Dr.P.Mastrantonio has served till 2015 as research director in the Department of Infectious, Parasitic and Immune-mediated Diseases of the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS). She completed her studies in Biological Sciences at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy. She has been worked in the field of clinical bacteriology at ISS where she was appointed Director of the Laboratory of Gastroenteric and Neurologic Bacterial Diseases. In particular, she has been involved in international study groups on Clostridium difficile contributing to European surveillance studies to monitor the epidemiology of C.difficile infection. She was Executive Committee member of the ESCMID Study Group on C. difficile (ESGCD) and was appointed by the Italian Ministry of Health as National Microbiological Focal Point at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm.   Dr. M. Rupnik is professor of Microbiology at Medical faculty, University of Maribor, and Head of Department for Microbiological Research at National laboratory for health, environment and food (NLZOH) in Maribor, Slovenia. She completed University studies and PhD at Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana. Her research is focused on molecular epidemiology of C. difficile and lately also on gut microbiota and NGS applications in clinical microbiology. She is von Humboldt fellow, has obtained ECCMID award for Advances in Clinical Microbiology and Slovenian national award for exceptional scientific achievements. She was a member of ESGCD Executive board and is serving as President of series of ICDS meetings (International C. difficile Symposium).