Prof. Xenofon Baraliakos
Clinical Director of the Rheumazentrum Ruhrgebiet Herne
Full Professor for Internal Medicine and Rheumatology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany
Prof. Baraliakos received his official Board Degrees in orthopaedic surgery in 2007 and in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology in 2014. His research interests are focused on the field of spondyloarthritis, with special emphasis on imaging outcomes and treatment.
Among others, Prof. Baraliakos won the EWRR Award, in 2005, the EULAR Young Investigator Award, in 2006 and 2008, the German patient’s AS Society Award in 2010 and the 2014 Award for Excellence in Clinical Research from the European Society for Clinical Investigations.
Prof. Baraliakos is the current President of the Assessments in Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS) and holds membership of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) and the German Society of Rheumatology. He also acts as Associate Editor and a reviewer in a number of major rheumatological journals.
Prof. Alberto Cauli
Professor in Rheumatology at the University of Cagliari, Italy
Director of the Rheumatology Division at the University Hospital of Cagliari, Italy
Prof. Cauli started his career as a junior doctor in the team of Prof. Alessandro Mathieu, then spent many years in London at Guy’s and St. Thomas Hospitals, as research fellow of Prof. Panayi (Arthritis Clinic) and Dr. Hughes (Lupus Clinic), where he got a PhD in Rheumatology from King’s College.
Once back in Italy, he participated in many collaborative studies – and in 1997 he spent a visitorship stay – with the Department of Autoimmune Diseases of the Hospital Clinic in Barcelona, often under the umbrella of the Euro-Lupus consortium, all focused on genetic, clinical features and therapy of systemic lupus erythematosus. He is currently fellow of SIR, BSR, ACR, GRAPPA and ASAS.
Dr. Victoria Navarro Compán
Senior Consultant Rheumatologist at the University Hospital La Paz and IdiPaz in Madrid, Spain
Dr. Victoria Navarro Compán, MD, PhD, MsC studied Medicine at the University of Sevilla and did her training as rheumatologist at the University Hospital Virgen Macarena in Sevilla. She spent two periods in international centres of excellence: the first of 4 months in the Charité-Universitätsmedizin in Berlin and the second of 2 and a half years in the Leiden University Medical Center, where she obtained her doctoral degree.
Currently, she combines clinical practice and research at La Paz University Hospital and teaching at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid (Spain), mainly focus on spondyloarthritis. She has participated in and led multiple national and international research projects in the area of spondyloarthritis. She is associate editor of Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism journal.
Dr. James Galloway
Reader in the Centre for Rheumatic Diseases at King’s College London
Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
His interests are inflammatory arthritis, biologic and targeted therapies and also sarcoidosis. He leads a research group with a focus on pharmacovigilance and health care quality, and is chief investigator for multiple international randomised controlled trials. At King’s College Hospital he is the programme director for an Applied Research Methods course.
He holds several national roles, including lead methodologist for the Health Quality Improvement Partnership National Early Inflammatory Arthritis Audit, and he is co-investigator for the British Society for Rheumatology Biologics Register for Rheumatoid Arthritis. He is deputy editor for Rheumatology (impact factor 7.58) and has co-authored over 140 peer reviewed manuscripts.
Prof. Dennis McGonagle
Professor of Investigative Rheumatology
Leeds Institute of Rheumatic & Musculoskeletal Medicine
University of Leeds
Dennis McGonagle graduated from UCD in 1990 with a first class honour in Medicine, winning the O’Donovan Gold Medal and two other Medals in Medicine. He went into Rheumatology in 1994 and moved to the University of Leeds in 1996. He undertook his PhD into the cellular and micro-anatomical basis for inflammatory arthritis disease localisation to the joints. In clinical research, he has used microanatomy and imaging to elucidate the pathogenesis of the seronegative inflammatory diseases and has defined the central role of the enthesis in joint pathology in several key publications including the cytokine mediated enthesitis theory of synovitis in the seronegative spondyloarthopathies (diseases that include Ankylosing Spondylitis and Psoriatic Arthritis) (Lancet 1998). He runs clinics into immune mediated diseases and a joint auto-inflammatory network and has developed the modern immunological Disease Continuum classification of inflammation against self (PLoS Med 2006).
His group have defined normal human enthesis innate and adaptive immunity including gamma delta T-cells and conventional T-cells in the human enthesis (Cuthbert R et al ARD 2019) and (Bridgewood C et al ARD 2019 & Watad et al ARD 2020). His other interest is the use of native joint resident mesenchymal stem cells for OA therapy development (Nat Rev Rheum 2017).
Dennis is Section Head of Experimental Rheumatology at the Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine. His scholar He is PI on over £5M in the last 4 years. He has served on the Editorial Boards of Arthritis & Rheumatism and Annals of Rheumatic Diseases, and has served as a member of the Scientific Committee of The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) and is co-chair of the EULAR task force on the use of anti-Rheumatic drugs in COVID-19 (ARD 2021). He is a member of the UK MRC PSMB Board. He has also won international prizes for his work including the Verna Wright Lecture in 2018 and the Philadelphia Rheumatism Pemberton Prize in 2018 and the Royal Academy of Medicine (Bioengineering) Medal in 2019.