Dr Fooks is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. Dr Fooks is Director of a World Health Organisation Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response Collaborating Centre and is a WOAH Reference Expert for rabies. In 2005, Dr Fooks presented The Arthur Leighton-Young Memorial Prize Lecture and in 2006 was awarded the Camille Geurin prize by the Veterinary Academy of France for his book entitled ‘Historical Perspective of Rabies in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin’. Dr Fooks has co-edited and published additional books on rabies including, ‘Towards the Elimination of Rabies in Eurasia (2008), ‘Rabies: Towards Sustainable Prevention at the Source’ (2012), ‘Rabies’ (2018), ‘Rabies: Scientific Basis of the Disease and Its Management’, 4th Edition (2020) and ‘Rabies: Scientific Basis of the Disease and Its Management’, 5th Edition (2025). In 2021, Dr Fooks was a global recipient of an MSD Rabies Hero Award. More recently, in 2024, Dr Fooks was awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours List. Dr Fooks has published more than 400 scientific reports (h-index = 78) in international journals on a variety of viral pathogens, and his scientific research remains focused on ‘One Health’, particularly emerging and zoonotic RNA viruses.

Richard B. Ford, is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He is a retired Brigadier General from the USAF Reserve, where he was assigned to the Office of the Surgeon General at the Pentagon. Dr. Ford is also a past president of the NAVC Conference and continues his role as a member of the scientific program committee. His clinical interests are in the field of companion animal infectious disease; he is a prolific author and serves on both the AAHA Canine Vaccination Task Force and AAFP Feline Vaccination Advisory Panel. Dr. Ford received his DVM from Ohio State University and completed an internal medicine residency at Michigan State University. He held a previous faculty position at Purdue University.

After working and researching in charity veterinary practice in the UK, Andy began working for Mission Rabies in 2013, initially as a volunteer, vaccinating dogs in Kolkata.

His previous experience using smartphone technology in the epidemiological setting in Zanzibar, Tanzania, transferred to work on rabies and he was tasked to developing a tailor made smartphone app to overcome challenges faced during mass dog vaccination campaigns. The app now has over 300,000 entries and is used in 7 countries. Andy drives the field strategy of Mission Rabies projects, develops surveillance protocols for testing rabid dogs and gathering data on intervention impact. Description of the 'Vaccinate-Assess-Move' methodology used in India was successfully published in December 2015.

He oversees the research activities of the charty and ongoing mobile technology developments. He is currently undertaking a PhD at The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh studying the methods and outcomes of mass dog vaccination and rabies surveillance.

Dr. Ryan Wallace, DVM is a veterinary epidemiologist and expert in rabies prevention and control. As the director of the CDC’s World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Rabies and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) Reference Laboratory for Rabies, Dr. Wallace leads global efforts to reduce the burden of this fatal disease. He has worked closely with state and local health departments to manage complex rabies exposures and enhance public health response systems. His leadership has advanced critical vaccination campaigns and surveillance programs, ensuring Americans are protected from this deadly virus.