Neena Modi is Professor of Neonatal Medicine and Vice-Dean (International Affairs), Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, a fellow and council member of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, and president-elect of the European Association of Perinatal Medicine. Neena is a past-president of the British Medical Association, Medical Women’s Federation, and UK Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. She has also headed the research organisations, The Neonatal Society and Academic Paediatrics Association of Great Britain and Ireland.
Neena leads a multidisciplinary neonatal research group at Imperial, tackling the immediate care of the sick and preterm newborn infant with the aim of improving life-long health. She also leads the UK National Neonatal Research Database and eNewborn, an International Neonatal Research Database. She is an international advocate for child health and wellbeing.
Neena’s work on the use of real-world health data for patient benefit has been widely acclaimed. She received the Royal College of Physicians of London, Excellence in Patient Care Award for Innovation 2018 (the National Neonatal Research Database: A road-map for NHS “big-data” to improve care, services and patient outcomes) and in 2022 the US FDA funded Critical-Path Institute, International Neonatal Consortium, Data Pioneer Award for contributions to health data research.

Sam Mathewlynn is a consultant obstetrician at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. He completed his undergraduate training at the University of Bristol and received clinical training in obstetrics and gynaecology in the Thames Valley region. With a strong interest in digital health, Sam focuses on developing innovative digital tools for risk stratification during the antenatal and postnatal period.
A Topol Fellow in digital health, Sam collaborates with the National Centre for Maternity Improvement as a Fellow for Future Development. He actively contributes to expanding the ‘Tommy’s App,’ a digital tool that supports maternal health. Sam’s expertise has been acknowledged through peer review, and he is a member of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics.
Sam is currently pursuing a DPhil project that explores the use of 3D ultrasound and machine learning techniques (AI) to assess placental volume and vascularity in the first trimester. His research aims to enhance the prediction of adverse pregnancy outcomes, such as pre-eclampsia and fetal growth restriction.
Through his clinical experience and dedication to digital health, Sam Mathewlynn strives to improve maternal and fetal healthcare outcomes.

Miguel Viana Baptista nasceu em Lisboa em 1965. É diretor do Serviço de Neurologia do Hospital Egas Moniz e professor de Neurologia na Faculdade de Ciências Médicas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Divide a sua vida entre a medicina e os livros, tendo publicado até agora um romance em nome próprio e um conto sob pseudónimo.

Kevin Mitchell is an associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He studies the genetics of brain wiring and its relevance to variation in human faculties, psychiatric disease and perceptual conditions like synaesthesia. His current research focuses on the biology of agency and the nature of genetic and neural information. He is the author of “INNATE – How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are” and “FREE AGENTS – How Evolution Gave us Free Will”.

Lucía Chávez-Gutiérrez (LCG) holds a PhD in Sciences with a major in Biochemistry from the National University of Mexico.
Trained as biochemist with a strong background in enzymology and protein structure, LCG studies proteolytic mechanisms and their (dys)regulation on the premise that developing a solid mechanistic understanding will offer critical insights into how these molecular switches control fundamental cellular processes in physiology and disease.
Her fascination for proteases and the connection with brain function and disease motivated her postdoctoral studies in the laboratory of Prof. Bart De Strooper, where she investigated the γ-secretase intramembrane proteases and their pathogenic involvement in Alzheimer‘s disease.
Early-onset familial Alzheimer’s disease (FAD) is caused by mutations in Presenilin (PSEN, catalytic subunit of the γ-secretase proteases) and the Amyloid Precursor protein (APP). The studies of LCG settled down a long-standing “Loss-of-function vs. Gain-of-function” debate on the aetiology of FAD (Chávez-Gutiérrez et al, EMBO 2012; Szaruga et al, JEM 2015 and Veugelen et al, Neuron 2016) by demonstrating that pathogenic mutations in Presenilin variably affect the overall activity of γ-secretase -which controls key signalling cascades- but invariably increase the production of longer, aggregation-prone Aβ peptides.
Her mechanistic and genetically-led work has shown that the enhanced generation of longer Aβ species arises from the mutation-driven destabilizing effects on γ-secretase-APP interactions (Szaruga et al, Cell 2017). These mechanistic findings placed Aβ at the core of Alzheimer‘s pathogenicity and support the stabilization of γ-secretase-APP interactions (Petit et al EMBO J 2019) as a potential therapeutic strategy.

Professor Pedro Nascimento Alves is a neurologist, completing his Ph.D. in neurology on the theme “Delusions of space after stroke: clinical phenomenology and neural basis". He is currently practicing in the Neurology Department of Hospital de Santa Maria and is a member of the Language Studies Laboratory at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. In addition, he is a Guest Assistant Professor of Neurology in the Medicine course and a lecturer in the Masters and Ph.D. programs in Neurosciences at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. He is President of the Portuguese Section of Behavioral Neurology, part of the Portuguese Society of Neurology, and a member of several national and international scientific associations. As first author and co-researcher, he has published several indexed articles in his area of research. He has received numerous awards, such as the “Professor João Lobo Antunes 2018” Prize, the Pfizer Investigator-Initiated Research 2019 Grant, among others.

Currently full Professor in Anaesthesia, Critical Care, and Critical Emergency Medicine at the Università del Piemonte Orientale, Novara, Italy.
He served as Honorary Secretary to the European Society for Emergency Medicine from 1999 to 2006.
Founder of the European Master in Disaster Medicine (EMDM).
Founder and current Director of CRIMEDIM, as well as Founder and current Director of SIMNOVA, Centro Interdipartimentale di Didattica Innovativa e di Simulazione in Medicina e Professioni Sanitarie.
Director of the International Doctoral Program in Global Health, Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Medicine at Università del Piemonte Orientale.
Prof. Della Corte was involved in different projects funded by European Union. He authored more than 250 full papers published on peer-reviewed (h-I 29). His main fields of research are: interactive education, traumatology and disaster medicine.
He is currently Director of the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Critical Emergency Medicine at l’Ospedale Maggiore della Carità di Novara.
Professor Della Corte has been invited as speaker in more than 300 national and international congresses.

Doctor Lina Echeverri is a distinguished medical professional with a remarkable career, marked by proactive involvement in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies and outbreaks of infectious diseases, including Ebola, Yellow Fever, Meningitis, Cholera, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. She holds a keen interest in mass population displacement and is internationally engaged in various renowned organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), UK-EMT, and Save the Children, among others. Currently, she serves as a consultant for Geneva Call, a prestigious Geneva-based NGO specializing in humanitarian engagement with armed non-state actors. She is also pursuing a PhD at CRIMEDIM.

Ron Waldman, MD began his career as a volunteer in the World Health Organization’s Smallpox Eradication Program, serving for two years in rural Bangladesh. He joined the Epidemic Intelligence Service of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1979. He also worked with the Ministry of Health in Somalia and, with colleagues, helped establish the epidemiology of refugee health. After two years as CDC’s regional epidemiologist based in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire, in 1985 he became Director of the Technical Support Division of CDC’s International Health Program Office and worked on both child survival projects and disaster response. From1992 through 1994 he was the Coordinator of the Cholera Control Task Force at the World Health Organization in Geneva.
From 1994-1999 he was assigned by CDC to be Technical Director of the USAID-funded BASICS program, a global child survival effort. During this time he also worked in emergency relief in the Balkans and Central Africa. In 1999 he became Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health and Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. In 2004-5 he was WHO’s coordinator during the tsunami emergency in Aceh, Indonesia. In 2007 he became Team Leader for Strategic Preparedness in the Pandemic Influenza and Other Emerging Pandemic Threats Unit of the US Agency for International Development. In 2010 he served as the US Government’s health sector coordinator in the Haiti earthquake relief effort and, later that year, as Senior Public Health Advisor to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator during the Pakistan floods disaster response.. He joined the faculty at GW in July 2012.

Professor Martina Valente specialized in Global Health and has earned her PhD at the Athena Institute, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She’s a postdoctoral fellow at CRIMEDIM and conducts research in Global Health, Humanitarian Aid, and Disaster Medicine. She coordinates the activities of CRIMEDIM’s PhD program. In particular, she provides lectures on research methods to candidates, offers them ongoing support in their PhD projects, and contributes to innovative research directions at CRIMEDIM.