Peter H. Gilligan, Ph.D, has been Associate Director and now Director of the Clinical Microbiology-Immunology Laboratories at the University of North Carolina Hospitals for the past 30 years. During that time he has been highly engaged in educating health care providers at all levels in clinical aspects of medical microbiology. An ABMM-board certified microbiologist, he received his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Kansas followed by a Medical Microbiology and Public Health Fellowship at the University of North Carolina Hospitals. His research interests are in the laboratory diagnosis of emerging pathogens, particularly in agents of chronic lung infection in cystic fibrosis patients.

Daniel S. Shapiro, M.D., a board-certified infectious diseases specialist, spent 20 years as the director of clinical microbiology laboratories at hospitals in the Boston area (Lahey Clinic; Boston Medical Center and its predecessor institutions Boston City Hospital and Boston University Hospital) prior to becoming Chair of Internal Medicine at the University of Nevada School of Medicine in Reno. A graduate of M.I.T., following his internal medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital he completed fellowships in both infectious diseases and clinical microbiology at the University of North Carolina Hospitals, where he trained in Dr. Gilligan's laboratory. His area of particular interest is zoonotic infections.

Melissa B. Miller, Ph.D., D(ABMM), is an Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. She is Director of the Molecular Microbiology Laboratory and Associate Director of the Microbiology-Immunology Laboratory for UNC Health Care. Dr. Miller received her Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Princeton University and completed the Medical and Public Health Microbiology Fellowship at the UNC Hospitals. Her research focus is in microbial epidemiology and antimicrobial resistance and the development and assessment of molecular diagnostic assays for the detection of pathogens.