Dr. Julie Levy is the Fran Marino Distinguished Professor of Shelter Medicine Education at the University of Florida, where she focuses on the health and welfare of animals in shelters, feline infectious diseases, and humane alternatives for cat population control. She founded Operation Catnip, a nonprofit university-based community cat trap-neuter-return program that has spayed, neutered, and vaccinated more than 70,000 cats in Gainesville since 1998. In 2008, she joined Dr. Cynda Crawford to found Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the College of Veterinary Medicine, an educational and discovery initiative with a global impact on the care of homeless animals. In 2014, she joined Dr. Kate Hurley to launch the Million Cat Challenge, a shelter-based campaign that saved more than 3.5 million cats in shelters across North America. In 2022, she helped launch Maddie’s Million Pet Challenge to create transformative “communities of practice” that deliver access to care through humane, community-centric programming—inside and outside of the shelter—to achieve the right outcome for every pet.

Katrin Hartmann qualified as a veterinarian from the College of Veterinary Medicine of the LMU (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet) Munich in Germany in 1987. She obtained her Dr. med. vet. in Small Animal Internal Medicine in 1990. From 1988 to 1996, she was Scientific Assistant and Clinical Instructor at the Clinic of Small Animal Medicine of the LMU Munich. She obtained her habilitation (German PhD) in Small Animal Internal Medicine in 1995, and from 1996 to 2001 worked as Assistant Professor (Privatdozentin) at the same clinic. She became Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Internal Medicine – Companion Animals in 1999 and holds the German title of Fachtieraerztin (specialised veterinarian) in both Internal Medicine and Clinical Pathology. From 2001 to 2003, she worked as Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the Small Animal Department at the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Georgia Athens in USA. In 2003, she returned to Munich where she still works today as a Full Professor and Chair of the Clinic of Small Animal Medicine at the LMU Munich. In 2009, she additionally was appointed the First Department Head of the newly founded Centre for Clinical Veterinary Medicine at the LMU Munich and since then acts as either Department Head or Vice Department Head in changing turns.

Her main research interests are in small animal clinical infectiology with a focus on feline virus infections (particularly feline infectious peritonitis and feline retrovirus infections), antiviral chemotherapy, leptospirosis, as well as vaccination and herd immunity.

Margaret Hosie is Professor of Comparative Virology at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research. A veterinarian, she completed her Ph.D. studies on feline immunodeficiency virus in 1991 and subsequently she has pursued an academic research and teaching career in Glasgow, collaborating with colleagues in Europe, US, Australia and Japan.  She conducts research in infectious disease pathogenesis, diagnostics and vaccine development, with a focus on feline viruses. In 2002 she was awarded Recognised Specialist Status in Pathology (Microbiology) by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, in recognition of her contributions to these fields.

Her most significant scientific contributions have included the identification of determinants of virulence amongst feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) isolates, the development of methods to confirm FIV and feline leukaemia virus infections in diagnostic samples, the identification of vaccine-induced enhancement of FIV infection and elucidation of the mechanism of protection induced by whole inactivated FIV vaccines. She has also identified immunological correlates of feline retroviral infection, discovered the primary and co-receptor molecules for FIV infection, and more recently identified the first case of human-to-cat transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the UK. Over the years, her research findings have had implications for improving feline welfare as well as having wider, comparative and One Health significance.

Prof Hosie has served as a member of the Editorial Boards of Virus Genes and BMC Veterinary Research and has acted as a guest editor for Viruses Special Issues on companion animal virology.  She is currently a member of the UK Veterinary Vaccinology Network, The International Society for Companion Animal Infectious Diseases and recently completed her second term on the British Veterinary Association Policy Committee. She is the INSPIRE lead for the School of Veterinary Medicine and actively encourages veterinary undergraduates to engage with research activities. She is also a member of the panel that is responsible for updating the AAFP: Feline Retrovirus Management Guidelines. She has been a member of the European Advisory Board for Cat Diseases (ABCD) since 2005 and was elected as President of the newly established Association, ABCD Europe, in 2019.

Dr. Margie Scherk is a private practitioner who founded the Cats Only Veterinary Clinic, in Vancouver, BC in 1986. She graduated from the University of Guelph in 1982 with a DVM from the Ontario Veterinary College. In 1995 she became board certified in the specialty of Feline Practice by the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners (ABVP). One of the things she is most proud of is her pioneering the use of the Transdermal Fentanyl Patch for the alleviation of pain in companion animals. She has collaborated and co-authored several other papers; she has written chapters for Ettinger and Feldman's Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine, numerous chapters in Little’s The Cat, Clinical Medicine and Management as well as chapters in several other texts.

She has served on the Board of the American Association of Feline Practitioners and was 2007 President of the organization. She has the privilege of being on the AAFP Feline Vaccine Recommendations Panel since 1995. She has volunteered also on the ABVP exam committee and the CE committee and has served on the scientific advisory committee for the World Small Animal Veterinary Congress and been the editor of the WSAVA Proceedings for the Vancouver 2001 meeting. As a participant on the North American Veterinary Licensing Exam Committee (NAVLE), she interacts with top teachers and practitioners to create a fair way of assessing the competence of new graduates. She founded the Feline Internal Medicine folder on Veterinary Information Network (VIN), and through many opportunities on the online medium, has grown to love teaching veterinarians, vet students and veterinary care providers both online and around the world. She is the North American editor for the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery.

In "real life", she shares her home with her husband Jim, misses her adult children, loves to cook, garden, and is allowed to serve three cats: Nimitz, Jules and Harvey.