Dr. Elizabeth Ferreira Rangel is a public health investigator who presently leads PAHO/WHO´s National and International reference centre on the control, surveillance, taxonomy and ecology of leishmaniasis´ vectors that is located at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation´s Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  She is an advisor to Brazil´s Ministry of Health and the organizer of the foundation´s Leishmaniasis reference network. Dr Rangel is a member of the Pan American Health Organization´s Leishmaniasis Control Program Expert Committee and a WHO Expert Advisor on Parasitic Diseases (Leishmaniasis).

Professor Jeffrey Jon Shaw has worked on leishmaniasis in Brazil since 1965, initially in the Amazon region, where he was based at the Instituto Evandro Chagas, Belém, Brazil. In 1994 he left Belém to take up a tenured professorship in São Paulo University´s Parasitology Department located in its Biomedical Sciences Institute.  He retired in 2008 but continues there as a Senior Professor.  He has been a member of three WHO Leishmaniasis Expert Committees, is a WHO expert advisor on Parasitic Diseases (Leishmaniasis) and an advisor to national and international research and funding agencies. Prof. Shaw is a fellow of the Brazilian Academy of Science, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and founder and director of the International Leishmaniasis discussion group (Leish-L).