ekmd.huji.ac.il;
Dana Wolf, MD is the Director of Clinical Virology at Hadassah Medical Center and a Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She leads research projects focusing on human CMV transmission and correlates of protection. She has discovered new prognostic prenatal biomarkers which predict the severity of congenital CMV infection in the fetus and the newborn. She has developed and implemented, in collaboration with the Division of Neonatology, a new saliva-pooling setup for universal newborn screening of congenital CMV. She is currently characterizing neonatal and maternal infection parameters. She is a member of national and international advisory committees, including the Israeli Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and Epidemic Preparedness Team, and the European Society for Virology Executive Board.