2022 GSA Board

Brett is Secretary of the Asia Pacific Sepsis Alliance and Program Manager for the Australian Sepsis Network. He has extensive emergency and critical care clinical, education, and management experience. He has worked in Nepal, Vanuatu, China, and Croatia to establish cardiac surgical and critical care programs. Concurrently, Brett has held a range of health policy, planning, project management, digital health, and clinical safety advisory roles. A health service planning and management consultancy business followed, leading to project manager roles on a series of national eHealth and electronic medication safety programs.

Abdulelah is Vice President of the GSA, Chair of the Eastern Mediterranean Sepsis Alliance, and founding Director-General of the Saudi Patient Safety Center (former) and MOH Advisor on Patient Safety. He holds the Dual Certified Board (American - Canadian) of Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgery. Abdulelah is a consultant to several national and international quality and safety organizations. He was part of the Expert Panel on the 3rd Global Patient Safety Challenge of the WHO and chaired the Organizing Committee for the 4th Global Ministerial Summit on Patient Safety. Abdulelah has helped introduce Patient Safety as a G20 priority in the 2020 G20 of Saudi Arabia.

Maha is a critical care nurse specialist working as a director of nursing of Ambulatory Care and Hemodialysis at King Abdulaziz Medical City. She is a member of the Scientific Nursing Council, the Clinical Advisory Group for Stroke, and leads several quality improvement projects, e.g., improving sepsis education for nurses. Her research interest includes improving sepsis care and sedation practices in the ICU. Maha has contributed to several publications at distinguished journals and obtained several poster awards.

Antonio is a Professor of Applied Physiology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Emeritus Director of the Intensive Care Medicine Department at Corporacion Sanitaria Universitaria Parc Tauli and Director of the Pathophysiological Translational and Cell Therapy Laboratory, member of the Executive Committee of ESA and GSA Board and of the Advisory Committee of Sepsis of the Government in Catalonia. He is Honorary member of ESICM, received the Educational Award of the ERS and member of Académie Nationale de Médicine.

Ron is Vice President of the GSA and an NHS Consultant in Intensive Care, based in Birmingham, UK. He’s the Founder and Chief Executive of the UK Sepsis Trust. Ron has operationally transformed the delivery of reliable sepsis care in the UK and beyond, through his creation of the Red Flag Sepsis recognition tool and the Sepsis 6 treatment pathway. In 2016, he was awarded the British Empire Medal for services to patients.

Alison is Professor of Medicine at McMaster University and an ICU physician and Director of Medical Education at Hamilton Health Sciences. She is the Scientific Director of Sepsis Canada, a research collaborative of over 200 scientists, knowledge users and patients and family partners. As a clinician scientist she studies sepsis from the bench to the bedside. She is president of the Canadian Sepsis Foundation, a not-for-profit organization for sepsis advocacy and awareness. In 2018, the Global Sepsis Alliance awarded her an individual GSA Award for her sepsis leadership.

Evangelos is Chair of the European Sepsis Alliance and Professor of Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the Medical School of the University of Athens with a subspecialty in the Immunology of Infections. In 2012 and 2013, he served as a guest Professor at the Jena University Hospital in Germany. He has 460 publications in international peer-reviewed journals. His main contributions are the development of clarithromycin as immunotherapy for septic shock and of anakinra for COVID-19 pneumonia in adults. Anakinra was registered by the European Medicines Agency through the phase 2 and phase 3 programs that he designed and directed.

Luis is Chair of the WSD Committee. He is a Mexican doctor from Tampico city, specialized in Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Medicine. He works in two public ICUs in Mexico City; since 2013 he is the leading professor at the Inter-Institutional Symposium of World Sepsis Day that takes place annually in the “Hospital Juárez de México" and collaborates with other institutions as guest professor and promoter of awareness about sepsis. In 2017, his wife and he started "Sepsis México" to disseminate information to health personnel and general population, do research and academic activities on sepsis in their country and across Latin America.

Shevin is an infectious diseases physician and Reader in Sepsis Research at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. He has been conducting research on adult sepsis in resource-constrained settings for over a decade and currently co-directs the African Research Collaboration on Sepsis (ARCS). He also supports activities focused on improving the quality of clinical management for severely ill patients in Uganda through a collaboration between the Ministry of Health and Walimu, an Uganda-based non-government organization he co-founded. He serves as a consultant to the WHO for various working groups to improve the clinical management of sepsis and other severe illnesses in resource-constrained settings.

Tex is President of the GSA and past President of the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies. Professor at UBC & BC Children’s Hospital in Critical Care and Global Child Health, Vancouver, Canada. He also holds the UBC BC Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair in Acute and Critical Care for Global Child Health. In 2020 he received the Drs. Vidyasagar and Nagamani Dharmapuri Award, for Sustained Exemplary and Pioneering Achievements in the Care of Critically Ill and Injured Infants and Children.

Ulrika is a communications specialist. In 2015, she and Adam Linder founded Sepsisfonden in Sweden – a trust that has grown to be a major influencer in Sweden when it comes to spreading sepsis awareness to the public, as well as to decision-makers, and raising money for research. In her capacity as communications director at Sepsisfonden, she has also worked closely with the Swedish National Sepsis Plan committee. Sepsisfonden has, for example, been involved in providing the program with patient material. In 2020, Sepsisfonden received a GSA Award, much due to Ulrika’s efforts in the sepsis awareness work in Sweden.

Dennis is Vice President of the GSA. He survived severe sepsis in 2016, suffering amputation of parts of his foot. He is now an advocate for better preventive sepsis policies throughout the European Union. In his professional life, he is Head of the Brussels Office with Dow. He holds Economics degrees from the College of Europe, Bruges (Belgium), the University of Sussex (UK), and the University of Grenoble (France).

Mitchell is Chief, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University. He is Past-President of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (2009). Mitchell’s current research interests include translational research in sepsis, clinical trial design, and end-of-life care in the ICU. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters.  He is a founding and current member of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) executive committee.

Imrana is Chair of the GSA Fellowship Program and Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Care at MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC) in Houston, Texas. She is primarily involved in direct patient care in the medical and surgical intensive care units. Her main clinical research interest involves sepsis in cancer patients.

Naoyuki is a board member of the Japanese Society of Intensive Care Medicine and a representative of the Japanese Sepsis Alliance (JaSA). He has led emergency medicine and critical care medicine in Hokkaido university and Kyoto university and is currently working as a professor of Emergency & Critical Care Medicine at Nagoya University, Japan. He is a meritorious person who introduced WSD to Japan by holding the first clean hand campaign and WSD in Japan from 2012. He disseminates information on sepsis to healthcare professionals and the public, conducting research and academic activities on sepsis in Asia and the world.

Emmanuel is a Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician, Chair of the Tropical and Infectious Diseases Division and Infection Prevention Committee at Sheikh Shakhbout Medical City (SSMC), Abu Dhabi. He is Chair of the African Sepsis Alliance and investigator for the African Research Collaboration on Sepsis. He previously worked at the Royal Liverpool Hospital as Associate Medical Director for Deterioration and Sepsis and clinical advisor for the National Health Service (NHS) England (sepsis and deterioration).

Halima is a Practice Development Consultant, and the Sepsis Coordinator, SIDOK Sepsis Research Group, a multidisciplinary team from various hospitals in Kano, Nigeria; Development Manager of the Life Support Training Program, Anesthesiology/ICU, AKTH. Her vision is to eradicate preventable deaths due to sepsis in Nigeria and Africa, and quality healthcare in low-resource countries. She participated in the expert content development group and external peer review group that developed the Global Report on the Epidemiology and Burden of Sepsis: Current Evidence, Identifying Gaps, and Future Directions by the World Health Organization.

Daniela is a Pediatric Intensivist in Brazil (University of São Paulo and Hospital Sírio Libanês, São Paulo, Brazil) and the current President of the Latin American Sepsis Institute (LASI). She is Member of the Pediatric Sepsis Definition Task Force (SSCM/ESPNIC/WFPICCS) and Sepsis Committee at the AMIB (Brazilian Intensive Care Medicine Association). Her involvement focuses on improving our understanding of sepsis, especially in children, and the challenges and priorities in low- and middle-income countries.

Ciaran founded END SEPSIS in 2012 with his wife, Orlaith, following the death of their young son, Rory, from undiagnosed sepsis. END SEPSIS has transformed the sepsis landscape in the USA. It was instrumental in the implementation of Rory’s Regulations–mandatory sepsis protocols for hospitals–in New York State which saved 16,000 lives between 2015 and 2019 and in the passage of Rory Staunton’s Law, which requires sepsis and infection education for all healthcare workers. In 2014, Ciaran testified at the first-ever US Senate Hearing on Sepsis. In September 2022, END SEPSIS spearheaded the successful efforts to include sepsis funding and directives in the federal budget for the first time and for the Senate to declare September 13th National Sepsis Day.

Louise is a Senior Clinical Researcher and member of the Emerging Infections group at the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Her work focuses on improving the care of critically ill patients in resource-restricted settings. She is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health at the University of Oxford, Vietnam lead for Critical Care Asia Africa ICU Network, and leads the Guidelines, Policy, and Quality working group of the Asia Pacific Sepsis Alliance.