RON DAGAN，Short Bio Professor of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva is the Director of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Unit at the Department of Pediatrics, Soroka University, Beer-Sheva, Israel, a position he has held since 1987. Professor Dagan obtained his MD degree in 1974 from the Hadassah Medical School of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. In 1982, he embarked on a 3-year Fellowship in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. A member of several national and international advisory committees and medical and scientific associations, he served as President of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID) from 2004 to 2006 and as President of the World Society for Pediatric Infectious Diseases (WSPID) from 2006 through 2009. Prof. Dagan is currently the chair of the board of the International Symposia on Pneumococcus and Pneumococcal Diseases (ISPPD). Professor Dagan serves on the editorial board of several peer-reviewed journals, including Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Infection, Human Vaccines, Journal of Infectious Diseases and Vaccine. He is a recipient of many grants and awards. During his professional career, he has contributed over 450 original articles, reviews and book chapters, and has presented more than 500 papers at national and international scientific meetings. Professor Dagan has earned international recognition for his research, which has focused largely on the development of new conjugate vaccines, with particular emphasis on pneumococcal conjugate vaccines; the understanding of hepatitis A epidemiology and introduction of hepatitis A vaccines; the epidemiology of diseases that are preventable through vaccination; clinical aspects of vaccination against antibiotic-resistant pneumococci; the pathology of otitis media, role of resistant organisms in otitis media and prediction of bacteriological response to various antibiotics; and the epidemiology and prevention of enteric and invasive infections in young children.