Caroline is recognized as a leader, consultant, and trainer in the healthcare industry. She has a bachelor’s degree in nursing with a solid medical background with more than 30 years of experience in healthcare management and accreditation and 15 years’ experience as international healthcare consultant in EMEA region.

Caroline is a trainer for Infection Control, Surgical safety, and patient safety programs. She held the position of Operating Room Nursing Manager, Director of Homecare Lebanon, and Scientific Affairs and Education Manager in CEEMEA regions. Caroline is the founder and CEO of the Compass Health Consultancy since 2019. She is managing the firm to assist healthcare and medical organisations to reach their goal of excellency via executing tailor-made solutions and education programs.

Caroline is passionate about infection prevention and patient safety. She is regularly engaged as a keynote speaker and moderator at international and national symposia. She is a published author, and her work has been broadly published and quoted in the media. She is a member of many local and international scientific organizations as well as a member of the Worldwide Association of Female Professionals.

Professor Robert Bragg obtained B.Sc. degree with Microbiology and Zoology in December 1981, followed by a B.Sc (Hons) degree in Microbiology obtained December 1982 and an M.Sc. degree in 1989, all from the University of the Witwatersrand. He obtained a PhD from the University of Pretoria in May 1996. He was employed at the Veterinary Research Institute at Onderstepoort from 1990 to 1998, where he worked on disease of fish (bacterial and viral). In 1998, Professor Robert Bragg moved to the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Pretoria where he worked on various poultry diseases, but mostly on infectious coryza and mostly focusing on vaccine development. In 1998, he moved to the Department of Microbiology and Biochemistry of the University of the Free State where he is still currently employed as a full professor. In addition, he has a C-1 rating from the NRF. Current research activities remain on the control of infectious coryza and development of new generation vaccines, disease control through improved biosecurity and understanding resistance of bacteria to antimicrobials such as disinfectants.

He is also studying the link between antibiotic and disinfectant resistance. Professor Robert Bragg is a member of the sub-committee to the Advisory committee of the Genetically modified organisms Act (Act 15 of 1997) since June 2008.

His current teaching responsibilities include

• MCBP 3724: Pathogens and Immunity (3rd year)
• MCBD 6824: (Bacteriology) Bacterial ecology and taxonomy (Hons)
• MCBD 6824: (Virology) Virology ecology and taxonomy (Hons)
• DIM 607: Public Health – Master’s degree in Disaster Management
• DIM608: Biological warfare – Master’s degree in Disaster Management

Professor Robert Braggs' main interest and activity is on the training of post-graduate students. He has published nearly 100 peer reviewed scientific articles.

Number of B.Sc. (Hons) completed = 65; Current = 1
Number of M.Sc. degrees completed = 34; Current = 8
Number of PhD degrees completed = 11; Current = 1 

Currently, a PhD candidate at the University of the Free State focusing on antimicrobial resistance and biosecurity, Samantha started her career in Port Elizabeth at Nelson Mandela University and then completed her BSc Honours degree and Masters degrees at UFS, achieving Consecutive ICA awards for best Honours and then best Masters degree in Microbiology. She has had the privilege to present her research at both local and international conferences including the South African Society of Microbiology conference in 2020, the WVPA conference in Bangkok, Thailand in 2019 and co-authored a keynote speech at AMIC held in The Netherlands in 2019.

To date, Samantha has published several articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals about resistance to disinfectants and served as a supervisor to both Honours and Masters students at UFS. 

Dr Lebea is the Chief Scientific Officer at Tokabio (Pty) Ltd. With over 17 years of highest level of Research and Development coupled with commercialisation in the human and animal health industry, he is one of the premier scientists within the animal health industry in Africa. He has performed research and led research groups in various fields within Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. He is currently the lead scientific investigator and new business development contact at TokaBio (Pty) Ltd.

TokaBio (Pty) Ltd has a One Health approach to infectious disease management, viz; pathogen detection, biosecurity & bio-surveillance, disaster management and early warning systems. The two main groups that facilitate this vision are as follows; The Animal Health Group is focused in developing diagnostics products to facilitate export of livestock. Furthermore, TokaBio (Pty) Ltd offers laboratory routine diagnosis of infectious animal diseases as well as theory and hands-on training for Animal Health.

TokaBio (Pty) Ltd specialises in diagnostics assay and platform development. The company strives to develop novel functionality assays for infectious pathogen detection. The main focus of TokaBio (Pty) Ltd is the commercialisation and validation of a pipeline of point-of-care detection assays and services that have relevance to the developing world, specifically African commercial environment and landscape. The Research and Development team within TokaBio (Pty) Ltd is responsible for pipeline development for future detection protocols. These are technologies including ELISA, isothermal PCR, point-of-care real-time PCR, Next Generation Sequencing & Bioinformatics and general animal vaccine development. The Human Diagnostics Group focuses on offering laboratory diagnostics for human health. Pathology services are included as part of routine molecular diagnostics testing with special interest in Covid-19, HIV viral load, HIV-drug resistance, Influenza, HBV and HCV.