Professor Lars Iversen, MD, DMSc, is Professor of Dermatology at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark. Professor Iversen’s primary research interest is psoriasis but he has also numerous publications on cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Most of his research activities are translational and spans from studies on signal transduction and immunology to clinical studies. Professor Iversen has been a guest researcher at University of California, USA and invited speaker at international conferences in Asia, Europe and the United States. He is the author or co-author of more than 260 articles and book chapters. Professor Iversen’s writings have appeared in several scientific journals, including Nature Immunology, Nature Communication, Blood, PNAS and the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. He became a councillor of the International Psoriasis Council (IPC) in 2009 and IPC board-member from 2017-2022, and he has served as president of the Danish Dermatological Society from 2018-2020. He received his clinical education and obtained a doctoral degree from Aarhus University in Denmark. In 2018 he was founder of the National Center for Autoimmune Diseases at Aarhus University Hospita

Christophe von Garnier is the head of the Division of Respiratory Medicine and full professor at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV). He is a pulmonologist with an interest in severe obstructive pulmonary diseases, lung cancer and interventional bronchoscopy and served as president of the Swiss Society for Pulmonology 2010-2022. As a clinician researcher, he has research interests in mucosal immunology and respiratory microbiota in asthma, COPD, SARS-CoV-2 infection, and lung cancer.

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Dr. Curdin Conrad is Professor of Dermatology and head of policlinic and the center for psoriasis at Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland. He received his MD training at the University of Zurich, where he also participated at the Postgraduate Course of Experimental Medicine and Biology. After his training in Dermatology, he was research fellow at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.

Dr. Conrad has a strong interest – from basic science to translational research and the clinic – in inflammatory skin diseases, adaptive and innate immunity, and targeted immunotherapies. He has fundamentally contributed to today’s understanding of the pathogenesis of psoriasis and has received several scientific awards for his basic and translational research. Over the years, Dr Conrad has actively been involved in the teaching of evidence-based clinical and scientific dermatology and immunology.

He serves as an external scientific expert for several international societies and foundations. Dr. Conrad is an elected councilor of the International Psoriasis Council (IPC) and, as Secretary-Treasurer, member of the executive committee of the European Society for Dermatological Research (ESDR).

Jeroen Geurts is a principal investigator for translational research and clinical study coordinator at the Rheumatology Unit of the Lausanne University Hospital. He is also associate editor for basis science at Osteoarthritis & Cartilage.His research focuses on the role of subchondral bone marrow adipose tissue in the regulation of pathological bone remodeling in human osteoarthritis. He is the chair of the ECTS Academy and executive board member of the Swiss Bone and Mineral Society and international Bone Marrow Adiposity Society.

Emmanuella Guenova is a professor in dermatology and dermatopathology and clinician-scientist at the University Hospital of Lausanne. Fascinated by the beauty and complexity of skin biology, she explores the innate and adaptive responses against the “non-self” (pathogens and cancer) of the skin. Born in Sofia, she completed her medical studies and a doctorate (MD) at the Eberhard Karl University in Tübingen (Germany) and subsequently a PhD in biochemistry at the Medical University of Sofia (Bulgaria). Her translational research explored the essential function of type 2 cytoines on innate immunity and their role as a promising immunomodulation tool for inflammatory skin diseases. She also seeks to understand the cellular mechanisms behind cutaneous lymphoproliferative diseases, in particular cutaneous T cell lymphomas such as mycosis fungoides and Sézary syndrome. From 2010 to 2012, as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA), Emmanuella Guenova worked on negative immune regulators in immunocompromised patients. Between 2013 and 2019, she directed the clinical program for lymphoproliferative skin diseases and co-directed of the outpatient dermatology clinic of the University Hospital Zurich (USZ). Since August 2019, Emmanuella Guenova is appointed as an associate professor at the University of Lausanne and the Department of Dermatology of the University Hospital of Lausanne.

Mikael Rydén is professor in clinical and experimental adipose tissue research at the Karolinska Institute where he heads the Endocrinology unit and the Center for clinical metabolic research in diabetes. He is also senior consultant in endocrinology at the Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. His research focuses on the role of human adipose tissue in several different conditions and spans from advanced cell- and molecular biology techniques in different cell culture models to clinical studies in man. He has served as the Honorary Secretary of the EASD 2018-2022 and is a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute.

Gerd R. Burmester, MD, is Senior Professor of Medicine and Rheumatology in the Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Freie Universität und Humboldt-Universität Berlin and consultant rheumatologist, Division of Rheumatology, MVZ endokrinologikum, partner practice of the Charité.

Professor Burmester earned his medical degree from Hannover Medical School and completed a residency at the Medical School of the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. He was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University in New York and was a visiting scholar at the Hospital for Joint Diseases, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York.

Professor Burmester is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Jan van Breemen Medal of the Dutch Society of Rheumatology and the Carol-Nachman Price for Rheumatology.  He serves on several editorial boards, including the Journal of Rheumatology and Clinical Rheumatology, and he is the Editor-in-Chief of RMD Open, official journal of EULAR (European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology). The author himself of more than 950 original and review articles, Professor Burmester’s research interests include rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, immunotherapy, Lyme borreliosis, cellular activation mechanisms in inflammatory joint diseases, and tissue engineering.

Professor Burmester served as President of the German Society of Rheumatology from 2001-2002. He was a Member of the Executive Committee of EULAR from 2003-2006 acting as Chairman of the Standing Committee on Investigative Rheumatology and became an honorary member of EULAR in 2006. From 2011 – 2013 he served as Treasurer of EULAR, and he served as President of EULAR from 2015 – 201. Since 2017 he is President of the Board of Trustees, FOREUM Foundation for Research in Rheumatology. In 2019 he became Master of the American College of Rheumatology and in 2022 received the Meritorious Service Award in Rheumatology from EULAR. He became honorary member of the German Society of Rheumatology in 2022.

Fadi Fakhouri is an adult nephrologist and a clinical researcher. He has a long-standing interest in autoimmune renal diseases, particularly complement-mediated nephropathies. He has conducted several clinical and experimental studies in the field of thrombotic microangiopathies, C3 glomerulopathy and other membrano-proliferative glomerulonephritis.

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Dr. Mike Becker works as a rheumatology consultant at the Department of Rheumatology at the University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland. He completed his rheumatology training at the Charité University Hospital Berlin, Germany, where he started doing research in the field of systemic sclerosis. This was continued when he joined the senior staff at the University Hospital Zurich in 2016, where he is additionally involved in outpatient clinics for connective tissue diseases and vasculitis and heads a specialized vasculitis outpatient clinic. He is also responsible for the clinical trials at the Department of Rheumatology.

Jérôme Gouttenoire is a molecular virologist with a long-standing interest in viral hepatitis, more specifically hepatitis C and E. He is research group leader in the Service of Gastroenterology and Hepatology of the CHUV in Lausanne. He is conducting fundamental research studies, including structure-function and virus-host interactions analyses, aiming to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and hepatitis E virus (HEV) replication. He also developed a translational research program together with clinicians to address questions related to the pathogenesis of these viruses.