Speakers

Dr. David Calfee is a professor of medicine and population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is also a board-certified infectious disease physician and the chief hospital epidemiologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. In this role, Calfee oversees all medical aspects of the facility’s infection prevention and control program, including outbreak investigation and control; development and implementation of infection prevention initiatives; surveillance for healthcare-associated infections; communication with public health authorities on issues associated with communicable diseases and nosocomial outbreaks; educating healthcare personnel on HAI prevention; and communication with hospital leadership regarding HAIs and infection-related patient safety and regulatory issues. Calfee has more than 20 years of experience in healthcare epidemiology, medical education and clinical research. His research focuses on antimicrobial resistance and HAI epidemiology and prevention.

Calfee serves as the editor-in-chief of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. He was a faculty advisor for the New York State Partnership for Patients. He is a fellow of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America and the Infectious Diseases Society of America. In 2019, he received the Physician of the Year Award from New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.

Calfee received his bachelor’s degree in biology and Doctorate of Medicine from West Virginia University. He did his internal medicine residency and an infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Virginia and earned a master’s degree in health evaluation sciences.

Ernest Clement has been a nurse for over 35 years with experience in critical care, inpatient and outpatient oncology, and infection control and prevention. He has worked in the acute care and office settings. Currently, he is the director of the Bureau of Healthcare Associated Infections for NYSDOH. The bureau is responsible for providing infection prevention and control guidance to healthcare facilities in New York state, auditing hospital NHSN reporting for certain reportable infections and addressing antimicrobial resistance and stewardship across the state. He received his BSN from SUNY Utica-Rome and his MSN from the University of Phoenix.

Linda Greene has more than 30 years of infection prevention experience in acute care, long-term care and ambulatory surgery settings. She has served in various leadership roles, most recently as director of infection prevention at Highland Hospital. Greene retired in 2022 and is now an infection prevention consultant for acute and long-term care and provides per diem support at Highland Hospital.

Greene held leadership roles in her local APIC chapter before becoming a member of the APIC board of directors in 2010. She was secretary of the APIC board from 2012-2013 and served as APIC president in 2017. Greene was also president of the board for APIC Consulting Services in 2015 and continues to serve as an advisor and contributor to APIC position papers and implementation guides. She was an APIC representative to the 2020 CDC Decennial Steering Committee and is a frequent presenter at regional, national and international conferences.

Greene serves as faculty for several national HAI reduction projects. She has served on advisory panels on public reporting of HAIs and received several awards in infection prevention, leadership and nursing.

The author of several peer-reviewed publications, Greene is an expert on quality improvement, antimicrobial stewardship and HAIs. She served on the American Journal of Infection Control editorial board from 2015 to 2017. In 2020, APIC awarded her with the prestigious Carole DeMille award which is given annually to an IP with visionary leadership and extraordinary contributions to the profession.

As senior vice president of nursing at Erie County Medical Center, Charlene Ludlow is responsible for nursing operations and high-quality care delivery to diverse populations across multiple service lines including medical-surgical, critical care, emergency, outpatient and behavioral health. Ludlow’s experience includes more than ten years as chief patient safety officer at ECMC, overseeing facility-wide infection prevention and patient safety, and serving as vice president of quality and patient safety at Great Lakes Health. Ludlow is a board member of the New York State APIC Coordinating Council and a member of the New York State Technical Advisory for Infection Prevention.

Past President
New York State APIC Coordinating Council

Rodolfo Simons has been an active member of APIC, Chapter 13, for more than 20 years and held the position of chapter president in 2013. He is the current past president of the New York State APIC Coordinating Council. Since 2019, Simons has been an assistant director at Mount Sinai Hospital. Before joining Mount Sinai Hospital, he worked at Montefiore Medical Center for 10 years and, prior to that, for seven years as an infection control practitioner at Maimonides Medical Center.

Assistant Professor, Medicine
Johns Hopkins University

‌Dr. Geeta Sood is a medical director for the Bureau of Healthcare Associated Infections and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. She also serves as associate hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center and health service researcher at Hopkins Health System.

Sood completed her medical training residency in internal medicine and fellowship training in infectious diseases at Temple University Medical School. She served as an associate program director and student clerkship director in internal medicine at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, before moving to Abington Memorial Hospital where she was the hospital epidemiologist. She was recruited to Johns Hopkins University in 2011 as the hospital epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center where she led several successful process improvement interventions particularly in the burn intensive care unit for which she won the Armstrong Clinical Excellence Award in Patient Safety in 2015.

Sood is a member of the Maryland Healthcare-associated Infections Advisory Board, the Health Service Cost Service Performance Measurement Workgroup, former co-chair for the Patient Safety Committee at the National Quality Forum and chair for the Society for Healthcare Epidemiologists of America Quality Metrics Task force. She has taught at the SHEA fellow’s course from 2015-2018 and was vice-chair and chair for the SHEA/CDC training course from 2019-2021. She serves on the editorial board for the American Journal of Infection Control.

Her research interests include using big data and machine learning algorithms to predict and ultimately mitigate the risk of developing healthcare-associated infections.

Sue Starr is the director of environmental services for Adirondack Health. She started in plant operations then was promoted to leadership in environmental services where she developed a passion for infection control. Starr served as Adirondack Health’s infection preventionist from 2022 through 2023. As part of a comprehensive team, she works to maintain the safety of staff and patients throughout Adirondack Health.

Dr. Heidi Torres received her undergraduate degree in biology and her medical degree from the University of Puerto Rico, where she is from originally. After graduating with honors, she completed a residency in internal medicine at UT Health in San Antonio, Texas before moving to New York to pursue a fellowship in infectious diseases with the Weill Cornell Medicine program. During this fellowship, Torres became interested in infection control and epidemiology. She currently serves as an attending physician of infectious diseases and assistant hospital epidemiologist for the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She is dual board-certified in internal medicine and infectious diseases. Her research interests include infection prevention, epidemiology, emerging diseases and the prevention of communicable diseases after a disaster.

President
New York State APIC Coordinating Council

Michelle Vignari is the director of infection prevention for University of Rochester Medical Center’s Highland Hospital and an independent infection prevention consultant. Currently working in an acute care hospital setting, Vignari also has vast experience in ambulatory and long-term care.

She has more than 27 years of practical clinical and leadership experience and is board certified in infection prevention and epidemiology.

In 2011, Vignari was one of 12 professionals nationally chosen by APIC as a “Hero in Infection Prevention” and, in 2017, was awarded the March of Dimes’ Nurse of the Year Award in infection prevention.

She is an active member of APIC and is currently the past president of her local chapter: Rochester Finger Lakes, Chapter 107. Vignari is president of the New York APIC Coordinating Council and serves on the DOH Technical Advisory Committee, a council of subject matter experts who work with DOH.

Vignari has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals and continues to contribute to the infection prevention and scientific community.

Sheron Wilson has worked in infection prevention for the past 17 years and currently serves as the director of infection prevention at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. She has maintained infection control certification during the past 12 years while pursuing continuing education in infection prevention and control. As director of a robust and progressive infection prevention program, one of her duties is ensuring the implementation and oversight of an educational program that includes standard and transmission-based precautions. These precautions are evidence-based and in alignment with the CDC guidelines for transmission-based precautions.

Wilson earned her Bachelor of Science in nursing from Chamberlain University and her master’s degree in health policy and management from New York Medical College.