Meet the SPEAKERS

Shellie A. Boudreau is an Associate Professor at the Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP), SMI, Department of Health Science and Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark and has been a member of the research faculty since 2005. Shellie received her BSc and MSc. Engineering from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Her research interests are in the areas of musculoskeletal and neuropathic pain with a focus capturing the benefits from digital mapping and image/map database systems. She designs and develops electronic patient reported outcome (ePRO) software technology to support big data studies for clarifying driving mechanisms of pain. Through this, she is pioneering and assessing novel metrics and approaches to identify and quantify patterns of bodily-pain and other related symptoms across a number of musculoskeletal and neuropathological diseases and syndromes. Therefore, she is translating basic research into tools for clinical and industry applications. Shellie has a number of peer-reviewed scientific publications within musculoskeletal pain, cortical neuroplasticity, and eHealth, has been honored for teaching excellence, and is one of the first recipients of a Talent Management Grant from Aalborg University, Denmark. One of her research paths investigates the influence of pain and attention on cortical neuroplasticity and movement behavior. Currently, she supports and supervises multiple PhD projects and post-docs on projects on the effects of pain and maladaptive neuroplasticity. Her goal for this symposium is to inspire and connect researchers, clinicians, and industry on a common path for a more dynamic and realistic assessment of the pain experience.

Wilco Achterberg (1963) is an elderly care physician and a professor of institutional care and elderly care medicine in Leiden, the Netherlands, since October 2010. His research focus is on the most vulnerable persons, most of whom live in nursing homes, and is centred around three themes: pain and quality of life in dementia, palliative care in dementia and geriatric rehabilitation. He is the chair of a large academic nursing home network, and responsible for the training of 70 residents in elderly care medicine. Wilco was vice-chair of the EU COST action Pain in Cognitive impairment. Next to numerous international scientific publications, he has given lectures at many international congresses and chaired symposia nationally and internationally. Next to that he has been an invited lecturer amongst others in London 2015 on palliative care in dementia, Beijing 2016 on geriatric rehabilitation, Sao Paolo 2017 on ageing, London 2018 (BGS): Geriatric Training of physicians and he is invited to speak in Sydney (Dutch Consulate, November 21st 2018) on societal challenges of ageing.

Dr Al-Kaisy is currently Clinical Lead of the Pain Management and Neuromodulation Centre at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS trust. He trained in Chronic Pain Medicine at The Walton Centre for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Liverpool. He has a fellowship in Chronic Pain Management at the University of Toronto Hospital, Canada.

Dr Al-Kaisy has an international reputation as a leading expert in Pain Management and has extensive experience in working toward the advancement of electrical neuromodulation techniques within this speciality.

Dr Al-Kaisy led the first multicenter and multinational study on the safety and efficacy of 10kHz SCS in the management of Failed Back Surgery Syndrome (FBSS). He has subsequently clinically pioneered the use of this novel therapy in the management of different chronic pain conditions including the feasibility study on chronic back patients without prior surgery. He has successfully designed groundbreaking research including a randomized double-blind placebo control study examining different frequency in the management of FBSS. He is the innovator of a number techniques including transgrade dorsal root ganglion stimulation using monopolar electrical stimulation.

Dr Al-Kaisy continues to teach and lecture on essential and pioneering topics in pain management in the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia. He is the chair of the biannual London Spine Pain Symposium at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital.

Praveen Anand is Professor of Clinical Neurology and Head, Centre for Clinical Translation, at Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College London.

Professor Praveen Anand’s medical education was at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and post-graduate training was at the Hammersmith Hospital and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London.

His research focuses on pathophysiological and molecular mechanisms in the human sensory neuropathies and chronic pain syndromes. Collaborations with pharmaceutical companies and clinical colleagues are directed to projects which bridge the gap between pre-clinical developments and their successful clinical applications. The translational approach has guided the recent success of 3 novel drugs from the laboratory to Phase II trials for chronic neuropathic pain, and one for chronic itch. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles in journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, Science and The Lancet.

Pr Nadine ATTAL is Professor of therapeutics and pain in University Versailles Saint Quentin (UVSQ, France) and responsible for the Center of Evaluation and Treatment of Pain in Ambroise Paré Hospital (Boulogne-Billancourt, FRANCE). She is also a member of the INSERM U 987 Research Unit on Pain (Ambroise Paré hospital, directed by Didier Bouhassira). Her research activity has focused on chronic pain particularly neuropathic pain and pain management. Pr Attal has coordinated several international recommendations on neuropathic pain, has published 136 peer review papers in high impact factors journals such as Lancet Neurol, Annals Neurol, Neurology, Brain, Pain and has an H index of 50. She is a Council member of the International Association for the Study of Pain and of the the French Society of Pain, member of the scientific committee of the European Academy of neurology (EAN) and head of the panel « pain » of the EAN. She has received award from Fondation de France, price of biology from the Science Academy (« Académie des Sciences ») in 2017 and was appointed knight (« Chevalier de la légion d’honneur ») in october 2016.

Caterina Aurilio is full professor in Anaesthesia, Analgesia and Intensive Care at University of Campania "L. Vanvitelli". She is chief Director of Unit of Anaesthesia, Intensive Care and Pain Medicine of University of Campania "L. Vanvitelli". Director of the post-graduated School in Anaesthesia, Analgesia and Intensive Care of University of Campania "L. Vanvitelli". ESA Subcomitte Member of Pain and Palliative Care commission. Author of several international papers with spacial interest in Pain Medicine.

Emmanuel Bäckryd, MD PhD, is Associate Professor of Pain Medicine & Head Physician of the Pain and Rehabilitation Center, Linköping University Hospital, Linköping, Sweden. As a clinician specialized both in Anesthesiology & Intensive Care and in Pain Medicine, he has a special interest in the treatment of cancer pain and neuropathic pain, and in the question of how best to use opioids in everyday practice. Acknowledging the “translational gap” between animal models and chronic human pain conditions, his research has notably been about the quest for human biomarkers that could potentially mirror the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in chronic pain conditions. For instance, when comparing the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of chronic pain patients with healthy controls, a number of chemokines have been found to be upregulated in patients, perhaps indicating a state of neuroinflammation. Likewise, in the context of recent interest in the renin-angiotensin system as an analgesic target, Bäckryd has shown that an isoform of angiotensinogen was upregulated in CSF from neuropathic pain patients. Such studies could perhaps be seen as forerunners of a more “personalized” pain medicine that takes not only psychometric or psychophysical but also biological data into account. Bäckryd also has a theological degree and a deep interest in medical humanities and the philosophy of pain.

Kirsty Bannister graduated from UCL in 2003 with a BSc in Pharmacology (first class honours) before completing a Master of Research and subsequent PhD in Epigenetics at Imperial College London. In 2008 Kirsty began a post-doctoral placement back at UCL in the Neuropharmacology of Pain laboratory, investigating neural and pharmacological systems that sub-serve pain transmission and modulation in the spinal cord and brain. Kirsty joined King’s College London in the autumn of 2017 on a permanent basis as a Lecturer in Neuropharmacology, and Principal Investigator. Her interests remain investigating descending mechanisms of pain control in both normal and pathological conditions, and how to translate basic science to the patient. Kirsty has authored 24 refereed publications and has led multiple symposia at international meetings including the World Congress on Pain, European Pain Federation EFIC, Pain Mechanisms and Therapeutics, and The Physiological Society. In 2017 Kirsty won the EFIC IBSA publication award for her original research article ‘An investigation into the inhibitory function of serotonin in DNIC’.

Professor Dr med Ralf Baron is Head of the Division of Neurological Pain Research and Therapy at the Department of Neurology, Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet Kiel, in Germany. From 1999-2004, he served as General Secretary of the German Interdisciplinary Pain Society (DIVS), from 2005-2016 he served as a Management Committee Member of the Neuropathic Pain Special Interest Group (NeuPSIG) of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and from 2008-2010 as a board member of the Deutsche Schmerzgesellschaft. He has been a Councilor of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) from 2010-2016.

His main research interest is the pathophysiology and therapy of neuropathic pain states. He has intensive scientific collaborations with several researchers worldwide, e.g., Professor HL Fields, San Francisco, USA, and Professor TS Jensen, Aarhus, Denmark.

Professor Baron is associate editor and reviewer for many scientific journals (Advisory Board Member for Nature Reviews Neurology, Associate Editor for the European Journal of Pain). He has been the recipient of the German Pain Award, the Heinrich-Pette-Award of the German Neurological Society and the Sertürner-Award. In 1998 he was awarded a Feodor Lynen fellowship by the German Humboldt Foundation and was visiting professor at the Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco.

Professor Baron has authored more than 320 publications with his outstanding and motivated research team, and has lectured at numerous conferences and symposia worldwide.

Dr Serena Bartys is a Chartered Psychologist and Principal Research Fellow in Work & Health. Her research interests are focused on the biopsychosocial nature of the work-health relationship, and improving communication and knowledge exchange in order facilitate the implementation of evidence-based solutions and reduce the evidence-policy-practice gap in the field.  Dr Bartys recently completed a Policy Fellowship in the UK government’s Joint Work & Health Unit, providing her academic expertise to ministerial level policymaking. She was also appointed as a Specialist Advisor on Return-to-Work for the 2016 NICE guidelines on low back pain.

Susanne Becker is the head of the research group “Psychobiology of Pain” at the Department for Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience at the Central Institute of Mental Health (Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University) in Mannheim, Germany. She has a background in psychology and cognitive neurosciences. Susanne earned her PhD at the University of Mannheim, Germany, after which she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain, McGill University, Montreal, Canada. In 2018 she earned her habilitation at the Medical Faculty of the Heidelberg University. She investigates the psychobiological mechanisms underlying the interaction of pain and reward as two fundamental motivators that determine our perception and behavior. Goals of her work are to characterize neuroanatomical and neurochemical mechanisms of the perceptual effects of reward on pain and to identify pathogenetic relevant alterations of theses processes in chronic pain. Susanne applies a multimodal approach incorporating psychophysical and neuropsychological methods as well as neuroimaging and pharmacological interventions.

I am a Professor in Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Doctor Habilitatus in Medical Sciences and Master in Public Health. Affiliation: State University of Medicine and Pharmacy „Nicolae Testemitanu” from Republic of Moldova.

Studies made in Moldova (Faculty of Medecine, Residency in Anesthesiology and Intensive Care), Romania (6 Mo clinical stage) and France (Universite d’Angers) – 4 x 6 Mo. In France, I get AFSA Certificate (Attestation de Formation Specialisee Approfondie in Anesthesie et Reanimation Chirurgicale) and I made PhD thesis (Multimodal management of perioperative pain) and Doctor habilitatus thesis (Enhanced recovery after surgery: structures, processes and results).

I’m the Chairperson of the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care (18 OR and 54 ICU beds), Institute of Emergency Medicine.

The Founder and President of Moldovan Society for the Study and Management of Pain, and the

President of Moldovan Society of Anesthesiology and Reanimathology.

Area of scientific interests: Transition from acute to persistent postoperative pain (risk factors, mechanisms), neurocognitive postoperatve dysfunction, Opioid Free Anesthesia.

Spoken languages: Romanian, Russian, French, English.

Main publications: Management of Perioperative Pain (Textbook, 2012; Edithor and author; the book was written in international cooperation – 37 authors, 4 countries).

Lars Bendtsen, MD, PhD, Dr.Med.Sci. is Associate Professor at the Department of Neurology and Danish Headache Center, Rigshospitalet Glostrup, University of Copenhagen. He is co-director of The Danish Headache Centre. Dr. Bendtsen has actively been involved in headache research since 1991 and has authored more than 130 original and review articles in international peer-reviewed journals.
The scientific focus for Dr. Bendtsen for the last 5 years has been to investigate pathophysiological mechanisms behind and to optimize the clinical management of trigeminal neuralgia and medication overuse headache and to optimize the clinical management of migraine. In 2012 he established a trigeminal neuralgia research group at the Danish Headache Center. The group began a prospective collection of data from all trigeminal neuralgia patients. The data collection has led to the largest TN database in the world. In a collaboration with neurologists, neuroradiologists and neurosurgeons his group has implemented a standardized cross-specialty management program for trigeminal neuralgia patients at the Danish Headache Center. The program ensures a high-quality work up to be able to make a correct diagnosis and provides continuous evaluation of the need for adjustments in pharmacological management or need for surgery. The program has resulted in a high number of scientific papers published in high ranking journals. Medication overuse headache has been a focus of high priority at the Danish Headache Center for decades. The research has improved the understanding and clinical management of this common and highly disabling disorder considerably. Finally, Dr. Bendtsen is highly involved in the clinical management of migraine. Recently, Dr. Bendtsen has been first author on the European Headache Federation guideline on the use of onabotulinumtoxinA in chronic migraine and co-author on the European Headache Federation guideline on the use of calcitonin gene related peptide antibodies for the prevention of migraine.
Finally, Dr. Bendtsen is chairman for the forthcoming European Academy of Neurology guideline on trigeminal neuralgia, for the Danish guidelines concerning treatment of headache and facial pain and first author on the European Federation of Neurological Societies guideline for treatment of tension-type headache.

Position: MD, ph.d, Head of section of Clinical Neurophysiology, Department of Neurology – Oslo University Hospital
Kristian Bernhard Nilsen is Senior Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist. His research is focused on pain mechanisms. He is currently involved in projects focusing on how sleep disturbances affect pain mechanisms, mechanisms for neuropathic pain, and studies of the reliability of human pain “surrogate” models. He has published about 50 peer-reviewed papers. In his clinical work he is involved in the clinical investigation of patients with various neurological diseases, including all kinds of painful neuropathies.

Born in 1972 in Geneva, Switzerland, Marie Besson completed her medical training and specialization in Internal Medicine and in Clinical Pharmacology in Geneva University Hospitals. She then completed her postgraduate training in pain research and in psychopharmacology at Bristol University, UK.

Marie Besson is now the Head of the Psychopharmacology Unit, of Geneva University Hospitals.  She also works as a senior consultant at the Multidisciplinary Pain Center of Geneva University Hospitals. Her main areas of clinical expertise are the treatment of chronic neuropathic pain and therapeutic counselling in psychiatry with an emphasis on personalized prescription.

Her main research interests are translational approaches in the study of pain and in particular the role of the GABAergic pathway in pain transmission.  She is also involved in projects aiming at rationalizing prescription in adults with intellectual disability and analgesic prescription in particular.

Marie Besson is largely involved in teaching clinical pharmacology and psychopharmacology in medical students in University of Geneva as well as in post graduate training.

She is also active in the Swiss Society for the Study of Pain, being now the vice-chair of the executive committee. She is in charge of the 80 hours post graduate multidisciplinary pain course, run by the Swiss Society for the Study of Pain.

Neil’s onset of arthritis at the age of three had a serious impact on his childhood. He focused most of his career on representing the interests of patients in the UK and Europe. In 2011 he set up Neil Betteridge Associates (UK), an international consultancy offering patient insight to organisations that support people with chronic pain, rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases and other long term conditions.

He is a long standing member of the EULAR Executive Committee, acting as EULAR's Liaison Officer for Public Affairs, and has previously been its Vice President, representing the patient group network PARE, twice.

Neil has been both a moderator and presenter at Societal Impact of Pain (SIP) meetings. He also sits on the International Co-ordinating Council of the Global Alliance for Musculoskeletal Health; acts as adviser to the European Alliance for Patient Access (EAfPA); Co-Chairs the Chronic Pain Policy Coalition; and is a Patient Adviser to NHS England on Specialised Pain Services. Formerly he was CEO of the UK patient group Arthritis Care; Chair of the UK umbrella body for MSK, ARMA; Strategic Adviser, British Society for Rheumatology; Patient Adviser, Royal College of Physicians; and has been a UK ministerial adviser on both health and disability issues.

Dr Didier Bouhassira (MD, PhD) has been trained in neurology and neurophysiology in Paris. He has been involved in both basic and clinical research on pain and is currently Director of Research at the National Institut for Health and Medical Research (Inserm). He is associate attending neurologist in the Pain Clinic at Ambroise Paré hospital in Boulogne-Billancourt and director of the laboratory of “Pathophysiology and Clinical Pharmacology of Pain” (Inserm U-987).

Didier Bouhassira was president of the French Pain Society (2013-2016) and is an active member of several international associations or societies. He is field editor for the European Journal of Pain and associate editor for several scientific journals including Pain. He has co-authored over 190 articles in peer reviewed journals and has written a number of book chapters devoted to the pharmacology and pathophysiology of pain.

Specialist in Pain Medicine and specialist in Anesthesia. Grandparent of European Diploma in Pain Medicine
Director of Institute of Pain Medicine, at Tel Aviv Medical Center
Past- President of Israel Pain association and Councilor for Israel at European Pain Federation.
Member of the Board of EDPM.
Research interests: Cannabinoids for pain management, Invasive procedure for pain, Psychological aspects of chronic pain patient.

Dr. Adem Bytyqi, MD, specialist of anesthesiology & ICU, and EDPM certified from EFIC. He is president of Professional Health Association (PHA) in Kosovo which is engaged in the organization of conferences, workshops, courses, training of health professionals in diagnosing and managing pain. He is EFIC Councilour, representing Kosovo. He has organized 7 International Pain Treatment Conferences with lecturers from different countries. For the past 10 years he has been intensively taken with the improvement pain management in the country, at all levels including government, ministry, terciary, secondary and primary healthcare, for activities like: initiating the creation of protocols and guidelines for pain management, the introduction of pain management subject in the faculty medicine, countinuing education about pain management for all health professionals through conferences, courses, workshops etc., introduction of pain assessment according to scaling in the health information system etc. He has done many clinical research at national level, and he was leader of Pain Out Research Project about postoperative pain management at two biggest hospital in Prishtina and Prizren.

Dr Paul Cameron is Specialty Advisor for Pain to the Chief Medical Officer in Scotland, past National Lead Clinician, National Coordinator, and a member of the National Advisory Committee for Chronic Pain to the Scottish Government.  He is the Head of Service and Clinical Lead for the NHS Fife Pain Service, and Chair of the NHS Fife Pain Research Network.  He also holds an Honorary Senior Lecturer position with the Division of Population Science and Genomics at the University of Dundee.  Dr Cameron is actively involved in research as chief and principal investigator, policy and strategy at national government, and international levels, and,  along with several peer reviewed journal applications, has co-authored several internationally recognised guidelines including; SIGN 136 ‘Management of Chronic Pain in Primary Care’, U.K.’s Royal College of Anaesthetist’s Faculty of Medicine Guideline ‘Core Standards for Pain Management Services in the U.K.’, and Scottish Government’s ‘Guideline on the Management of Pain in Children and Young People’ and ‘Quality Prescribing Strategy for Chronic Pain’.  Dr Cameron is a former Council Member of the British Pain Society, and on the Editorial Board of peer-reviewed journals ‘Pain and Rehabilitation’ and the ‘British Journal of Pain’. 

Skilled in Government and Health Board level international, national, and regional engagement in healthcare structure and policy, with a special interest in global public healthcare infrastructure and development in low-middle income countries, Dr Cameron is engaged in developing Quality Performance Indicators for the treatment of Chronic Pain, for Scotland.  These indicators have the  potential for international use to drive improvements in patient care.  Dr Cameron is also part of the National group in Scotland developing the National Core Minimum Dataset to advance knowledge and understanding of the extent, and impact, of pain in populations.  Dr Cameron has presented internationally on pain management research and policy, and looks to encourage improvements in all aspects of pain provision for the care of people living with pain. 

Dr Cameron is delighted to present to attendees of the EFIC 2019 conference, along with other speakers interested in improving the national approach to the treatment of pain.

Dr. Adina Rusu (1977) is Assistant Professor at the Department of Medical Psychology and Medical Psychology, University of Bochum, Germany and associate fellow at the Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, U.K. Dr. Rusu is a clinical psychologist, trained in cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy. In 2009 she obtained her PhD degree in Psychology at the University of London (Thesis: ‘Cognitive biases and future thinking in chronic pain’). She is a Psychology graduate of the University of Bochum, Germany (equivalent B.A. and M.A.). Afterwards she earned a postgraduate degree in Cognitive-Behavioural Psychotherapy and gained experience as a clinical psychologist in a pain management unit and psychiatric hospitals. She has worked as a psychotherapist with elderly people, children and adolescents in different settings. As an assistant professor, she has been involved in teaching health psychology, clinical psychology and stress management.
Her research program focuses on cognitive biases and future thinking in chronic pain and depression. In particular she is interested in investigating negative affectivity and distress in patients with chronic pain. In her past research she has revealed qualitative differences among patients with clinical depression and depressed pain patients. Finding further evidence for these differences may improve our understanding of the underlying cognitive and behavioural processes of adjustment and may lead to the development of new treatment options for depressed pain patients. Her major research interests include: 1) neuro-cognitive mechanisms and changes in musculoskeletal disorders, 2) risk factors and mechanisms in the development of pain, and 3) treatment and measurement in depressed pain patients. Dr. Rusu is a member of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) (www.iasp-pain.org), the Musculoskeletal Process of Care Collaboration Group (MPCC) (www.ihse.qmul.ac.uk/chs/research/gppc/locomotor/index.html) and the West Focus Knowledge Exchange – Health Network.

Jordi Casanova-Molla, MD, PhD is an associate professor at the Department of Medicine of the University of Barcelona. He received his degree in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Valencia. After specializing in neurology at the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona and a postgraduate course in electromyography at the University of Barcelona, Jordi obtained his PhD at the University of Barcelona. The topic of his dissertation was Assessment of small fiber neuropathy by nociceptive evoked potentials and skin biopsy.

Jordi is also a researcher at the Institut d’Investigació Biomédica Agusti Pi Sunyer (IDIBAPS). His research fields are diagnosis and pathophysiology of peripheral neuropathies, study of neuropathic pain, neurophysiolgical recordings (specially focused on electromyography, quantitative sensory testing and nociceptive evoked potentials applied to small fiber neuropathies) and skin innervation.

Vicky Chapman was appointed to Chair in Neuropharmacology in 2008 in the School of Life Sciences, University of Nottingham.  She leads a research group focused on the mechanisms of pain and central sensitization.  Experimental approaches include behavioural testing, spinal and supraspinal electrophysiology, ex vivo analysis of tissues, and in collaboration small animal fMRI and lipidomic mass spectrometry methods for the study of pain mechanisms in a range of models.  She is Deputy Director of the Arthritis Research UK Pain Centre, with a current focus on peripheral and central mechanisms of osteoarthritis pain.  She has published over a 100 peer reviewed articles (orcid.org/0000-0002-7969-2788).

I have a broad background in neuro-urology field,  specially studying the pathophysiological mechanisms of a chronic visceral pain associated with Bladder Pain Syndrome/Interstitial Cystitis (BPS/IC), in two research units: Department of biomedicine from FMUP, and Translational Neurourology group from IBMC, University of Porto. I have participated in many projects in the neuro-urology field. Recently, I have successfully administered (responsible investigator) and was a PI in two pilot projects in BPS/IC field. From these project, my main achievements, at basic science level, were to demonstrate that sympathetic nervous system overactivity is involved in the genesis of chronic visceral pain, through an alpha 1A adrenoceptor and TRPV1-mediated mechanism. At the clinical level, we have demonstrated that the blockade of sensory and sympathetic neurons with OnabotulinumtoxinA improves bladder symptoms and quality of life in BPS/IC patients.

Recently, I have also been working in the field of of detrusor underactivity/underactive bladder (DU/UB). In a small back-translation study, we have shown that after severe chronic pelvic ischemia in elderly men there is an increase in LUTS and bladder neurogenic inflammation, which contribute to the validation of validate animal models such as the one of bilateral iliac artery occlusion. In our working hypothesis, the sensory pathway impairment precedes the detrusor impairment in DU/UB. In fact, using an animal model of aged rats, we have shown the importance of urethral serotonergic cells for the development of detrusor underactivity. Also, using a bladder outlet obstruction model, we have shown that there is an urothelium impairment that originates first detrusor overactivity that progresses to DU (with shift in ATP release by that tissue) before a definitive impairing the detrusor takes place9.

I have produced 26 peer-reviewed publications, with 670 citations (h-index 14, source: Web of Science).  

More details will follow.

Assistant Professor, Chair of nervous diseases and neurosurgery, I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University; Senior researcher, Pain research and treatment clinic, B.V.Petrovsky Russian Scientific Surgery Center; Head of the Committee on the organization of pain relief Russian Association for the Study of Pain (RASP); the EFIC Councillor    

Daniel Ciampi de Andrade is a neurologist specialized in chronic pain. He did his clinical training in the University of São Paulo, Brazil, and debuted his clinically-oriented research as a member of Didier Bouhassira’s INSERM 987 unit in 2007-8. He works as clinician and focuses his research on the challenges he faces on a daily basis at the clinic such as pain in neurological diseases, pain in leprosy and non-pharmacological analgesic treatments such as neuromodulation. He obtained his professorship in 2013 and has about 100 peer review articles published in the European Journal of Pain, Pain, Pain Reports, Neurology and serves in the Advisory Board of Pain Reports and is a Section Editor of the European Journal of Pain. He coordinates the Pain Center at Hospital das Clínicas university hospital and founded the first residency program in pain for neurologists and neurosurgeons, which is in full activity since 2011. He also serves at the pain scientific department of the Brazilian Academy of Neurology and serves on its Education Board being responsible for pain and headache sections of the national board certification test for neurologists.

Iris Coppieters holds a Master of Science degree in Rehabilitation Sciences and Physiotherapy. She is a postdoctoral research fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) and the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) – Applied Biomedical Research Program (TBM) appointed at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Brussels, Belgium) and Ghent University (Ghent, Belgium), and a member of the Pain in Motion (PiM) international research group. The PiM group is internationally recognized for its work on hyperexcitability of the central nervous system (central sensitization) and the effect of pain neuroscience education in various chronic pain disorders. Iris is also a visiting professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a physiotherapist at the University Hospital Brussels (Brussels, Belgium) where she treats patients with chronic pain. In addition, Iris is project coordinator of 3 randomized controlled trials focusing on brain imaging and rehabilitation including pain neuroscience education in the field of chronic whiplash and lumbar radiculopathy.
In 2017, she obtained her PhD in health sciences focusing on central sensitization and brain alterations in patients with chronic whiplash associated disorders compared to patients with chronic idiopathic neck pain. Her research and clinical interest goes out to chronic pain with a special interest in chronic spinal pain, pain rehabilitation, central sensitization and brain alterations. She received 3 presentation awards at national and international congresses, and she is ranked 30th in the world among whiplash injury researchers (expertscape.com).
At the age of 29, Iris has (co-)authored 22 peer-reviewed publications (9 as first author and 3 as last author) in international journals, including several papers in high impact journals such as Human Brain Mapping (IF 2017: 4.927), Physical Therapy (IF 2016: 2.764), The Journal of Pain (IF 2016: 4.519), and JAMA Neurology (IF 2017: 11.460). Furthermore, Iris has served several times as an invited speaker at national meetings and gave 17 oral or poster presentations at international conferences or meetings in 8 different countries. In addition, Iris gave several post-academic courses, and is currently (co-)supervisor of 7 PhD projects.

Carol A. Courtney PT, PhD, ATC is Professor at Northwestern University. She received a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy from Washington University in St Louis, Master of Science from the University of South Australia and Louisiana State University, and a PhD from the University of Miami. Dr. Courtney is a licensed physical therapist and athletic trainer, and has been recognized as a Fellow of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Manual Physical Therapists. In 1991 and 1992, she was chosen to serve on the USA medical staffs for the Pan American Games in Havana, Cuba, and the Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain.

Dr. Courtney has clinical expertise in the management chronic musculoskeletal pain and sports injury. Her research investigates the effects of knee joint injury and osteoarthritis on pain processing and joint function, as well as modulation of pain mechanisms through manual therapy interventions. She has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, book chapters and conference presentations and has presented both nationally and internationally on this research.

More details will follow.

Dr Andrew Davies is the Specialty Lead for Supportive & Palliative Care at the Royal Surrey County Hospital/St Luke’s Cancer Centre in Guildford, United Kingdom. He is a Visiting Reader at the University of Surrey and has academic interests include opioid related adverse effects (nausea & vomiting, constipation). He is the President-Elect of the Multinational Association for Supportive Care in Cancer, and is Present of the Association of Palliative Medicine for Great Britain and Ireland.

More details will follow.

Marshall Devor is the Alpert Professor of Pain Research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). He was born in Toronto, Canada in 1949. His bachelor’s degree is from Princeton University (1970) and his PhD from MIT (1975). He was a postdoctoral fellow with the pain research pioneer Prof. P.D. Wall at University College London and subsequently at HUJI. There he progressed from Research Associate (1977) to Senior Lecturer, Associate Professor and finally Professor in 1988. His research has focused on the neurobiology of neuropathic pain, and more recently also on mechanisms involved in loss of consciousness and pain-free surgery. His laboratory has published extensively in the pain field, with work of a notably integrative nature involving neurophysiology, computer simulations, neuroanatomy (light and electron microscopy), genetics, and behavioral models. He is author of >300 publications, career citations ~24,000, h-index = 77.

Luda Diatchenko, MD, PhD is a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Human Pain Genetics, Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Anesthesia, and Faculty of Dentistry, at McGill University, Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain. She earned her MD and PhD in the field of Molecular Biology from the Russian State Medical University. Dr. Diatchenko started her career in industry, she was a Leader of the RNA Expression Group at Clontech, Inc., and subsequently, Director of Gene Discovery at Attagene, Inc. During this time, Dr. Diatchenko was actively involved in the development of several widely-used and widely-cited molecular tools for the analysis of gene expression and regulation. Dr. Diatchenko’s academic career started at 2000 in the Center for Neurosensory Disorders at the University of North Carolina. Her research since then is focused on determining the cellular and molecular biological mechanisms by which functional genetic variations impact human pain perception and risk of development of chronic pain conditions, enabling new approaches to identify new drug targets, treatment responses to analgesics, and diagnostic. Multiple collaborative activities allow the Diatchenko group to take basic genetic findings all the way from human association studies, through molecular and cellular mechanisms, to animal models, and ultimately to human clinical trials. In total, Dr. Diatchenko have authored or co-authored over 120 peer-reviewed research papers in journals, 10 book chapters, and edited a book in human pain genetics. She is a member and an active officer of several national and international scientific societies, including the International Association for the Study of Pain and the American Pain Society.

Stefan Duschek is a Professor of Health Psychology at UMIT – University of Health Sciences Medical Informatics and Technology (Austria). A large part of his research activity is dedicated to the psychophysiology of chronic pain, particularly pertaining to disease-related alterations in cognition and emotional regulation and their biological foundations. He maintains close relationships, in terms of both research and teaching, with numerous European universities, including those of Granada, Jaén, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca, Bonn, Bamberg and Munich.

Christopher Eccleston, PhD, is professor of medical psychology at the University of Bath in the UK where he directs the Centre for Pain Research. He established the Bath Pain Management Unit at the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, including the first residential rehabilitation programme for adolescents with chronic pain.
Currently he is chair of the scientific Committee of the European Pain Federation, coordinating editor for the Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care Cochrane Review Group, is Senior Editor for Cochrane Brain, Nerves and Mind, and is psychology field editor for PAIN.

His main interest is in neuro-cognitive mechanisms of analgesia, innovative psychological treatments, embodied pain, evidence based pain management, and e-health. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles, with a career adjusted web of science h-index of 2.7. In 2016 he published ‘Embodied: The Psychology of Physical Sensation’ and in 2018 he published the edited volume ‘European Pain Management’, both with Oxford University Press. In 2018 he will present the Ronald Melzack Award Plenary Lecture at the IASP World Pain Congress.

Niels Eijkelkamp is Associate Professor at the Laboratory of Translational Immunology at the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. He received his PhD in 2009 at the Utrecht University under the mentorship of Cobi Heijnen and Annemieke Kavelaars where he worked on GRKs in the regulation of pain and inflammation. He then did his postdoctoral training at the University Medical Center Utrecht where he worked on intracellular signaling in sensory neurons and continued as a PostDoctoral fellow at in the laboratory of John Wood at the University College London where he further worked on signaling and mechanotransduction in pain.
Dr. Eijkelkamp’s current work focusses on elucidating the cellular and molecular basis of neuro-immune interactions in nociceptive processing and defining the role of mitochondria in the regulation of pathological pain states. A central discovery was the identification of a lysine-specific methyltransferase, FAM173b, that controls mitochondrial function in sensory neurons and the development of pathological pain. In addition, his work has identified intriguing roles of immune cell that regulate pain pathways in osteoarthritis and inflammation. Finally he has identified novel strategies to inhibit chronic pain by fusing anti-inflammatory cytokines (synerkines). Besides his work on generating basic insight into chronic pain, he also works on translation these findings to the clinic. This is exemplified by his current work on developing synerkines for the treatment of chronic pain and the work on using monocytes and their function as predictors of persisting juvenile idiopathic arthritis pain. His research has been supported by grants from the European Union, The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, and Arthritis Foundation among others.

Prof. Elon Eisenberg graduated from Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv
University in Israel. He completed a residency in Neurology, at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel, and Neurology – Pain Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA.
Prof. Eisenberg has been the director of the Institute of Pain Medicine at
Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel, and the President of the Israeli Pain Association. He is currently the director of the Pain Research Unit at the Institute of Pain Medicine, Rambam Health Care Campus. He is a Professor of Neurology and Pain Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine and holds the Otto Barth Family Academic Chair in Biomedical Science at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. His main areas of research include mechanisms and treatment of pain with special emphasis on neuropathic pain, CRPS, cancer pain, opioids and cannabinoids. Prof. Eisenberg has published about two-hundred articles, book chapters and abstracts in various areas of pain.

More details will follow.

Prof. Dr. Andrea W.W. Evers is professor of Health Psychology and chair of the Health-Medical-and-Neuropsychology-Unit at Leiden University, the Netherlands. After her PhD (cum laude), Andrea Evers obtained several personal grants and awards for high potential researchers (e.g. NWO-Veni 2004, NWO-Vidi 2009, ERC Consolidator Grant 2013, NWO-Vici 2017) for her innovative, interdisciplinary and translational research on psychoneurobiological mechanisms and treatments for physical symptoms, such as pain and itch and pain. She combines fundamental and applied science, by focusing both on basic learning mechanisms of placebo and nocebo effects and related interventions for patients with chronic itch and pain. She published more than 200 (inter)national papers in her research field.

Jeremy Fairbank graduated from Cambridge University and St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School. He held Fellowships in Dallas, Texas and in Oswestry. JF is Professor of Spinal Surgery at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology, and Musculoskeletal Sciences. He has retired as a spinal surgeon from the Spinal Unit, Oxford University Hospitals. He is still active in Spinal Research, appraisals, and legal work.

He published the Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) in 1980, a universally used PROM, now translated into 78 languages and can be accessed here https://eprovide.mapi-trust.org/instruments/oswestry-disability-index#basic_description. It is a preferred PROM of ICHOM.

JF developed and led the MRC Spine Stabilisation Trial, which has had an international impact in comparing the outcome of intensive rehabilitation in the management of chronic low back pain versus spinal fusion.

In Oxford his research with Jill Urban includes a series of in-vivo studies of the physiology of the intervertebral disc (pressure profiles, pO₂ and pNO₂, gadolinium diffusion), other clinical trials in back pain. He has been CI on 2 EU-funded project grants, EuroDisc and GenoDisc. Currently, he is working with engineers in the University of Oxford developing image analysis of lumbar MRI scans (SpineNet), work which has been awarded the 2017 ISSLS Prize for bioengineering. SpineNet measures ankylosing spondylitis and spinal stenosis from MR scans. He has collaborated with Dr Emma Clark in Bristol to see the relation of spinal curvatures on the growth and development and schooling within the birth cohort, ALSPAC.  Whole body DEXA scans can now be read automatically to identify and measure structural scoliosis. He has worked with Dr Adnan Al-Kaisy’s group at St Thomas’ to develop protocols and funding for a trial of HF SCS.

JF has 200 refereed publications. JF has been Secretary or President of several national and international spine societies.

Marie Fallon is the St Columba’s Hospice Chair of Palliative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Consultant in Palliative Care at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, Scotland. She leads the largest portfolio of multicentre clinical trials in Palliative Care in the UK, specializing in cancer pain control; assessment and treatment, including both drug trials and complementary therapies, e.g. TENS and acupuncture. She has led an international study of a RCT of 3 step WHO analgesic ladder. She also has a specific interest in cancer cachexia and is leading an international RCT. Marie Fallon has embedded clinical biomarkers in her research programme with the aim of moving towards efficient prediction of the most effective treatments for individual patients.

She has an active PhD programme, with palliative medicine, neurology and anaesthetic trainees having been awarded higher degrees.

Professor Fallon is a joint editor of the Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine (4th, 5th and 6th editions) and has served as editor of the ABC of Palliative Care (two editions) the ABC of Pain and the Textbook of Cancer Pain. She is a member of the grant committees for Dimbleby Cancer Care, the CSO PhDships, the Melville Trust for the Care and Cure of Cancer, the Columba Trust and the Marie Curie Cancer Care Research Fund. She is a Co-Director and a Visiting Professor of the European Palliative Care Research Centre, which is based in Oslo, Norway. She is on the Scientific Committees for several international conferences, including EAPC, EPCRC and ESMO.

Dr. Falowski underwent his neurosurgical residency training at Thomas Jefferson
University in Philadelphia, PA with a focus on Spinal Cord Stimulation and Pain management. He completed a functional neurosurgical fellowship at Rush University. He is presently Director of Functional Neurosurgery at St. Lukes University Health Network in Bethlehem, PA with a practice specializing in neuromodulation.

He is a member of several committees for functional neurosurgery that including secretary for the North American Neuromodulation Society(NANS), and annual meeting program chair. He is faculty of both Congress of Neurological Surgeons and American Association of Neurological Surgeons, as well as a board member of the CNS/AANS Executive Pain Committee.

His major focus in society and industry revolves around education, integration of specialties, and practice management. Roles include running the resident-fellows section and mentorship program through NANS. He has been the course director of the annual NANS spinal cord stimulation/neuromodulation workshop that is one of the largest international courses available. He also serves as course director for the INS cadaver workshops.

His primary focus and publications deals with utilizing intra- operative neuromonitoring for the asleep placement of spinal cord stimulators, as well as capturing live clinical data of SCS and waveforms using neuromonitoring.

His practice is primarily based on neuromodulation and its applications. He has developed a robust program that includes a Pain Center, Movement Disorder Center, and Epilepsy Monitoring Unit.

Graduated in Biological Sciences, with PhD in Biological Chemistry (In Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and pos-doctorate in immunopharmacology (in University of São Paulo, Brazil).
Full professor of Pharmacology at Institute of Biolmedical Sciences, in Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and head of the Laboratory of Pharmacology of Pain and inflammation, receiving fellowship from FAPERJ (scientist from our state) and CNPq (fellow 1D).
Is head of the Post-Graduate Program in Pharmacology and Medicinal Chemistry (ICB/UFRJ) and editor of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology.
Has 90 articles published in indexed journal and 4 patents deposited. With more than 20 master’s, 8 PhD thesis and pos-doctorates supervised.
Develops research directed to the search for new substances originated from natural or synthetic products that may be candidates for drug prototypes, acting in pre-clinical studies in the areas of inflammation, analgesia and cancer using for both acute and chronic models of diseases. The laboratory has experience in pre-clinical and toxicological tests for the validation of herbal medicines.

Michel D. Ferrari, MD, PhD, FANA, FRCP is Professor of Neurology and Chair of the Leiden Centre for Translational Neuroscience at Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC), President of the Dutch Headache Society, and past President of the International Headache Society (IHS). He received his MD (1980), his specialty certificates in Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology (1985) and his PhD (1992) on “Serotonin and Migraine” (supervisors: George Bruyn & Pramod Saxena) cum laude from LUMC. He has been a Research Fellow at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston with Mike Welch, and at Harvard Medical School with Michael Moskowitz.

Prof. Ferrari is a Fellow of the American Neurological Association (FANA) and the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) and Honorary Member of the Colombian Neurology Society and the International (IHS), Danish and Italian Headache Societies. He has received numerous awards, incl. the Arnold Friedman Distinguished Clinician Researcher (1995) and Harold G. Wolff (1997) Awards from the American Headache Society, the Migraine Trust Special (2002) and Macdonald Critchley (2016) Lectures, and The European Headache Federation (2006) and IHS Special (2009) Lectures. In 2011 he was awarded the triennial Hartmann Muller Prize for Biomedical Research from the University of Zurich. From the Dutch Neurological Association, Ferrari received the five-ennial Winkler Medallion for Excellence in Neurological Research (2005) and from The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) the Vici Innovational Research Personal Incentive Schema Award (2004), the Spinoza Life Time Achievement Premium (2009), the highest science prize in The Netherlands, and the 10-year Gravity Award “Brain on a Chip” (2017) as part of the “Netherlands Organ on a Chip Initiative”.

Prof. Ferrari is the PI of several international consortia, including the FP7 EUROHEADPAIN programme, in which 9 European centres collaborate to study the pathogenesis and treatment of migraine and its chronification. Ferrari serves and has served on the executive, scientific and advisory boards of many scientific organisations, is Associate Editor of Cephalalgia and Headache Currents, Senior Associate Editor of Headache, and a regular peer reviewer for high ranking scientific journals. He has organised several international congresses, incl. the 1997 IHS World Conference in Amsterdam. His research focusses on the neurobiological, genetic, clinical, epidemiological and therapeutic aspects of “Paroxysmal Cerebral Disorders”, in particular migraine, cluster headache, episodic ataxia, and epilepsy. He has (co-)authored over 600 peer-reviewed publications and many books on these topics. Ferrari ranks among the global top three most cited scientists on “Migraine and Other Vascular Headaches”. His landmark paper on the first migraine gene (Cell 1996) is the highest cited paper in the field. In 2015 his personal profile was highlighted in Lancet Neurology.

Nanna Brix Finnerup, MD, DrMedSc, is Professor and head of the Danish Pain Research Center, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Denmark. Nanna Finnerup graduated from the Medical School at Aarhus University 1993, and after internship worked at the department of Neurology and Clinical Neurophysiology at the University of Copenhagen. Since 1998 she has worked at the Danish Pain Research Center at Aarhus University. She obtained her degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences from Aarhus University in 2008, and is currently Professor at the Danish Pain Research Center.

Dr. Finnerup has authored more than 130 refereed publications. Her main research interest is the pathophysiology and therapy of neuropathic pain. Current research areas include spinal cord injury pain, chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain, painful diabetic polyneuropathy, postsurgical neuropathic pain, thermal sensory integration, neurophysiological assessment of pain mechanisms, placebo mechanisms, neuropharmacology, clinical trials, and systematic reviews.

Dr Finnerup is vice-chair of NeuPSIG, the neuropathic pain SIG of IASP and past president of the Scandinavian Association for the Study of pain (SASP). She is section editor of the journal PAIN. She has given a plenary lecture at the World Congress on Pain and the Sir Ludwig Guttman lecture at the International Spinal Cord Injury Society.

Dr Brona Fullen is an Associate Professor lecturer in University College Dublin’s School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science, Ireland. She holds a BSc Physiotherapy (UUJ), MSc Healthcare (Acupuncture, UCD), and PhD (UCD) degrees.
Clinically Brona specialized in the topic of pain working in Pain services at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, St Vincent’s University Hospital and Tallaght Hospital Dublin.
In UCD she teaches in the area of pain science to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. She is Director of the MSc programmes in Advanced Physiotherapy Studies and Healthcare (Acupuncture). She is a co-Director of the UCD Centre for Translational Pain Research.
Her research areas of interest include the assessment and rehabilitation of people with chronic pain in a range of conditions including musculoskeletal dysfunction, obesity, and spinal cord injury. She has supervised MSc and PhD students to completion, and has presented her research at national and international meetings.
Brona is a past President of the Irish Pain Society (Chapter of the International Association for the Study of Pain), and the first Chartered Physiotherapist to be elected President-Elect of the European Pain Federation EFIC®.

Eleonora Galosi is a postgraduate-MD, resident in Neurology, currently employed at the Department of Human Neuroscience of Sapienza University (Rome), where she has acquired skills in clinical, neurophysiological and skin biopsy assessment of patients suffering from peripheral nervous system diseases and neuropathic pain. She has focused her research activity on intraepidermal innervation morphometry assessment by skin biopsy in different neuropathic pain conditions, getting experienced with skin samples immunohistochemical processing and morphometric analysis.

Ms. Galve Villa is currently completing her PhD at the Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP), SMI®, Dept. of Health Science and Technology, Faculty of Medicine,

Aalborg University (Denmark). Her research investigates the use of digital mapping technology, and explores novel pain metrics to track, qualify and quantify changes of pain over time. Her research aims to capture, describe and evaluate the clinical picture of painful conditions using modern and accessible technology (e-health).

Ms. Galve Villa completed her Physiotherapy degree in her native Spain, followed by an MSc in Neuromusculoskeletal Physiotherapy in Ireland. She has an extensive background with more than 10 years’ experience in different clinical settings in Spain, Ireland and Denmark. She has developed a special interest in the management of persistent pain and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).

In the future she hopes to continue developing and implementing e-health and other digital solutions to bridge the gap between researchers, the industry and the individual.

Pierangelo Geppetti, MD, is professor of clinical pharmacology at the medical School of the University of Florence, Director of the Department of Health Sciences of the University of Florence, and Chief of the Clinical Unit - Headache Center and Clinical Pharmacology of the University Hospital of Careggi - Florence. He started his clinical and research activity at the at the Headache Centre of the Institute of Internal Medicine of the University of Florence under the guidance of Prof. Federigo Sicuteri, and spent three years (1991-1993) of research at the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and the Cardiovascular Research Institute of the University of California, San Francisco. He has been Associate Professor (1998-2002) at the University of Ferrara, where he founded the local Headache Centre. He has authored more than 350 papers, with more than 18,000 citations and H Index 71. His scientific activity has addressed the role of primary sensory neurons and the neuropeptides, substance P and calcitonin gene related peptide (CGRP), in neurogenic inflammation, migraine headache and other types of pain. More recently, after an initial interest on the transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) channel, he focused on the TRP ankyrin 1 (TRPA1) channel expressed by nociceptive neurons and Schwann cells in sustaining neuropathic chronic pain and migraine pain. 

I was born and raised in Wiesbaden/Germany and trained in Anaesthesia / Pain Medicine in Wuerzburg/Germany, and in the UK (Oxford, UCLH), and for post-trauma immunology at Harvard Medical School, Boston, US.
I work as Consultant in Pain Medicine at the Liverpool Walton Centre, and as Reader (associated Professor) in Pain Medicine at the University of Liverpool.

My research has focused on the role of the adaptive immune system in causing chronic pain. Based on our laboratory results, I have developed the idea of ‘autoantibody-pain’, a conceptual framework for explaining persistent Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), and additional severe primary chronic pains; I first proposed the concept of using passive transfer models to assess the contribution of IgG autoantibodies to chronic pain in 2004, have since established the first such model, and have led a group which has been successfully testing innovative immune-modulating treatments, particularly for the group of patients with longstanding CRPS. Our combined laboratory-clinical translational work has recently led to a first change in international guidelines, with the inclusion of CRPS as an indication into the ASFA guidelines for plasma exchange in 2016.

I have initiated, and have been leading the UK interdisciplinary CRPS Guidelines Group, under the Umbrella of the UK Royal College of Physicians, which has published its revised guidance in July 2018, endorsed by 29 UK professional organisations and Royal Colleges. I am Chair of the Special Interest Group ‘CRPS’ of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), and Chair of the European Pain Federation Task Force on CRPS.

In daily practice, I see patients at the Walton Centre, in secondary and tertiary outpatient clinics, Pain Management Program assessment clinics, and in operation theatres for neuromodulation trials. For my academic part, I also work as Director of the Liverpool Pain Research Institute – supporting Pain Research in the NW of the UK https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/pain-research-institute/.

Since graduating in 1999 from the University of Valencia , Dr. Gómez has focused his work towards applied clinical research of highly prevalence gynecological pathologies such as polycystic ovary syndrome, myomas and, more recently, endometriosis. During his Postdoctoral stays at Columbia University , and Mount Siani School of Medicine he specialized in transferring his research from the lab bench to its subsequent application in human clinical therapies. For such purposes Dr. Gómez develops animal models that replicate the gynecological diseases of interest to try to determine which molecular mechanisms are involved in their appearance. Subsequently, he rehearses on these animal models, compounds capable of altering the mechanisms responsible for the disease and constitute effective treatments thereof. In the absence of toxic effects, the next step involves testing in humans, through pilot studies, the effectiveness of the compounds of interest and their final implantation in the cynics in case of success. In this regard his team research published proof of concept (Reproduction 2011) and preclinical studies (Fertil Steril 2011) in humans showing the efficacy of dopamine agonists to treat endometriosis without side effects or compromising fertility. Currently, Dr. Gómez is focused on optimizing animals models to more physiologically reflect the chronic pelvic associated with endometriosis. The goal is to use such refined models as a platform to boost the transferability of research with newly developed analgesic drugs from the bench to the clinic.

Liesbet Goubert is Full Professor in the Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology at Ghent University, Belgium (http://www.ghplab.ugent.be). She is interested in psychosocial risk factors for the development of chronic (pediatric) pain and in the interpersonal dynamics of (chronic) pain and chronic illness. More recently, she became very interested in the study of psychosocial resilience mechanisms that may account for the sustainment of adaptive functioning and well-being in the presence of pain.
She has published 145 peer-reviewed articles and 15 book chapters, which have 7230 citations (her h-index is 43). Her scholarly contributions have been recognized with several scientific awards, including the IASP-SIG Early Career Award in Pediatric Pain, the EFIC Grünenthal Grant Award and the Prize "Institut Belge de la Douleur-UPSA-Belgisch Pijninstituut". In 2017, she received the British Pain Society Medal in recognition for her outstanding contributions to the clinical science of pain.
She is a Council member of the IASP Special Interest Group on Pain in Childhood (2018 – 2023) and a member of the IASP/EFIC Global Year 2019 taskforce “Pain in the most vulnerable”. She has been the Scientific Chair of the 11th International Symposium on Pediatric Pain (2017, Malaysia) and the European Pediatric Psychology Conference (2018, Belgium). At the national level, she is a member of the scientific committee of the Belgian Pain Society and a member of the workforce Chronic Pain in Childhood of the Belgian Paediatric Pain Association.

Thomas Graven-Nielsen received a M.Sc.EE degree within Biomedical Engineering from Aalborg University, Denmark in 1994 and acquired his PhD within Biomedical Science and Engineering in 1997 (Aalborg University). In 2006 he obtained a Doctoral degree in Medical Science (Copenhagen University). He is Director at Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP), SMI, Department of Health Science and Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark (since 2015), and Full Professor in Pain Neuroscience since 2008. The Danish National Research Foundation funds CNAP. Adjunct Professor at University at Western Sydney, Australia (since 2015), and Adjunct Professor at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia (since 2004). The research focuses on translational studies of musculoskeletal pain bridging the gap between basic animal findings and clinical manifestations of pain. The scope is to identify and modulate key features of human pain neuroplasticity leading to prevention of maladaptive neuroplasticity and promote advantageous neuroplasticity. Development of pain models, bio-markers, and assessment technologies are key biomedical tools for the translational studies. The core areas are muscle pain, joint pain, referred pain, localised and widespread deep-tissue hyperalgesia, pharmacological screening, and electrophysiological techniques to assess muscle pain physiology and neuroplasticity. He has published 300+ papers and reviews (260+ peer-reviewed, H-factor: 55) and received several awards. He reviews papers on a regular basis for high ranked journals, has presented as keynote speaker at several international conferences, and organised scientific workshops and symposia at international meetings. More than 10 national and international collaborations on translational pain research have been established including research groups in Sweden, UK, Japan, USA and Australia. Several international guest professors have worked with Dr. Graven-Nielsen in his laboratory facilities.

Dr Erin Greaves, Ph.D (Principal Investigator and Medical Research Council Career Development Award Fellow, MRC Centre for Reproductive Health University of Edinburgh, UK)

My research focuses on the pathophysiology of endometriosis with a specific emphasis on how lesions generate pain and the role of macrophages in the disorder. To investigate this complex disorder I generated a unique mouse model of endometriosis that demonstrates robust changes in sensory behavior and associated molecular changes in the CNS.

I completed my PhD (2009) at the University of Leeds and then moved to the MRC Human Reproductive Sciences Unit at the University of Edinburgh to carry out my postdoctoral studies on endometrial function and dysfunction. During this time I became interested in endometriosis and had the opportunity to develop a new mouse model. In 2014 I was awarded a prestigious Medical Research Council Career Development Award to investigate the role of macrophages in generating endometriosis-associated pain. At the same time I was appointed as Principal Investigator at the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health (University of Edinburgh). In 2017 I was awarded the David Healy Award for basic science at the 13th World Congress of Endometriosis. I have delivered 19 invited lectures and seminars at National and International conferences and academic Institutions.

Paul Griffiths has worked in the drugs field for over 25 years. Prior to 1999, he worked as a researcher based at the National Addiction Centre in London. From 2000, his activities have focused on the international monitoring of drug use, working first for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, in Vienna, (UNODC), and subsequently, for the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). Paul joined the EMCDDA in 2002, as head of the epidemiology unit and was appointed Scientific Director in 2010. In his current role he is responsible for the overall coordination of the EMCDDA scientific work. He holds an honorary position as a Visiting Senior Lecturer in the Department of Addictions, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. Recent activities include: serving as part of the UK government’s expert panel on NPS (2014); chairing an international expert review of the Irish National Drug Strategy (2015); Chairing of the European Union Agencies Network for Scientific Advice (2018); and acting as co-chair of the programme committee for the Lisbon Addictions Conference (2017 and 2019); In 2012, his work was noted by the NIDA international programme when he received an award for excellence in International leadership.

Gordon Guyatt is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Health Evidence and Impact at McMaster University. He coined the term “evidence based medicine” (EBM) in an editorial introducing the idea in 1991, and has since been a leading advocate of evidence-based approaches to clinical decision-making.  According to the Web of Science, his over 1,000 publications in peer review journals dealing with health status measurement, clinical trials, systematic reviews, and clinical practice guidelines, have been cited over 125,000 times; according to Google Scholar, he is one of the 20 most cited authors in the history of science.  Recognition for his work includes, in 2011, his appointment as an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 2013 the Canadian Institute of Health Research Researcher of the Year, and in 2016 to the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame.  

Per Hansson, MD, DMSci, DDS, is a senior consultant, specialist in neurology and pain medicine at the Dept. of Pain Management and Research, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway and a professor of clinical pain research at Dept. of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. He received his dental and medical degrees from the Karolinska Institutet in 1979 and 1986, respectively, and his PhD in physiology at the same institute in 1985. He was appointed associate professor of physiology in 1991 and professor of clinical pain research in 2000.
Peripheral and central neuropathic pain, somatosensory testing, endogenous pain controlling systems and functional brain imaging represent major areas of interest in Professor Hansson’s research.
Professor Hansson is a reviewer for many scientific journals and has served as co-editor of Pain Reviews, on the editorial board of Pain, Clinical Updates and as field editor for clinical medicine/neurology of the European Journal of Pain. He has published more than 180 journal articles, position papers, reviews and book chapters, and has lectured at numerous conferences and symposia worldwide. He is co-editor of 2 books published by the IASP Press.
From 2003-2006 he was president of the Scandinavian Association for the Study of Pain. He served as Honorary Secretary of the European Federation of IASP Chapters from 2008-2011. He has served as external reviewer for the German Network on Neuropathic Pain, INSERM and the Wellcome Foundation sponsored London Pain Consortium.

Dr. Lauren Harrison is a post-doctoral fellow in pediatric chronic pain at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. As a fellow, she works clinically within the Pediatric Pain Management Clinic at Stanford Children’s Hospital. She also has a research appointment and works within the Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain Lab, under the mentorship of Dr. Laura Simons. Dr. Harrison graduated from Eastern Michigan University in August 2018 with her PhD in Clinical Psychology, with a concentration on pediatric chronic illness populations. During her graduate education, she completed several clinical training experiences with pediatric chronic illness and pain populations, including a 1-year clinical practicum at Shriner’s Burn Hospital for Children in Galveston, TX, where she worked as part of an interdisciplinary team to conduct psychosocial evaluations and pain assessments and to provide psychological intervention during procedures and physical/occupational therapy appointments. She also completed a two-year practicum at the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, working within medical specialty clinics, as well as a rotation on an inpatient consultation and liaison service. She completed her clinical doctoral internship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine/Kennedy Krieger Institute working on a pediatric inpatient rehabilitation unit with children and adolescents with spinal cord injuries, functional neurological disorders, post-orthopedic surgery, brain injury, functional recovery following surgery or medical treatment. To date, her research has focused on parent and family functioning in pediatric chronic pain populations, with a special focus on effective assessment and treatment of parent and family variables within pediatric chronic pain populations

Winfried Häuser is specialist of general internal medicine, psychosomatic medicine and pain medicine. He is consultant for gastroenterology, hepatology and pain/palliative care medicine, department of Internal Medicine I and head of the function psychosomatic medicine, academic hospital Saarbrücken, Germany. He is consultant of the ambulatory pain medicine and mental health care center Saarbrücken and offers special consultant hours for patients with fibromyalgia and chronic abdominal pain. He is adjunct professor for psychosomatic medicine at the Technical University Munich, Germany. His areas of research are psychosomatic aspects of bowel diseases, functional somatic syndromes (fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic pelvic pain) and evidence-based medicine and health care research. He is co-editor of the Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care Group. He is the head of the steering committee of the German guidelines on fibromyalgia and opioids in chronic non-cancer pain and member of the steering group of the EULAR recommendations on the management of fibromyalgia. He is the head of the EFIC task force for a position paper on cannabis-based medicines for chronic pain. He has published more than 200 papers on chronic pain conditions (celiac disease; chronic inflammatory bowel diseases; fibromyalgia; irritable bowel syndrome) in peer-reviewed journals including systematic reviews on pharmacological, psychological, physical and complementary/alternative therapies for chronic pain conditions.

Andrea Houghton received her Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham in the UK studying the pharmacology of withdrawal reflexes using peripheral nerve recordings. After her PhD she moved to Galveston, Texas in the USA to work with Dr.s Karin Westlund-High and Bill Willis where she studied the pharmacology of pain processing in rodents and primates using electrophysiology and behavior. She then returned to the UK completing a postdoc at the University of Bristol with Dr Max Headley she took a position with Organon Laboratories in Scotland where she worked for 12 years supporting the research of novel analgesics. Andrea is currently an Executive Director at the Merck & Co Inc. Her first role at Merck was Executive Director Pain & Migraine where she was responsible for managing Merck’s Pain & Migraine portfolio. Her current role is leading the Pharmacology Dept at West Point supporting both Neuroscience and Infectious Disease therapy areas. She continues to work on preclinical and clinical projects pursuing the identification of novel analgesics, including Nav1.7 inhibitors. She has published more than 40 peer reviewed papers during her career worked on programs at Organon and Merck resulting in 8 compounds entering clinical development to treat pain and/or migraine.

PD Dr. Philipp Hüllemann is board certified consultant neurologist at the department of neurology at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, Campus Kiel, Germany and works also as pain clinician and pain researcher at the Division of Neurological Pain Research and Therapy. His main research interests are the pathomechanism and treatment of neuropathic pain as well as innovative neurophysiological diagnostic approaches for the assessment of the sensory system. In the neurophysiological pain field, he authored several publications e.g. regarding laser- or cold-evoked potentials.

Frank Huygen is working as an Anaesthesiologist pain specialist in the University Hospital “Erasmus Medical Centre” in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Since 2009 he is appointed as full Professor in Anaesthesiology especially Pain Medicine at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is director of the centre of pain medicine. This centre is a multidisciplinary pain clinic specialised in acute, chronic benign and oncologic pain and palliative care (including the treatment of congenital and acquired spasticity with intrathecal Baclofen).

Frank Huygen is principal investigator of the Academic Centre of Pain Medicine (Erasmusmc ACE). He is especially interested in the Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. In 2004, he received a PhD on writing a thesis titled “Neuroimmune alterations in the Complex Regional Pain Syndrome”. He is responsible for and/or participating in several research lines focussing especially on CRPS and neuropathic pain. He published > 150 peer reviewed articles.

He is involved in the education of medical students at Erasmusmc and responsible for the training of anaesthesia residents and anaesthesia fellows in pain medicine. He is responsible for the organisation of an education block on Neuromodulation in the master Technical Medicine at the Technical University in Delft.
He is Vice chair of the examination board of the FIPP examination of the World Institute of Pain. He is member of the editorial board of the journal “Painpractice”. He is member of the editorial board of “Evidence based Interventional Pain Practice: according to Clinical Diagnoses”. He is Chief editor of the ”Handbook pain medicine”.

He was involved in the organisation of several national and international symposia and congresses on pain. He is past elected president of the Dutch Anaesthesia Pain Society. He is chairman of the section Benelux of the WorId Institute of Pain. He is member of several (inter)national scientific advisory boards on pain medicine.

Frank Huygen is graduated as fellow of interventional pain practice in the world Institute of Pain in 2008. In 2011 he received the IASP research international collaboration grant. In January 2016, Frank Huygen received an honorary Fellowship in the Faculty of Pain Medicine in the College Anaesthetists of Ireland. Frank Huygen is appointed as member of the central disciplinary tribunal for healthcare in The Hague in January 2013.

Venerina is an Associate Professor in Physiotherapy at The University of Queensland, Australia. She leads the program of research on Facilitating Return to Pre-Injury Functioning at the RECOVER Injury Research Centre. Venerina has a rich background in occupational rehabilitation and injury management from the perspective of the insurer, provider and employer. These experiences have created a research portfolio focused on improving vocational outcomes for people with injuries or illnesses, which may be work-related (e.g. musculoskeletal neck pain), due to a road traffic crash (e.g. whiplash, traumatic brain injury) or acquired (e.g. mental health condition, acquired brain injury). Through research with relevant stakeholders (person, health professional, employer and insurer), Venerina has investigated the barriers and enablers a person may experience when attempting to return to, or remain at work after injury or illness. This research has led to the development of strategies (individual and workplace based) to improve or maintain work ability without negatively impacting productivity. She has published over 85 scholarly works in peer reviewed journals and books, and has been successful in obtaining AU$1.3 million in research funding. She is a strong advocate for the role of physiotherapists in the compensable arena to improve and / or maintain a person’s capacity for work.

Dr Abbie Jordan is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Bath, UK and a member of the Bath Centre for Pain Research, UK. Dr Jordan’s work focuses on a number of key areas including parenting in the context of paediatric chronic pain and assessment of paediatric pain. Additionally, Dr Jordan is especially interested in exploring topics around diagnostic uncertainty and social context with regards to pain in children, young people and their families.

Dr Pall Karlsson is Assistant Professor at the Danish Pain Research Centre at Aarhus University Hospital and Aarhus University in Denmark, where he has been employed since 2009. Dr Karlsson holds a bachelor degree in molecular biology from the University of Iceland, a master‘s degree in molecular biology from Aarhus University and a PhD from the Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University from 2013. He is responsible for the skin biopsy laboratory at Aarhus University and Aarhus University Hospital, overseeing both clinical and research-related skin biopsies. His research is focused on understanding why some, but not all, patients with diabetes develop neuropathic pain and to identify novel biomarkers of neuropathic pain. Dr Karlsson has published over 20 research papers and has a fruitful ongoing international collaboration in both Europe and the United States, and is part of the International Diabetic Neuropathy Consortium (IDNC). Additionally, Dr Karlsson a member of the national advisory forum of the Danish Diabetes Academy, is an editorial board member of the Journal of the Peripheral Nervous System and has given presentations at both the World Congress on Pain held by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and the International Congress on Neuropathic Pain, held by the Neuropathic Pain Special Interest Group (NeuPSIG).

Ed Keogh is Deputy Director of the Bath Centre for Pain Research and Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology, both based at the University of Bath in the UK. His PhD was in Psychology from Goldsmiths College, University of London (UK), where he examined the effect of anxiety on cognitive biases towards threatening information. Following a lectureship post in London, he moved to the University of Bath in 2003. Ed’s primary research interests focus on two core themes. The first is in sex and gender differences in pain, with a focus on the role of psychosocial factors. He is exploring social factors in men and women’s pain, especially those related to pain communication. The second interest is on the role that attention has in the perception and experience of pain. Here he focuses on the interruptive effects of pain on attention, as well as exploring biases in attention towards pain. His current interest are in bringing these two areas together, looking on whether there are sex and gender differences in attention to nonverbal pain signals. He has written extensively on these areas of pain, has over 100 publications, and regularly presents his work nationally and internationally.

Gineke Koopmans-Klein is Medical Manager Pain and Respiratory for Mundipharma Pharmaceuticals BV in the Netherlands. She obtained her Master degree in Biochemistry in 2001. From 2015 to 2019 she was a PhD-student at the Center for Pain Medicine of the Erasmus MC in the Netherlands under the supervision of Prof Dr. F.J.P.M. Huygen and Dr. M. Dirckx. Her main area of research is opioid induced constipation, with a focus on the efficacy opioid antagonists for the treatment of opioid induced constipation in patients. Within this field, her particular focus is on gathering real world evidence and observational studies especially in patients not responding to laxative treatment. Further, she now collaborates in investigating non-opioid treatment options in the emergency medical services. Moreover, she specialized in Value Based Health Care and she has become member of the Board Committee Patient and Science of the Association Innovative Medicines in the Netherlands.

Eva Kosek, MD, PhD is holding a position as full Professor in Clinical Pain Research at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. She received her medical degree from the Uppsala University in 1986 and her PhD from the Karolinska Institute in 1996. She is a specialist in rehabilitation medicine since 2001 and pain relief since 2004 and has been clinically active for the most part of her professional carrier. Dr. Kosek’s research focuses on pathophysiological mechanisms in chronic musculoskeletal pain, with special reference to central pain modulation and neuroinflammation in fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain, osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. The research is hypothesis driven and the research group uses a wide variety of techniques such as genetics, analysis of inflammatory substances in cerebrospinal fluid and blood, quantitative sensory testing and imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography).
Dr. Kosek was an elected Councilor of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) 2012-18 and chairs the IASP Terminology Task Force. She is a member of several professional associations such as Scandinavian Association for the Study of Pain (SASP), the Swedish Medical Association and the Swedish Pain Society. Dr. Kosek is a reviewer for several scientific journals and has published many articles, book chapters and abstracts. She has lectured at conferences and symposia worldwide.

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Patricia Lavand’homme, Professor of Anaesthesiology, is currently working in St Luc Hospital, University Catholic of Louvain, Brussels, Belgium. She is the director of the Acute Postoperative Pain service. She is dedicated to Orthopedic Anaesthesia, Obstetric Anaesthesia and Pain Clinic. She has a PhD degree in Medical Science.
Patricia did a visiting Scholarship Program at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston Salem, North Carolina, USA (Pain Mechanisms Laboratory, Pr Eisenach).
She also has served as Chairperson of the Scientic Subcommittee “Acute and Chronic Pain” in the European Society of Anesthesiologists – ESA. She is currently an Associated Editor of the European journal of Anesthesiology and a member of the PROSPECT working group. Patricia also is part of the IASP Task Force working with WHO on Pain Classification for ICD-11 (working on chronic postsurgical and posttraumatic pain).

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Cédric Lenoir is currently post-doc research assistant in the Pain Research Group headed by Prof André Mouraux in the Institute of Neuroscience at Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Brussels. His work aims investigating the changes in brain function related to chronic pain and whether neurophysiological measures could predict the development of post-operative chronic pain in patients. After a clinical practice in a pain clinic department as a physiotherapy, he obtained his PhD in the Pain Research Group headed by Prof. André Mouraux in the Institute of Neuroscience at UCLouvain Brussels. During his PhD, his work focused, in humans, on the characterization of the central processing of nociceptive somatosensory inputs by combining non-invasive neuromodulation such as high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) and functional neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). His works highlighted the differential involvement of the primary somatosensory cortex in vibrotaction and nociception. He also demonstrated the predominant role of the operculo-insular cortex in the detection of painful thermonociceptive somatosensory stimuli using deep rTMS of the operculo-insular cortex in healthy volunteers. In parallel, he conducted several studies on the central and peripheral mechanisms involved in nociception during sensitization in particular in the area of secondary hyperalgesia induced by high frequency stimulation of the skin in humans.

Dr. Lannie Ligthart is a researcher at the department of Biological Psychology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, specializing in behavioral genetics, in particular the genetics of migraine and its comorbidity with depression. She obtained her PhD on this topic in 2010, under the supervision of Prof. D.I. Boomsma and Dr. Dale R. Nyholt. Since then, she has conducted a large survey study on migraine an pain symtpoms in the Netherlands Twin Registry (NTR), and for many years coordinated a master course in Behavioral Genetics. Her current research focus is on the relationship between depression and chronic pain conditions in general, as it turns out that depression is associated with many different pain symptoms and chronic pain conditions. In particular she is interested in the genetic overlap between migraine, depression and other pain conditions and in how patterns of genetic correlations between conditions can provide new insights into the underlying mechanisms causing them. In 2012, she received the EFIC-Grünenthal Grant to perform a study on the longitudinal development of symptoms of depression and chronic pain.

I’m the head of the Department of Anesthesia, Intensive Care Medicine, Pain Management, Emergency Medicine and Palliative Medicine at Clinicum Klagenfurt and the Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at the Hospital Wolfsberg.

The Clinicum Klagenfurt offers a comprehensive range from intensive care to palliative care. Pain relief is also highly valued in Carinthia - we are one of the largest pain clinics in Austria.

Another focus, besides clinical activity, is conducting studies. We carry out these studies in the field of intensive care as well as in the field of pain therapy and palliative medicine.

Furthermore, many colleagues in our department are internationally active as lecturers and we are represented in various international professional societies. As well I have already been president of the Austrian Pain Society, furthermore the ÖGARI and the Austrian Palliative Society. I am still council member of EFIC and with my best friend Reinhard Sittl we founded the first pain school of EFIC. That means we are not only engaged in different fields of medicine locally but also nationally and internationally.

Tuomas Lilius, MD, PhD, is a specialist in clinical pharmacology. He is adjunct professor of pharmacology at University of Helsinki and currently works as assistant professor at the Center for Translational Neuromedicine, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He received his medical degree in 2012 and a PhD in 2014 from the University of Helsinki. Dr. Lilius is currently studying the glymphatic system, a recently recognized fluid flow pathway in the brain that allows the interchange of cerebrospinal fluid and brain interstitial fluid. Tuomas’ work has focused on opioid pharmacology, pharmacokinetic interactions of anesthetics and analgesics, and the involvement of neuroinflammation in pain, both in translational and clinical settings.

Steven J. Linton is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Center for Health and Medical Psychology (CHAMP). He combines research with teaching and clinical practice. His research focuses on the role of psychological factors in the development and treatment of pain. To this end he has conducted several impressive longitudinal and clinical studies to identify key processes in the etiology of chronic pain and disability. This has also resulted in theoretical advancements including the fear and avoidance model and a model for the interaction of emotions and pain. He has also worked diligently to advance clinical practice. A host of randomized controlled studies lay at the base of these psychologically oriented treatments for patients with severe chronic pain problems including exposure in-vivo and a hybrid, emotion-focused therapy that he has pioneered. Rather than simply treat chronic pain once developed, Professor Linton has also paved the way to an early identification system based on psychosocial factors for patients with back pain in primary care coupled to early, preventative interventions. Most recently his work has focused on implementing very early preventive interventions focusing on communication and problem solving techniques as well as evaluating the effects of a hybrid therapy for patients suffering chronic pain and disability.
As Professor of Clinical Psychology and scientific leader for the Center for Health and Medical Psychology his duties also involve the operation of the clinical psychology training program and a vibrant research agenda. He currently supervises several doctoral and master level students. He enjoys the great outdoors, self-sufficient gardening, and running!

Marco Loggia is a neuroscientist with a broad background in psychophysical and brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI; including Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) fMRI and Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL)), and integrated Positron Emission Tomography / Magnetic Resonance (PET/MR) imaging. His main research interests focus on the study of pain, with particular emphasis on chronic pain disorders. He is currently the PI of three NIH RO1 projects and co-project leader of a Program Project Grant, all aimed at evaluating brain alterations in chronic pain patients (chronic low back pain, osteoarthritis, HIV neuropathic pain and migraine) using integrated PET/MR imaging.

In 2008 Marco Loggia was awarded a Ph.D. In Neurological Sciences by McGill University in Montreal, QC (Canada). During his graduate studies he had the opportunity to work at the Alan Edwards Centre for Research on Pain (formerly McGill Centre for Research on Pain), under the mentorship of its first director, Prof. M. Catherine Bushnell, a pioneer in the field of human pain imaging. Between 2008 and 2013, he held the position of Research Fellow at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. As of 2013 Marco Loggia is faculty at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Marco Loggia is a recipient of the 2013 Early Career Award from the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and the 2016 IASP Ulf Lindblom Young Investigator Award for Clinical Science.

Lona Louring Christrup: Professor Emerita at the Department of Pharmaceutical Design and Pharmacology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Obtained a master degree in Pharmaceutics in 1983 and PhD degree in Biopharmaceutics in 1986 from the University of Copenhagen after which she joined a tenure track and retired in 2018, however she still active within research.  Research focus have been on opioids: dose response relationships, influence on administration route and dosage form upon pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics (analgesia and side effects), their similarities and differences when used in pain treatment in order to gain an understanding of the individual responses to opioids, with the overall aim of optimizing the pain management and treatment for the individual patient. After the retirement from University of Copenhagen she joined GeneTellingence - Personal Medicine Profile PMP, as head of clinical research and Development. PMP is a pharmacogenetic based decision support tool, helping clinicians choosing the right medicine for the individual patient.

Adriaan earned both an undergraduate as well as a master’s degree in physiotherapy from the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town, South Africa. He is an adjunct faculty member at St. Ambrose University and the University of Nevada Las Vegas, teaching pain science. Adriaan has taught throughout the US and internationally for 20 years at numerous national and international manual therapy, pain science and medical conferences. He is a Certified Spinal Manual Therapist, Certified Pain Specialist and has authored and co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles related to spinal disorders and pain science. Adriaan completed his Ph.D. on pain neuroscience education and is the Director of the Therapeutic Neuroscience Research Group – an independent collaborative initiative studying pain neuroscience. Adriaan is the Program Director of the Therapeutic Pain Specialist and Pain Science Fellowship post-graduate program for Evidence in Motion.

Gary Macfarlane is Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange (LIfe Sciences and Medicine). He has also held the Chair in Epidemiology (Clinical) at The University of Aberdeen since 2005 and previously held the same post at The University of Manchester from 1999. He is an Honorary Consultant in the Department of Public Health in NHS Grampian. He trained in Statistics/ Computing Science and then Medicine at The University of Glasgow before undertaking his PhD at The University of Bristol. He worked at the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan before leading a programme of chronic pain research at the Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit at the University of Manchester.
He leads the Epidemiology group at the University of Aberdeen which focusses its research in Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Diseases (RMD). The RMD programme has programmes of research on: mechanisms of disease onset and outcome (observational epidemiology), identifying effective management for RMDs (Clinical trials and evidence synthesis), and designing optimal delivery of care (health services research). The clinical focus is on common complex conditions (including musculoskeletal pain and fatigue, fibromyalgia, and early osteoarthritis), inflammatory conditions, and rare diseases. The current programme has funding of ~£6m, and we run the British Society of Rheumatology Biologics Register in Ankylosing Spondylitis (BSRBR-AS) and the BSR register in Psoriatic Arthritis (BSR-PsA). We are also part of the Arthritis Research UK/Medical Research Council Centre for Musculoskeletal Health and Work (with University of Southampton). Professor Macfarlane is a Chartered Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society and a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine.

Professor Christian Maihöfner is a neurologist and pain physician with a focus on neuropathic pain, headache and complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). He is a professor for neurology at the University of Erlangen and head of the department of neurology at the General Hospital Fürth, an academic teaching hospital of the University of Erlangen. Besides his activities in general neurology, he leads there an outpatient’s clinic program for CRPS-patients. He studied Medicine at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and at the Imperial College School of Science, Technology and Medicine in London. He undertook his neurology training at the Department of Neurology at the Erlangen University, where he worked as a senior consultant for Neurology and Pain Therapy. He is board certified for Neurology, Neurophysiology and Pain Therapy.

Professor Maihöfner lectures nationally and internationally on the latest advances in neurology, neuropathic pain and complex regional pain syndromes. He has contributed numerous scientific publications and book chapters to the medical literature. Furthermore, he is in 2019 congress president of the German Pain Congress.

Marzia Malcangio is Head of the Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases and Professor of Neuropharmacology at King’s College London where she has established an internationally renowned laboratory devoted to the study of the positive and negative modulation of pain transmission with particular emphasis on chronic pain.

She has published more than 100 papers on pain and edited a book on Synaptic plasticity in Pain. Her current work explores novel approaches to target neuropathic and arthritic pain unveiling the involvement of microglia in the CNS and monocyte/macrophages in the periphery and the mechanisms governing immune-neuronal cell communication.

Anneleen Malfliet holds a PhD in rehabilitation science and physiotherapy. She is a postdoctoral researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University (Belgium), and is a member of the international Pain in Motion research group. She has a special interest in cognition-targeted rehabilitation therapy, exercise neurophysiology, nutritional aspects of pain, pain neuroscience education and communication with people with (chronic) pain. She has published 25 full-text papers (13 as first author) published or accepted for publication in international peer-reviewed journals, like JAMA Neurology (Q1/D1), Physical Therapy Journal (Q1), etc. She also remains close contact with clinical practice by working as a volunteer physiotherapist at the University Hospital Brussels.

Anna Marcuzzi is a researcher and physiotherapist with an interest in the management of musculoskeletal pain. She completed her PhD at Macquarie University (Sydney) in 2017 investigating somatosensory profiles associated with the development of chronic low back pain. Since 2017, she has worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Pain Management Research Institute, University of Sydney. She is using a range of quantitative sensory tests to better understand the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying chronic pain and treatment responses. Her research interests include the assessment of pain sensitization and its impact on clinical outcomes, prognostic factors and the early management of back pain.

Candy McCabe is the Florence Nightingale Foundation Clinical Professor in Nursing  at the University of the West of England, Bristol and the Royal United Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Bath UK. She trained as a nurse at St. Thomas’ Hospital, London and after working in a variety of specialties including ward based and research work she moved to the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases (RNHRD), Bath in the mid- 90’s, which is now part of the RUH. Since this time her research and clinical interests directly relate to increasing our understanding of the mechanisms and potential therapies for those with chronic unexplained pain, particularly that of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) and other Rheumatology and neuropathic pain conditions. She leads an interdisciplinary Clinical Research team that provides national services for those with CRPS and for those suffering with Complex Cancer late effects.

Candy is a member of a number of national and international committees in the specialties of rheumatology and pain, co-founder and Chair of the CRPS UK Clinical Research Network, and Chair of the Scientific committee for the International Research Consortium for CRPS. She is the nursing representative on the NICE Guidelines committee for primary chronic pain and immediate past-Chair of the IASP Special Interest Group for CRPS. She is a past President of the British Health Professionals in Rheumatology and a past-member of the British Pain Society Scientific Committee.

Stephen McMahon is Sherrington Professor of Physiology at King’s College London. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He trained with Prof PD Wall at University College London and since then has run his own research laboratory in London.

His major research interest is pain mechanisms. He has a long-standing interest in identifying pain mediators and studying their neurobiological actions. He has worked extensively on the role of NGF (neutralizing antibodies now in multiple phase III trials), ATP acting at P2X3 receptors (receptor antagonists now in multiple phase II and III trials). His current research is focused on neuro-immune interactions, particularly the neurobiology of chemokines, and the genetics and epigenetics of pain.

Professor McMahon currently directs the Wellcome Trust Pain Consortium, and prior to this, the London Pain Consortium, a collection of leading pain researchers working to better understand chronic pain mechanisms and improve treatments. He was academic lead on a EU-IMI consortium called Europain, a collaboration of scientists working in academia and industry, 2009-2015. He is also deputy Chair of the MRC’s Neuroscience and Mental Health Board.

He has published more than 300 research articles in scientific journals including, Nature, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, Cell, Neuron and the Journal of Neuroscience and has an H-index of 102 (https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=Qz9HihUAAAAJ&hl=en).

C. Meghan McMurtry completed her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS, Canada and her psychology residency at Brown University in Providence, RI, United States in 2010. She is an Associate Professor in the CPA-accredited Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology program at the University of Guelph in Guelph, ON, Canada where she is director of the Pediatric Pain, Health, and Communication Lab. Dr. McMurtry is a Clinical and Health Psychologist with the Pediatric Chronic Pain Program at McMaster Children’s Hospital. She is an Adjunct Research Professor in Paediatrics at Western University and an Associate Scientist at the Children’s Health Research Institute. Dr. McMurtry’s research and clinical interests in child health psychology focus on acute and chronic pain, medical procedure-related fear, as well as communication and family influences in these contexts. Her research has been funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Team for Research with Adolescents and Children in Palliation and Grief, Genome Canada, and the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation.

Megan McPhee is a young researcher from Queensland, Australia, currently working on her PhD at the Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP), SMI®, at Aalborg University in Denmark. She holds a Bachelor of Physiotherapy (Hons) from the University of Queensland, and an MSc Med in Pain Management from the University of Sydney. In the past, she has worked on understanding the perceived complexity of exercises for low back pain, and finding the best management approaches for acute musculoskeletal pain in the emergency department. Her current research focusses on understanding the relationship between mechanisms of pain inhibition and facilitation, and the experience of low back pain over time, in both experimental models and clinical conditions. Beyond this, she has a broader interest in perception and perceptual learning, along with the interplay between attention, affect, expectation, movement and pain. At present, she has co-authored 11 peer-reviewed articles, 7 conference abstracts, 2 opinion pieces and a book chapter. She is highly motivated to contribute to the pain research community and is thrilled to have the opportunity to share her PhD work at the 2019 EFIC Congress.

Kaare Meier received his medical degree from University of Southern Denmark in 2006 and his PhD from the Danish Pain Research Center, Aarhus University in 2012. He is currently employed as staff specialist at Department of Anesthesiology and Department of Neurosurgery at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark.

His field of work is neuromodulation therapies for chronic pain, primarily spinal cord stimulation, and more recently also peripheral nerve stimulation for extremity pain and occipital nerve stimulation for cluster headache.

As the author of the only international database for neuromodulation therapies, he holds great interest in the economic and epidemiological aspects of neuromodulation, but he has also been active in animal research, clinical trials, and neurological studies of spinal cord stimulation.

Kaare Meier is the chairman of the Nordic Neuromodulation Society and a board member of the International Neuromodulation Society.

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Bart Jan Morlion has been Head of the Leuven Centre for Algology (formerly the Multidisciplinary Pain Centre) at the University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, since 1999. He received his medical degree in 1988 from the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and subsequently trained in anesthesiology, intensive care medicine, and pain management at the Klinik für Anästhesiologie und operative Intensivmedizin, Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany, where he was appointed head of the clinical research unit of the department in 1995.

In 1988 he moved to the University Hospitals Leuven, and in 2011 gained his PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the KU Leuven, where he was appointed as clinical professor in 2012. From 2006-2012 he has been the President of the Belgian Pain Society - the Belgian Chapter of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) - and during this period he represented Belgium as councillor in the European Pain Federation EFIC©. Since 2013 he is member of the executive board of the European Pain Federation EFIC© as president-elect and took office as president in September 2017 for a three-year term.

He is program director of the Belgian Interuniversity Postgraduate Studies in Pain Management and is also an active member of several committees of international scientific societies.

Professor Morlion teaches pain management, pharmacology and evidence-based medicine at KU Leuven and several international higher institutions, since 1999. He has given more than 450 international and national invited lectures and seminars on pain management and clinical nutrition, and has authored a number of primary manuscripts, reviews, books, and book sections. He is the deputy editor of the European Journal of Pain, and a regular reviewer for several international journals. His professional interests include all aspects of multimodal chronic pain management, analgesics, and quality management. His clinical research focuses on the pharmacological treatment of chronic pain and organizational aspects of multidisciplinary pain management.

André Mouraux (MD, PhD) heads a research group specialized in research on the physiology of the nociceptive system in humans, especially the cortical processes underlying the perception of pain. Using non-invasive functional neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), combined with novel techniques to selectively activate specific classes of nociceptive afferents (temperature-controlled infrared laser stimulation, mechanical pinprick stimulation, electric stimulation) and neuromodulation (transcranial direct current stimulation, transcranial magnetic stimulation), he aims at better understanding the neural processes underlying the perception of pain, the plastic changes in nociceptive pathways that occur after inflammation, injury or sustained nociceptive input, and its involvement in the development of chronic pain. These approaches are also translated into clinical tools for the diagnosis and follow-up of chronic pain conditions (http://www.nocions.org).

Dr. Müller is a medical doctor and holds a PhD in epidemiology jointly awarded by the Swiss School of Public Health and University of Bern, Switzerland. For her thesis on “Clinical application of quantitative sensory tests to assess altered central pain processing in chronic pain patients” she received a scholarship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. In her PhD training she focused on clinical research methodology and biostatistics and developed methodological skills in advanced statistical methods such as prognostic modelling including trajectories, multiple imputation and causal modelling. As a psychiatrist she has broad clinical experience in emotional and motivational aspects of pain management. She currently works as senior clinician at the service of addiction medicine of the University Hospital of Psychiatry in Geneva. She is particularly interested in the bidirectional relationship of chronic pain and opioid dependency and treats in this capacity opioid-dependent patients who develop a pain disorder as well as chronic pain patients developing opioid-dependency as a result of abuse of pain medication.

Dr Matt Mulvey gained his PhD in Neurophysiology of pain from Leeds Beckett University, UK, in 2010. Since that time Dr Mulvey’s research has focused on the epidemiology, assessment and management of pain in people with cancer. Dr Mulvey completed a 2 year post-doc in the epidemiology of chronic pain from 2010 to 2012 in the Epidemiology Unit at the University of Manchester, UK. In November 2012, Dr Mulvey moved to the University of Leeds where, as a post-doc researcher, he developed a programme of research investigating the physiology of pain in cancer. Dr Mulvey has led a number of nationally funded research projects developing complex interventions to support the self-management of pain and analgesia at the end of life. In September 2017 Matt was awarded a five year fellowship funded by Yorkshire Cancer Research to develop novel interventions to improve the assessment and management of cancer pain for pain specialists and non-pain specialists.

Currently Dr Mulvey is leading an international collaborative research project using Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST). The project will evaluate the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) algorithm for diagnosing neuropathic pain in cancer against the NeupSIG neuropathic pain grading system. The project will also describe common pain phenotypes using QST data from a heterogeneous sample of cancer patients with tumour-related pain.

Melanie Noel, PhD, RPsych is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Calgary and a Full Member of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, and the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education. She directs the Alberta Children’s Pain Research Lab within the Vi Riddell Pain & Rehabilitation Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Noel’s expertise is on children’s memories for pain and co-occurring mental health issues and pediatric chronic pain. She published conceptual models of children’s pain memory development, co-occurring PTSD and chronic pain, and fear-avoidance (72 peer-reviewed papers, H index = 21). In recognition of her contributions to advancing knowledge of the psychological aspects of children’s pain, Dr. Noel received early career awards from the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), the Canadian Pain Society, the American Pain Society, the Canadian Psychological Association, and the Society of Pediatric Psychology.
Dr. Noel co-chairs the Pain in Child Health Research Training Initiative and is the vice chair of the Scientific Program Committee (SPC) of the Canadian Pain Society. She is an advocate for the use of developmentally tailored psychological interventions for pediatric pain management and serves on committees to promote and implement evidence-based interventions within her children’s hospital and beyond. As an evidence lead on the Help Eliminate Pain in Kids and Adults team, Dr. Noel co-authored clinical practice guidelines for pain and fear management for vaccine injections. Many of these recommendations were adopted by the World Health Organization.

Dr. Nurmikko is a former Professor and Chair of Pain Science, University of Liverpool UK and Past Chairman of IASP’s Neuropathic Pain Special Interest Group, NeuPSIG. He currently works as a scientific advisor and research collaborator in a number of clinical studies on neuropathic pain. He has been a member of several Task Forces on the diagnosis and treatment of trigeminal neuralgia, including Co-Chair (Cranial Neuralgia Section) of the 2018 The International Classification of Headache Disorders (ICDH-3) which provides the background for his presentation.

Gráinne O’Leary is Chief Executive of Arthritis Ireland where she is leading the strategy of the charity to be one of the leading patient centric medical research charities in Ireland.

Before becoming Chief Executive in January 2018, Gráinne developed and implemented Arthritis Ireland’s suite of patient support services, including the innovative Stanford University self-management programme, a national helpline and a national physical activity programme in partnership with the Irish Society for Chartered Physiotherapists.

She has developed key relationships across the healthcare arena, including with corporate partners and funders, healthcare professionals, the HSE and related agencies, professional bodies, academia, government officials and other patient groups.

She serves as a Board member of the Disability Federation of Ireland and IPPOSI - The Irish Platform for Patient Organisations, Science and Industry.

Kaya Peerdeman works as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Health, Medical and Neuropsychology department of Leiden University, the Netherlands. She completed her PhD dissertation ‘Harnessing placebo effects by targeting expectancies’ in early 2018 in the research group Psychoneurobiology of Health and Disease under the supervision of Prof. Andrea Evers, prof. Madelon Peters, and Dr. Antoinette van Laarhoven.
In her research she focuses on unraveling the psychophysiological mechanisms of placebo and nocebo effects on pain, itch, and fatigue. In addition, she looks at how placebo and nocebo effects can be translated to clinical practice to improve health care.

Madelon Peters is professor of Experimental Health Psychology at Maastricht University, where she chairs the Experimental Health Psychology research section. She studied Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, with a specialization in psychophysiology. She obtained her PhD at Maastricht University in 1992, and after having worked a few years at Utrecht University she returned to Maastricht for a tenured position. Her main interest focuses on how psychological factors influence pain perception and their association with chronic pain and disability. In addition to psychological vulnerabilities, she is interested in resilience factors, more specifically in the role of optimism. She received the prestigious VICI Innovative Research grant from the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research for her project “Optimism as a resiliency for pain, pathways and intervention”. She published more than 200 papers and presented her work on many international conferences as well as to the general public. Her latest work concentrates on the prediction and prevention of persistent pain after surgery and on novel strategies to improve the life of chronic pain patients. She developed and tested a positive psychology web-based intervention for chronic pain, which is made available for health care providers. This intervention has also been published in the form of a self-help book.

Professor Gisèle Pickering (MD,PhD, DPharm) is Professor of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology at the University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand, France. She coordinates the Inserm CIC 1405 Clinical Research Centre and is a permanent member of the Inserm 1407 Laboratory of Fundamental and Clinical Pharmacology of Pain. Her main topics of research concern the mechanism of action of analgesics, the impact of pain on cognitive-emotional processes and pain management in older persons. She presently coordinates clinical trials in cancer patients, neuropathic pain, and in fibromyalgia, with a special focus on pain relief and quality of life. She regularly contributes to peer-reviewed publications on Pharmacology and pain, to international meetings and belongs to national and international Pain, Pharmacology and Geriatrics Societies. She is the French Councillor at the European Pain Society (EFIC). She is the author of over 150 publications and the editor of several books.

Rief, Winfried, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Philipps University of Marburg, Germany. Head of the Clinic for Psychological Interventions. License for psychotherapy and supervision. Dr. Rief worked for many years in hospital settings (e.g., Roseneck Hospital for Psychosomatic Medicine, Prien a. Ch.). He is specialized in placebo- and nocebo effects, classification of chronic pain conditions, perception and coping with somatic symptoms, optimization of clinical studies and interventions. He was guest professor at Harvard Medical School, Boston (2004/2005), University of Auckland Medical School (2002), and University of California San Diego (2009/2010). Additionally, he was nominated for the expert committee of WHO/APA for the revision of the classification of mental disorders according to DSM-5, and he is co-chairing the WHO working group on chronic pain diagnoses in ICD-11. Dr. Rief is elected coordinator for grant applications to the German Research Foundation and he is spokesperson of the DFG-research unit on placebo and nocebo mechanisms. He received the Distinguished Researchers award in Behavioral Medicine in 2014.

Since 2014 Prof. Rolke is Chair and Director of the Department of Palliative Medicine, RWTH Aachen University. Before he was the Assistant Medical Director of the Department of Palliative Medicine (Director Prof. Lukas Radbruch) at the University Hospital of Bonn. He worked before as a neurologist (senior physician) in the Department of Neurology, University of Mainz, Germany. For some years, he also joined the pain research group of Prof. Rolf-Detlef Treede (Neurophysiology of pain, former IASP president).
Specifically, his research interests include the pathophysiology and therapy of neuropathic cancer pain. He was involved in the development of the protocol for the implementation of quantitative sensory testing in the context of the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain (DFNS). He managed nationwide training sessions in this methodology for the measurement of pain sensitivity. Within the neuro-scientific focus and palliative medicine approach of the University Clinics of Mainz, Bonn and Aachen, he conducted studies in the area of “back pain”, “neuropathic pain” and “cancer pain”. Prof. Rolke is first author of several internationally acclaimed studies in high level journals. In 2007, he won the 1st prize for clinical pain research of the German Pain Association, the most prestigious German pain prize. Prof. Rolke was member of the Research Committee and is editor of a patient´s guide of this society. He gave numerous lectures in the aforementioned Universities and organised several national and international congress workshops (IASP Cancer Pain SIG, NeuPSIG, EFIC, EAPC).
Prof. Rolke is member of the IASP, EAPC, German Palliative Care Association and German Pain Association. He served as an Associate Editor of PAIN and the European Journal of Pain, and is reviewer for many other journals such as e.g. Palliativmedizin, PAIN, European Journal of Pain, Journal of Pain, Schmerz, Neurology.
Prof. Rolke is married and has three children.

Giorgio Sandrini is Full Professor of Neurology in the University of Pavia, , Italy and he developed his clinical activity mainly as Chairman of the Department of Neurology and Neurorehabilitation at the Institute of Neurology, “C. Mondino” Foundation, and as Director of University Centre for Adaptive Disorders and Headache (UCADH).
The main fields of his research are neurorehabilitation,headache and neurophysiology of pain.He published more than 300 articles concerning these topics.
He promoted several research and Congresses as President of the European Federation of the Neuro-Rehabilitation Societies and as President of the Italian Society of Neurorehabilitation. In particular,he was Chairman of an European Committee on Curriculum in Neurorehabilitation.
About the field of headache,he was Chairman of the International Headache Society Italian Linguistic Special Interest Group and Co-Chairman with Prof.L.Friberg of the European Federation of Neurological Societies Task Force on Neurophysiological Tests and Neuroimaging Procedures in Non-acute Headache.
The guidelines on neurophysiological tests and neuroimaging in non-acute headache define when it is usefull to carry out an investigation in these patients and they give a contribution
about the instrumental markers in headache.
If pathogenetic mechanisms are different in migraine and tension type headache is yet argument of debate . Neurophysiological investigations,biological markers as well as neuroimaging studies gave a contribution to clarify this controversial issue.

Katharina Schmidt has studied psychology in Hamburg, Germany.
After her studies she finished her PhD in 2016 at Ulrike Bingel’s pain & cognition lab in Hamburg. The topic of her thesis was the interaction of pain and cognitive processes, specifically modulating influences, such as the stimulated body site or the influence of expectation on the interruptive function of pain.
Since 2016 she is working as a postdoc researcher at the University Hospital in Essen, Germany with Ulrike Bingel. She is currently investigating learning processes in the context of pain using fear conditioning experimental pain paradigms and clinical open label placebo paradigms.

Pat is Professor of Pain & Ageing. She is an active research professor leading a number of grants around pain and ageing and or dementia.  She has recently completed a number of major programmes of research around pain in older adults. A cross council programme of research under the LLHW banner which is Designing and Developing Strategies for the Self Management of Chronic Pain (EOPIC) and the second project is New technologies to support older people at home: maximising personal and social interaction funded by dot.rural and the third project is an EU funded programme Pain Assessment in Patients with Impaired Cognition, especially Dementia.  She has also completed a local study funded by HIEC looking at education of staff to improve the management of pain in adults with dementia within an acute trust and a study looking at the use of the iPhone for pain assessment in dementia and a study looking at peer education for older adults. At the moment she is working on an SBRI funded project looking at the use of chatbot technology for self management of chronic pain based upon her earlier work. In total Pat has been awarded over £2.5m in research funding.  Pat has over 200 peer reviewed publications and many books in the area. She has recently been awarded an honorary European Diploma in Pain Medicine for her contribution to education and is a member of the curriculum development group for the European Diploma in Pain Nursing and an examiner on the European Diploma in Pain Medicine. Pat still works with older adults in helping to shape her research and she is patron to the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster pensioner forum which consists of over 1500 pensioners from across London.

Vinil Shah, MD, is an Assistant professor of Radiology in the Neuroradiology subspecialty in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco. He received his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in Pennsylvania and completed a one-year internship at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York in 2007. Dr. Shah did his Radiology residency from 2007-2011 at UCSF, serving as chief resident in 2010. From 2011-2013, he completed a clinical fellowship and a Chief fellowship in Neuroradiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. From 2013-2014, Dr. Shah was a clinical fellow in Musculoskeletal Imaging and Intervention at the same institution. In August 2014, Dr. Shah accepted the position of Assistant Professor of Clinical Radiology in Neuroradiology at UCSF.

Dr. Shah’s research interests include studying spinal imaging biomarkers to help guide intervention and assessing clinical outcomes of spine intervention. Other interests include structured reporting, teaching, and radiology curricula development. He is actively involved in teaching, lecturing nationally and internationally, and is an instructor of the Spine Intervention Society. Dr. Shah is also the neuroradiology fellowship program director at UCSF.

More details will follow.

Dr. Simons is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. She direct the Stanford Biobehavioral Pediatric Pain (BPP) Lab and is clinical psychologist who evaluates and treats children and adolescents who present with chronic pain in Pediatric Pain Management Clinic at Stanford Children’s Health. Dr. Simons’ research spans assessment scale development, treatment intervention, and experimental and neuroimaging methods to gain a mechanistic understanding of altered psychological processes in children with chronic pain and their parents.

Pierre Sirois was born in Quebec City the 12th December 1945, has obtained a B.A. from Laval University, a B.Sc. in Biochemistry, a M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from University of Sherbrooke. Three years of postdoctoral studies at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Imperial College of Science and Technology of London and at the Hospital for Sick Children of Toronto in pharmacology and immunology have completed his education. He then joined the Medical School of University of Sherbrooke in 1978 and has been promoted full professor of Pharmacology in 1987. He has been Chair of the Department of Pharmacology from 1987 to 1999. During his years at the direction of the Department of Pharmacology, Dr. Sirois has trained a number of pharmacologists and funded the Institute of Pharmacology of Sherbrooke. He is now adjunct professor of Laval University Medical School (Quebec City). He also created two biotech companies: IPS Pharma Inc. which developed a drug for diabetic complications (mainly neuropathic pain) and IPS Therapeutique Inc., a successful CRO evaluating the Efficacy and Safety pharmacology of NCEs. The research interests of Dr. Sirois are focused on the pathophysiology inflammatory reactions and asthma. Dr. Sirois has played a major role in the characterization of the structure of SRS-A, now called leukotrienes, and of their pharmacological activities. He is the author of more than 360 publications and 550 abstracts in international journals. He has been invited to deliver more than 300 conferences in various countries. Dr. Sirois has been Scholar of the Medical Research Council of Canada and the “Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec” for a number of years. He also received selected awards including the Medical Research Council Scientist Award and was knighted of “L’Ordre de la Pléiade” from the Quebec Government. He has been a member of numerous in-house, university and national committees and on the board of many companies and associations. He is an executive editor of international scientific journal and on the Editorial Board of many others. Other interests: Dr. Sirois is a certified multi-engine and instrument-rated pilot.

Ina Skyt received her Master’s degree in Psychology from Aarhus University, Denmark, in 2016. She has been working in pain research since 2012, currently as PhD Student at the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences, Aarhus University. Her research focuses on how psychological interventions may contribute to the efficacy of active pain treatments, primarily in relation to chronic pain management, with a special focus on placebo effects. During her PhD, she has specifically investigated the contribution of expectancy, desire and the dopaminergic system in placebo effects in chronic neuropathic pain patients.

Prof. dr Rob J.E.M. Smeets (1964) is a physiatrist since 1995 and received his PhD in medicine in 2006 (effectiveness of different treatment modalities for chronic disabling low back pain and measuring performance). From 1995 until 2008 he worked as a physiatrist at Libra Rehabilitation and Audiology in Eindhoven. From may 2008 until may 2009 he worked as a research fellow at the George Institute of Global Health, affiliated with the University of Sydney, in Sydney, Australia. In June 2009 he was appointed full professor in Rehabilitation Medicine (0.5 fte) and is working as physiatrist at CIR Revalidatie (0.6) at Eindhoven and Zwolle.
He specialized in the physical as well as cognitive behavioral treatments of chronic musculoskeletal pain and chronic fatigue patients and is responsible for the development, research and implementation of new diagnostic tools and treatments for these patients. He has successfully transferred the clinical department of Rehabilitation Medicine into an innovative academic working place and developed new diagnostic and treatment care pathways between primary and secondary care, especially in the field of musculoskeletal disorders.
Other research topics are mediating and moderating processes and clinimetrics of outcome measures including performance tasks. He has been involved in several (inter)national guideline committees, (past) chair of the International Association of the Study of Pain (IASP) special interest group op Pain & Movement, chair of scientific working group of the Dutch Association of Rehabilitation Medicine (2011-2014), and member (till 2014) of the scientific committee of the 7th World Congress of World Institute of Pain (2014). He is internationally recognized in the area of musculoskeletal pain research as well as rehabilitation medicine. He has served >70 times as keynote, obtained >5 million Euro of grants and co(authored) >140 international peer reviewed articles. Although he only started publishing in 2006, his work has been cited >5000 times and has an H-index of 32 (ISI Web of Knowledge) and 45 (Google Scholar). He has supervised 14 PhD’s and 4 postdocs and is currently supervising 13 PhD’s, including 2 in Belgium and 1 from Germany. He is associate editor of Pain Practice and European Journal of Physiotherapy.

More details will follow.

Prof. Matthew Smuck, MD is the Chief of PM&R and Associate Professor in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Stanford University. He is also the Medical Director of Rehabilitation Services for Stanford Healthcare where he specializes in the comprehensive conservative management of spine disorders. He is a physician leader and current Vice President of the Spine Intervention Society (SIS), and has served on the Board of Directors of the North American Spine Society (NASS) and the Foundation for PM&R. Dr. Smuck is also an award-winning researcher who pioneered the new field of physical performance monitoring. He directs the Wearable Health Lab at Stanford, investigating medical applications of mobile technology to improve musculoskeletal and neurologic disease detection, treatment and prevention. His work is recognized by numerous research society awards and publication awards, including the ISSLS Medtronic Award in 2012, the American Academy of PM&R’s 2014 President’s Citation Award, the PM&R Journal’s 2015 Best Original Research Award, the 2016 ISSLS Prize, and The Spine Journal’s Outstanding Paper Award in 2013, 2016, 2017 & 2018.

Pain Alliance Europe (PAE) Board Member – Spain

Maria Soledad García Penalta lives in A Coruña, Spain. She works as a Senior Officer Assistant for the Coruña Biomedical Institute Foundation: This institution promotes biomedical research, education for young researchers, and brings science to citizens through a series of lectures and workshops. She is a member of the management board of Pain Alliance Europe (PAE), an institution that aims to promote awareness for chronic pain, promoting a European policy to reduce the impact of chronic pain on the European society on all areas. A chronic pain patient herself, she firmly believes that the experience of pain represents a substantial burden on both individuals and the economy, not only with reduced participation in the labour force and increased absenteeism and presentism, but with substantially higher patterns of healthcare resource utilization. Changes are necessary and time for patients and professionals to work together to pressure the legislatures to update and universalize health systems across Europe to establish more equal and effective coverage for everyone.

Dusica M. Stamenkovic, MD, PhD, Anesthesiologist, Assoc. Prof. of Anesthesiology, Medical faculty, University of Defense in Belgrade, Serbia
EDUCATION Doctor of philosophy (PhD) awarded at Medical School, University of Belgrade (2004). Master of Science Oncology, Medical School, University of Belgrade (1999). MD top ten percentile in the class (GPA of 9.13), Medical School, University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1994). Residency training. Medical School, University of Belgrade, Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, Clinic for Anesthesia and Intensive Therapy (1996-2000).
APPOINTMENTS Anesthesiologist, Military Medical Academy, Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Belgrade, Serbia (2008-present), Instructor in anesthesiology, Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Department of Anesthesiology, St. Louis, MO, USA (2005.-2007). Research Fellow in liver transplant, Anesthesia Department, St James’s University Hospital, Leeds, United Kingdom (2004-2005).
TEACHING POSITIONS Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Medical School Military Medical Adacemy, University of Defence in Belgrade (2014), Visiting Professor, Attending Anesthesiologist, Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, Department of Anesthesiology, St. Louis, MO, USA (2005-2007).
RESERCH AND PUBLICATIONS Field of interest includes application of noninvasive cortical stimulation for acute pain treatment, chronic postICU pain, preoperative anxiety and consequences on postoperative recovery and improvement of postoperative pain management (EFIC PainOut Project). Editor of book (Acute postoperative pain), author and co-author in four chapters in national and international books. Author and co-author of 83 papers in international (39) and national (44) medical journals. Invited speaker at international (23) and national (29) meetings. Author and co-author of 59 abstracts published in international conference proceedings (41) and national conference proceedings (18). Participation in local, regional, and national activities including organization of Pain Service at Department of Anesthesiology, Military Medical Academy, Board member of Serbian Pain Society (SePaS), Serbian Association of Anesthesiologists and Intesivists (SAAI). Member of Organizing and Scientific Committee of Belgrade International Symposium on Pain (2017,2018,2019); Serbian Congress of Anesthesiologists and Intesivists (2014;2018), President of the Comitee for standards and protocols appointed by SAAI (2014-2018); Final Four! Residents’ Compatition, Founder and Organizer, Associate editor in BMC Anesthesiology and Serbian Journal of Anaesthesia and Intensive Therapy (SJAIT). Reviewer in four international journals.

Cathy Stannard has worked as a Consultant in Pain Medicine for 23 years and is now a Consultant in Complex Pain and Pain Transformation Programme Clinical Lead for NHS Gloucestershire CCG. She has written numerous chapters and four textbooks on aspects of pain management, evidence, and opioid therapy in particular and published widely on the use of opioids for persistent pain and the potential implications of analgesic prescribing for public health. She has chaired working groups for the Medical Royal Colleges, professional organisations and policymakers on Pain and Substance Misuse, Best Practice in Opioid Prescribing, Pain and Addiction and Pain Management in Secure Environments. Cathy is involved in the work of a number of bodies including, PHE, MHRA, European Medicines Agency, and the Cochrane collaboration. She is board member of the IASP special interest group on Systematic Reviews and Outcome Evaluation, Member of the IASP International Taskforce on Opioids and group member for the WHO Guideline on Cancer Pain Management. Cathy is currently Clinical lead for the NICE Guideline on Chronic Pain. She has a busy schedule of lectures nationally and internationally on use of opioids and on problem opioid use to policymakers, professionals working in the field of pain and other medical disciplines. She has run multidisciplinary services for patients on high dose opioids and patients with challenging psychiatric co-morbidity. She has recently led a national strategy for improving pain management in prisons and provides in-reach pain services to five prisons in the South West of England. Cathy frequently contributes to conversations about pain, opioids and painkiller addiction in both written and broadcast media.

Prof Brigitte Tampin is a Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist and works as an Advanced Scope Physiotherapist at the Neurosurgery Spinal Clinic, Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Western Australia. In her role she assesses patients with spinal pain to determine optimal treatment strategies (surgery and non-invasive management). Brigitte obtained her Physiotherapy undergraduate training in Germany and her postgraduate training (Grad.Dip.Manip.Ther, MSc, PhD) at Curtin University/Perth. She is a clinical researcher, she holds a part time Professorship in Physiotherapy at Hochschule Osnabrück, University of Applied Sciences, Germany and she is an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the School of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science, Curtin University, Perth. She obtained a post-doc Clinician Research Fellowship from the Western Australian Department of Health and Raine Medical Research Foundation.

Brigitte has a strong clinical and research background and growing national and international reputation in the assessment and management of neuro-musculoskeletal pain disorders and neuropathic pain. Her PhD studies addressed the assessment of neuropathic pain in patients with nerve-related neck-arm pain, using the NeuPSIG grading system for neuropathic pain, the quantitative sensory testing (QST) protocol of the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain (DFNS) and neuropathic pain screening tools.

Some of her post-doctoral studies investigated (i) the assessment of neuropathic pain and altered sensory nerve function in patients with lumbar radicular pain, using QST and (ii) if altered sensory profiles may be associated with pain persistency in patients under conservative management and in patients following lumbar discectomy. Brigitte will present her study findings and demonstrate the heterogeneity of patients with lumbar radicular pain. Her combined roles as clinician, researcher and educator place her in a unique position to translate her research findings into clinical practice.

For more than 20 years I have been involved in chronic pain as a former CRPS patient and as Chair of the CRPS patient Society in the Netherlands and Chair of a patient society of 18 patient organizations (representing 40.000 patients) where chronic pain plays an important role. I have been involved in national and international research groups and participated in writing en developing the Evidence Based Guideline CRPS (2006 and 2014) and the Care Standard Chronic Pain (2017). I am also involved in the implementation of the Standard Chronic Pain in the Netherlands via Health Deal (regional ‘living labs’) to change the health care organization for chronic pain. For five years I am involved in improving pain management and registration of pain after surgery to get better care and cure in an academic hospital. I was a member of the Task Force CRPS from the EFIC and I am board member of the American CRPS Patient Society (RSDSA).

Dr Simon Thomson MBBS FRCA FIPP FFPMRCA

Consultant in pain medicine and neuromodulation

Pain and Neuromodulation Consulting Ltd

Nuffield Health, Brentwood and The London Clinic

Clinical Lead of Pain and Neuromodulation at BTUH NHSFT

Emeritus Director at Large of INS

www.drsimonthomson.com and twitter @drsimonthomson

Leon Timmerman is an anaesthesiologist-pain specialist working in the St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. He performed his doctoral research on medication adherence of chronic pain patients at the Center for Pain Medicine of the Erasmus MC  university hospital in Rotterdam. He is head of the Anesthesiology Research and Development department of the St. Antonius Hospital. His personal fields of interest are pharmacological pain therapy, medication adherence and postoperative pain management.

Thomas R. Tölle is a Professor of Neurology at the Technische Universität München, Germany. He is a neurologist and psychologist by training. He was formerly also appointed as Professor of Medical Psychology and Neurobiology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. He combines a basic and clinical research department with running a multi-disciplinary pain clinic.
He set up an interdisciplinary research group for clinical and experimental research into pain, focusing primarily on the neurobiological mechanisms of neuronal plasticity, pharmacological treatment and central imaging with fMRI and PET. His research and clinical interests also include the prevention and treatment of chronic neuropathic pain and he is the spokesman and runs the head office of the German Research Network for Neuropathic Pain (DFNS). He served as the president of the German IASP chapter and was chair the scientific program committee for the EFIC European Pain Congress in 2017 in Copenhagen. Currently, he is a member at large of the Executive Board of EFIC and chair of the committee for advocacy in the EXB.

He was also s plenary speaker on world congress of pain of IASP and worked in various task forces of IASP, has authored many peer-reviewed publications, participated in the development of various treatment guidelines and lectures on many aspects of pain medicine all over the world.

Hans Törnblom MD PhD

Dept of Internal Medicine & Clinical Nutrition, Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.

e-mail: hans.tornblom@gu.se         

Hans Törnblom is a Consultant Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden, a tertiary referral center for complex intestinal problems, particularly within the field of neurogastroenterology. He is former scientific secretary of the Scandinavian Association for Gastrointestinal Motility (SAGIM) as well as the Swedish Society of Gastroenterology and is representing the European Society of Neurogastroenterology and Motility (ESNM) in the Public Affairs Committee of United European Gastroenterology.

His current research includes a wide area of translational and basic science studies, involving pathogenetic and pathophysiologic mechanisms in functional gastrointestinal disorders and their possible linkage to symptoms, particularly in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). In his current clinical practice, severe nausea and vomiting refractory to standard treatment options is a special interest, particularly within the area of neurostimulation, both with temporary and permanent gastric electrical stimulation devices. In studies of severe IBS, enteral dysmotility and intestinal pseudo-obstruction, a thorough knowledge of both diagnostic and treatment aspects of visceral neuropathies has resulted. Based on these, he has been part of a Rome Foundation Working Team report on the use of neuromodulating pharmacotherapy in functional gastrointestinal disorders.

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Dr. Treister currently serves as a faculty member at the Faculty of Social Welfare & Health Sciences, University of Haifa, were he leads the Clinical Pain Innovation Laboratory. He began his academic carrier in the Department of Psychology, and has later moved on to pursue his PhD in pain neurophysiology at The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion. Dr. Treister has held a post-doc position at Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. Dr. Treister research focus on innovation in pain assessment and diagnosis, methodological aspects of pain research, and assessment of innovative analgesic treatments.

More details will follow.

More details will follow.

Trained in Genetic Epidemiology at the University of California Berkeley, Ana Valdes is Associate Professor of musculoskeletal genetics at the University of Nottingham. For the past 15 years extensively worked in the field of osteoarthritis having participated in several of the large-consortia for OA genetics. She has pioneered work on candidate gene associations to symptomatic osteoarthritis and published the first genome wide association study on neuropathic pain symptoms post total joint replacement. Her work spans genetics and metabolomic profiling of this and other common diseases with specific emphasis on pain. Her current emphasis is to understand the molecular basis of OA pain using metabolomic and lipidomic approaches linking the omic data to quantitative sensory testing phenotypes.

After passing for gymnasium, Rianne continued with Nursing on the higher professional educational level, being a student nurse in the Radboud university medical center. At the age of 23, she received her Bachelor of Nursing. Her job was offered immediately after her graduation in the department of General Internal Medicine and then at the Thorax / Heart Surgery department. After three years, she started nursing education specializing in intensive care nursing. After four years at the Intensive Care department, she accepted the position of clinical pain nursing consultant at the Department of Anesthesiology, Pain and Palliative Medicine. She is still working at this department and has since been employed as a nursing expert and is the hospital leader for the theme “Early Recognition and Treatment of Pain”. In this function, she is responsible for all aspects of pain in patients, such as protocols, work instructions, patient education, training programs, reports and quality improvement programs of individual departments.

In addition to clinical work, Rianne initiated the two-year post-graduate program for pain nursing consultant at the HAN University of Applied Sciences. She still coordinates this training and some other courses related to pain and palliative care at the HAN. Furthermore, she has accepted the assignment to promote research and evidence based practice and give these topics a more prominent place in the courses within HAN VDO.
In 2013 she won a personal scholarship, “NWO Promotion Grant for Teachers”, to start her PhD study on acute postoperative pain management in collaboration with the Radboud University Medical Center and HAN. In 2017 she successfully defended her PhD thesis called:
Improving postoperative pain care: an Acute Pain Service data analysis.

Stefaan Van Damme focuses on fundamental-theoretical as well as more applied research on the interplay between cognitive, affective, and motivational processes related to (chronic) pain. His research career began in 2000 at Ghent University, when he started a PhD under the supervision of Geert Crombez. The PhD project consisted of a series of fundamental studies disentangling attentional processes related to pain processing and involved a collaboration with Chris Eccleston (Bath). After receiving his doctoral degree in 2004, he became a post-doc research fellow, funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), and extended his fundamental work on attentional pain processing by focusing on cross-model interactions. A research visit in Oxford (UK) resulted in a collaboration with Charles Spence, Lorimer Moseley, and Alberto Gallace. For his research in the area of pain and attention, Stefaan received several awards such as the EFIC Grünenthal Grant (2004), Belgian Pain Society Prize (2007), and the IASP Early Career Research Grant (2008). In 2009 he was appointed at Ghent University, where he currently holds a position as Associate Professor. Since then Stefaan broadened his scope and started to adopt a broader self-regulation perspective on pain incorporating cognitive, affective, and motivational processes. In the following years, he received funding for 3 research projects, and supervised several PhD students (Lore Van Hulle, Charlotte Vanden Bulcke, Wouter Durnez). Currently, he also (co-)supervises PhD students focusiing on mindfulness (Björn Prins) and goal adjustment in chronic illness (Gunther Van Bost). In 2015 he received funding for his interdisciplinary research initiative on the interplay between sensorimotor and attentional processes in (back) pain. The project uses behavioral and electrophysiological (EEG/EMG) methods to assess somatosensory and sensorimotor processing during back-related movements. He (co-)supervises 2 PhD students (Amanda Clauwaert, Stijn Schouppe) within this project. In 2018, Stefaan received FWO funding for a new research project in collaboration with Diane Torta (Leuven) and Ann Meulders (Maastricht), focusing on the effects of motor action on pain processing within a motivational context, again using a combination of behavioral and EEG measures. A new PhD student (Eleana Pinto) recently started working on this project.

Emanuel van den Broeke is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Louvain in Belgium (UCLouvain). His research focusses on pain plasticity and in particular on the phenomenon of “central sensitization”; the increase responsiveness of nociceptive neurons in the central nervous system. Central sensitization is widely believed to be an important factor contributing to persistent pain. The aim of his research is to identify biomarkers for CS in humans. Dr. van den Broeke has authored more than 20 publications in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and publishes in the most rigorous and top journals of his field, such as J Physiol, J Neurophysiol, Clin Neurophysiol. Besides, he wrote book chapters for the book Postoperative Pain: Science and Clinical Practice and the book Pain after Surgery that is published in the context of the IASP’s 2017 Global Year Against Pain, both published by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Dr. van den Broeke has received the EFIC-Grünenthal grant and recently a personal fellowship through the Fonds de Recherche Clinique (FRC) of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain).

Prof. Dr. Ron van Schaik (PhD, FACB) is a registered European Specialist Laboratory Medicine and a Full Professor of Pharmacogenetics. He is working at the Dept. Clinical Chemistry at the Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, and is Director of the International (IFCC) Expert-center for Pharmacogenetics. Main interest is the clinical implementation of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenetics translational research.
Specific research fields are organ transplantation, oncology, cardiology, pain and psychiatry. He has published over 275 articles on pharmacogenetics. Prof van Schaik participates in several National and International advisory committees on Pharmacogenetics (a.o. chair of the European Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (Eu-PIC; chair (www.eu-pic.net), President of the European Society for Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Therapy (www.esptnet.eu) and advisor of the Pharmacogenetics Working Group of the European Medicine Agency (EMA). In 2001, he received the Ortho Clinical Diagnostics Award for Outstanding Research, in 2009 the AACC Outstanding Speaker Award, and in 2010 the AACC/Mol Pathology Award for Outstanding Scientific Research.

Maurits van Tulder is professor of Health Technology Assessment and head of the department of Health Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He also has a position as professor of Evidence-Based Physiotherapy & Occupational Therapy at Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark. His main research interest is effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of interventions. He has ample expertise in designing and analysing randomized controlled trials, economic evaluations and systematic reviews in the field of musculoskeletal disorders. He was one of the principal investigators responsible for the MinT trial on the effect of radiofrequency denervation for patients with chronic low back pain.
Maurits van Tulder has been co-editor of the Cochrane Back and Neck Group for the last 12 years and has been chairman or committee member for at least 5 low back pain and several other national and international clinical guidelines.

Prof. dr. C. Paul van Wilgen is a Physical Therapist, Psychologist and Epidemiologist. He is professor at the Vrije University Belgium Faculty of Physical Education & Physiotherapy and member of the international research group pain in motion (www.paininmotion.be) After working as a clinician and researcher at the University Medical Centre in Groningen he obtained his PhD in 2004. After several years working as a post-doc he initiated Transcare (www.transcare.nl) a transdisciplinary pain management centre for patients with persisting pain and chronic fatigue in the Netherlands. He (co)authored more than 120 scientific publications and 4 books on pain and painmanagement e.g. pain education and graded activity. His fields of expertise are; central sensitization processes in patient with persisting pain, the psychosocial factors related to pain and central sensitization, pain-education, lifestyle and trans-and multidisciplinary collaboration in patients with pain.

He also completed a postgraduate training in Health Law and Health Ethics at the University of Antwerp and wrote a thesis on “The scope and enforceability of practice guidelines”. He authored 86 publications in PubMed indexed journals. He was (co)author of 38 book chapters. He holds functions in the editorial board of several journals and is the past editor of the Dutch and English version of the guidelines “Evidence based interventional pain medicine according to clinical diagnoses”.

He is honorary treasurer of the World Institute of Pain (WIP) Jan Van Zundert is anesthesiologist, head of the Multidisciplinary Pain Centre of the Hospital Oost Limburg, Belgium. He is associate professor at the Maastricht University Medical Centre.

He obtained the doctoral degree in Medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and completed a 5 years residency in anesthesiology and reanimation at the University hospital Antwerp and specialized in pain medicine at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
He obtained his PhD at the Maastricht University with the thesis: “The use of pulsed radiofrequency in the treatment of chronic pain”. He followed a postgraduate training in Health Policy and management at the Catholic University of Leuven and wrote a thesis on “The treatment of (chronic) low back pain in a multidisciplinary pain center: effects and costs”.

Nicolas Varela, MD, PhD, EDPM, DESA is the clinical lead for the pain services at Clínica Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona and Madrid (Spain).

He trained in the University of Navarra where he did his undergraduate studies and specialised in Anaesthesia. He later on moved to London (UK) where he did fellowships in Pain Medicine (Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital and National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery) and Neuromodulation (Guy’s and St Thomas’s). After finishing his training in Pain he worked as a Consultant at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital where he was research lead and educational supervisor before moving back to Spain in the past months.

He obtained the first Ulf Lindblom prize from EFIC-European Pain Federation after obtaining the highest score in the European Diploma for Pain Medicine. He is also Senior Fellow of the London Pain Forum.

Currently, he undertakes both clinical and organisational duties at the prestigious Clínica Universidad de Navarra and is Associate Professor at the School of Medicine of the University of Navarra.

He is married and father of two.

In the last 31 years, Dr Villanueva has worked as full-time researcher in Pain Neurobiology at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM). His research interests have centered on translational, rodent studies of central mechanisms involved in pain modulation. His doctoral dissertations were devoted to studies of the functional architecture of descending bulbospinal systems involved in pain modulation, termed Diffuse Noxious Inhibitory Controls (DNIC). Afterwards, Dr Villanueva developed his own independent research program devoted to the study of pain networks, by combining in vivo electrophysiology with high-resolution neuroanatomical tracing and computer-assisted reconstruction imaging techniques. He discovered in rats and monkeys a brainstem region (Subnucleus Reticularis Dorsalis) that participates in DNIC and conveys noxious inputs from the whole-body regions to the brain. Since then he has established a unique research program and raised teams devoted to the assessment of maladaptive mechanisms of pain modulation elicited by dysfunctions of trigeminal, hypothalamic and/or cortical networks. He made significant discoveries, including a thalamic relay of noxious inputs from the whole-body surface to the rat’s neocortex layer I, implicated in cortical rhythmicity changes elicited by painful inputs. He showed that corticothalamic networks issued from the primary sensory cortex are involved in a selective discrimination of tactile versus noxious inputs. He identified also a hypothalamic link of trigemino-vascular pain/stress/sensitization comorbidity mechanisms involved in migraine and cluster headaches. By combining high spatiotemporal resolution brain ultrasound imaging with electrophysiology in rats, he recently established a direct link between visual cortex disturbances elicited by spreading depression and cortical, craniofacial pain sensitization mechanisms at the origin of migraine.
Dr Villanueva has trained undergraduate, graduate students, post-doctoral research fellows from several countries and teach pain neurobiology and pharmacology in graduate and post-graduate programs of Medical and Faculties of Sciences. He has been Chair of EFIC Committee on Research, Co-Coordinator of the EFIC Krakow School on Translational Pain Research, member of the Editorial Board of the European Journal of Pain and Coordinator of exchange programs in life sciences and health between France, Colombia and Mexico. His research projects have resulted in more than 80 manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals, 30 Book chapters and 100 abstracts.

Dr. Jan Vollert is a bioinformatician with a PhD in Neurophysiology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, who is currently working at Imperial College London. His research focuses on the application of statistical and computational models in pain research, mainly in Quantitative Sensory Testing. He has conducted analyses of quantitative sensory testing data of patients suffering from neuropathic pain that have been largely acknowledged in the field, honored by five first-authorship papers on QST in PAIN since 2015. He is part of the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain (DFNS), and as such responsible for all questions related to statistical analyses of QST data within the European database.

Tor Wager is a Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In July 2019, he will join the faculty of Dartmouth College as the Diana L. Taylor Distinguished Professor in Neuroscience. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Cognitive Psychology in 2003, and served as an Assistant and Associate Professor at Columbia University from 2004-2009. Since 2004, he has directed the Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience laboratory, a research lab devoted to work on the neurophysiology of affective processes—pain, emotion, stress, and empathy—and how they are shaped by cognitive and social influences. Dr. Wager and his lab are also dedicated to developing analysis methods for functional neuroimaging and sharing ideas, tools, and scientific data with the scientific community and public. See http://wagerlab.colorado.edu and http://canlab.github.io for papers, data, tools, and code.

Nicola is as an Academic Physiotherapist from the UK. I her early career she developed clinical expertise in musculoskeletal practice, working in the National Health Service, private and professional sport sectors. She moved into academia and gained her PhD from King’s College London in 2009 for her thesis entitled ‘Developing effective, deliverable and affordable models of care for osteoarthritis’. In 2011 she successfully gained an Arthritis Research UK 5 year Career Development Fellowship to continue her work in osteoarthritis, and became Associate Professor of Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation in 2013. In 2016 Nicola was appointed as Professor of Knowledge Mobilisation and Musculoskeletal Health, a joint appointment between UWE Bristol and the local NHS Clinical Commissioning group. Her current role supports the co-creation of clinically informed, relevant research; evidence informed commissioning; and the integration of research evidence into clinical practice.

Nicola’s expertise lies in Health services Research, and she has published widely on self-management of musculoskeletal conditions. Her work has been funded by the National Institute of Heath Research (NIHR), Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and Versus Arthritis. She is currently Chief Investigator on a large NIHR funded project investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of First Contact Physiotherapists for musculoskeletal conditions in Primary Care.

Chris Wells graduated in 1970 from Liverpool University. He trained in GP and anaesthesia, and was the first doctor in the UK to specialise solely in pain medicine in 1982. In 1983, he set up the first continuously-running Pain Management Programme in Europe at the Walton Centre, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. His clinical interests include the assessment and management of back pain and neuropathic pain. Dr Wells worked in North West England until he carried out his own Brexit to Portugal in 2016.

Dr Wells was a Council member of the British Pain Society from 1995 to 1999 and was Secretary from 2000 to 2002. He gave the Annual British Pain Society Lecture in 2008 and was made an Honorary Member of the Society that year. He started, with 2 others,, NeuPSIG, a Special Interest Group of IASP©. He was made one of 3 Honorary Members of this group in 2010.

Dr Wells was made an honorary member of IASP in 2016. He is also an honorary member of the Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Moldovan and Ukrainian Pain Societies. He was made a Citizen of Honour of Liverpool in 2016. He is a member of the recent NICE Guideline Development Group on low back pain and sciatica, completing the comprehensive report in 2016.

He is Vice-President of EFIC, The European Pain Federation. He initiated a multidisciplinary core curriculum in Europe, leading to a Diploma in Pain Medicine for all medical doctors, the European Pain Federation EDPM.

Dr. Westbrook a seasoned drug discoverer, the inventor of numerous patents who worked at Pfizer, Sandwich for c. 18 years in a variety of roles and departments including Urology, Cardiovascular/Metabolic Disease and Pain. Whilst in the Pain therapeutic area, Simon worked on the anti-NGF program with the role of identifying novel means of manipulating the neurotrophin pathway.
In September 2012 Simon founded Levicept, a Pfizer-spun out company, with the goal of developing a novel and safe neurotrophin modulator for the treatment of chronic pain.

Amanda C de C Williams is an academic and clinical psychologist at University College London, one of the world’s highest ranked for psychology, and at the Pain Management Centre, University College London Hospital. She also works for the International Centre for Health and Human Rights. She has worked in the pain field for over 30 years, as a clinician and as a researcher, with particular interests in evaluating psychologically-based treatments, including systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and national and international guidelines. She also works on expression of pain and its interpretation by clinicians; on pain from torture; and on the use of responsive technology to extend healthcare. She has written over 250 papers and chapters on aspects of pain and psychology, and presents at national and international pain meetings.

I have been at King’s College London for 12 years and my position allows me to combine the study of chronic pain with the practice of musculoskeletal medicine. In particular, I run clinics in General Rheumatology and Metabolic bone disease. I also have an interest in occupational conditions and hold a monthly clinic for Musicians and Performing Artists with musculoskeletal complaints, which is unique in the UK and is funded by the NHS.

Modern medicine is currently ill equipped to deal with the highly prevalent symptom of chronic pain. Seen in all medical specialties, chronic pain syndromes are poorly understood. They have, however, been shown to have a heritable basis. The use of omic data derived from identical and non-identical same sex twins and from large internal consortia and bioresources allows a greater understanding of the role of genetic and environmental factors in chronic pain conditions.

Chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain (CWP) and fibromyalgia are associated with a number of other traits such as anxiety and depression, pain catastrophizing and other medical and psychological diagnoses. The aim of my group is to understand better the pathogenic processes underlying common complex traits. In particular we focus on those presenting to rheumatology such as chronic widespread pain and chronic back pain. The study of a broad range of omics, in isolation and in combination, will reveal more about the pathways involved in chronic pain, especially the transition from acute to chronic pain. I led the EU FP7 project PainOmics which examines biomarkers of the transition from acute to chronic low back pain. We have recently identified novel genetic variants associated with back pain by performing the largest-to-date genome-wide association study of back pain.

I am a clinician-researcher neurologist, focused on pain research. My main research interest is pain modulation in humans, using psychophysical tools as well as neurophysiological and other ones. Conditioned pain modulation is at the center of my research work, trying to understand how the endogenous analgesia systems shape the human pain behavior, and how they can be used to better treat pain. The clinical substrates of my research are neuropathic pain, migraine, post traumatic headache, fibromyalgia, and post operative pain. My clinical work is in general neurology, focus on neuromuscular disorders, neuropathic pain and headaches. During last 3 years I also serve as Editor in Chief of IASP’s new online open access journal PAIN Reports.