Maka Danelia is MD, PhD, Manager of Global Fund Tuberculosis Project at National Center for Disease Control and Public Health Georgia.

Maka Danelia has a dual background. She earned her MD and PhD from Tbilisi State Medical University and MSc in Health Systems Management from the University of Liverpool. Her career expands over several healthcare areas, including public and non-governmental sectors. Dr. Danelia worked her way up from the position of attending physician at a city hospital and currently works as the Global Fund Tuberculosis Program Manager at the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health, Georgia. She has extensive experience participating in multilateral efforts related to communicable and non-communicable diseases, engaging primary healthcare providers and was personally involved in the development of an innovative integrated screening model for Tuberculosis, HIV and Hepatitis C in Georgia.

David Otiashvili, MD, PhD is Director of the Addiction Research Centre at Alternative Georgia and Associate Professor of Healthcare at the School of Natural Sciences and Medicine at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia.

David graduated from Tbilisi State Medical University in 1992 and received the training and qualifications to become a Psychiatrist. He spent ten years in clinical work treating patients with substance use disorders. Between 2003-2004 he conducted substance abuse research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA as a NIDA Hubert Humphrey Fellow. In 2014, he received a PhD in Health Psychology from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. For the last decade his major focus has been on research and education programs in the fields of substance use and HIV.

He served as a PI and Co-I for a number of international collaborative research projects, including RCTs and epidemiological studies. He has been actively involved in establishing a national drug monitoring mechanism in Georgia and serves as an expert for quality assurance on drug related data collection. 

Professor Sergii Dvoriak, M.D., Ph.D. has over 45 years of experience with Addiction Medicine and Psychiatry. After completing post-graduate training in Addiction Medicine and HIV prevention at the School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, he worked with UNDP-Ukraine as an expert in public health where with colleagues created the first opioid substitution treatment (OST) program in the country. Later established the Ukrainian Institute on Public Health Policy (UIPHP) with colleagues, where currently serves as the Senior Scientist.

In collaboration with several leading US investigators, he conducted several research projects funded by NIDA/NIH in Ukraine as well as in other countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The projects included community epidemiology, OST, integrated care for PWID, harm reduction and community outreach interventions, and implementation science in public health and within the criminal justice system. He also worked as a UNODC consultant in Central Asia for the last 10 years and have prepared a 5-year plan for the development of MAT in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Over the past 12 years, he worked with the Yale research team and with Alliance for Public Health of Ukraine to develop new models of OST delivery and integrated care for PWIDs in Ukraine. Also successfully worked in several countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including bio-behavioural studies in Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan and setting up methadone programs in Kyrgyzstan and Moldova. He also is the Professor of the Department of Social Relations and Social Work at the Academy of Labor, Social Relations and Tourism and the Executive Director of the Eurasian Professional association of Addiction Medicine.