ESPR 2026 Annual Conference
Keynote Speakers
March 13-15, 2026 | Philadelphia, PA
We are thrilled to announce the keynote speakers for the ESPR 2026 Annual Conference, taking place March 13-15, 2026, in Philadelphia, PA. This year’s program will feature inspiring keynote addresses from leaders in the field, bringing together cutting-edge research, innovative practices, and diverse perspectives to shape the future of pediatric research.
Mark your calendars and save the date! You won’t want to miss this exciting event! Conference registration opens December 1, 2025.
Stay tuned for more details on the full program, networking opportunities, and special sessions as we get closer to the meeting.
Saturday, March 14 | Plenary Speaker
Sallie Permar, MD, PhD
Dr. Sallie Permar is the Nancy C. Paduano Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine and Pediatrician-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. She is also Professor of Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences.
As a physician-scientist focusing on the prevention and treatment of neonatal viral infections, Dr. Permar leads a research laboratory investigating immune protection against vertical transmission of neonatal viral pathogens, namely HIV and cytomegalovirus (CMV). She has made important contributions to the development of vaccines for prevention of vertical HIV transmission, defining both innate and adaptive immune responses that are associated with protection against infant HIV acquisition. Moreover, Dr. Permar is leading the development of HIV vaccine strategies in preclinical maternal/infant nonhuman primate models and translation of this work for clinical vaccine trials in infants. Dr. Permar has also defined determinants of congenital and perinatal CMV transmission, developing the first nonhuman primate model of congenital CMV infection and leading human cohort studies that have defined immune correlates of protection necessary to guide vaccine development.
Dr. Permar has a Ph.D. in Microbiology/Immunology from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and completed her clinical training in pediatric infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital in Boston. She has received several prestigious investigator awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE), and the E. Mead Johnson Award from the Society of Pediatric Research. She has been inducted into the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) and the American Association of Advancement of Science. In 2020, she received the Oswald Avery Award for Early Achievement from the Infectious Diseases Society of America and in 2022, Dr. Permar received the Excellence in Science Mid-Career Investigator Award from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). She serves on the board of the National CMV Foundation and is an institutional and national leader in physician-scientist training, serving as the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Development (NICHD) Pediatric Scientist Development Program.
Sunday, March 15 | Plenary Panel
Michael Farias, MD
Dr. Farias earned his MD from Harvard Medical School and MBA from Harvard Business School as part of a combined degree program. He completed his pediatrics and pediatric cardiology training at Boston Children's Hospital, and served as a chief fellow in cardiology and a senior fellow in interventional cardiology. He was on staff at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children in Orlando, Florida for five years before returning to join the catheterization laboratory at Boston Children's, where he currently serves as director of the premature PDA closure program and medical co-director of the pre-procedural unit.
Kathleen Gibbs, MD
Kathleen (Kate) Gibbs, MD is a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in the Division of Neonatology. She graduated from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine followed by Pediatric Residency and Neonatal Perinatal Medicine Fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. She joined the faculty at Mount Sinai upon completion of fellowship in 2007 until her transition to CHOP in 2017. She is currently the Medical Director for the Newborn/Infant Chronic Lung Disease Program which cares for infants with severe bronchopulmonary dysplasia, as well as the Medical Director for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety for the Newborn/Infant Intensive Care Unit at CHOP.
Matthew Laughon, MD, MPH
Matthew M. Laughon, MD, MPH is a Professor, with Tenure, in the Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He receives support from the US government for work in neonatal clinical pharmacology and clinical trials (NICHD R01, MPI Lang, Gonzalez, Laughon; NHLBI R62/R33, MPI Hornik, Laughon; and NICHD Pediatric Trials Network, PI Benjamin, Duke) and as the UNC site PI for the NICHD Neonatal Research Network (MPI: Cotten, Duke; Laughon, UNC; Moore, ECU). He has published >180 peer reviewed articles in neonatal epidemiology, pharmacoepidemiology, and clinical pharmacology, >50% with a trainee as a first author.
Philip Levy, MD
Philip Levy is an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and an attending neonatologist at Boston Children’s Hospital. He has a long-standing clinical and academic focus on cardiovascular care of critically ill neonates. He is the co-director of the Boston Children’s Premature PDA closure team and a liaison between the Heart Center and the Division of Newborn Medicine.