ERS Virtual Congress Update – part one

Prof. Chris Brightling is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, National Institute for Health Research Senior Investigator, Respiratory Theme Lead for Leicester NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Director Institute for Lung Health and Honorary Consultant Respiratory Physician, Leicester, UK.

He is Coordinator for the European Union Consortium AirPROM, MRC/ABPI COPD (COPDMAP) Consortium, the MRC Molecular Pathology Node EMBER and Respiratory lead for the IMI 3TR. He was founding Director of the European Respiratory Society Clinical Research Collaborations and is the current ERS Science Council Chair.

He is the national lead for the post-COVID consortium PHOSP-COVID and local research lead for the COVID-19 pandemic. His main research focus is on improving the clinical management and understanding the immunopathogenesis of the airway diseases asthma, chronic cough and COPD.
He is a member of the American College of Chest Physicians’ Cough Guidelines, the British Thoracic Society, American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society Severe Asthma guidelines and is on the scientific committee for the Global INitiative for Asthma - GINA.

Prof. Richard Costello is the ERS Education Council Chair. He is Professor of Medicine at his alma mater, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He is Fellow of the ERS and a Health Research Board of Ireland Clinician Scientist.

Dr. Marc Miravitlles is senior researcher and consultant at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona. He was Chair of the Respiratory Infections Group of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and Guidelines Director of the ERS.

He has acted as a consultant for the development of international guidelines of COPD, including the American Thoracic Society (ATS)/ERS guidelines on exacerbations of COPD and the ERS statement on management of respiratory disease in alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency.

He is also a consultant of the Spanish Ministry of Health for the development of the National Strategy Against COPD. He is the coordinator of the Spanish National Guidelines for COPD since 2011. He has more than 500 peer-reviewed publications in the field of COPD and alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency indexed in PubMed.

Miriam Barrecheguren is a pneumologist at Vall d´Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain.

She graduated in Medicine at the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2008. After her training in Respiratory Medicine, she obtained her PhD at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2016 on the diagnosis and management of COPD and AATD in Primary Care. Afterwards, she fulfilled a research fellow at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and obtained a Rio Hortega grant from the Health Institute Carlos III (Madrid, Spain). She was granted the honorary lecture for young researchers of the Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) in 2018.

She is the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Early Career Member (ECM) representative of the in the European Alpha-1 research collaboration (EARCO) and was the ECM representative in the ERS Clinical Research Collaboration (CRC) working group until November 2020.

Her primary interests include COPD, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) and mechanical ventilation. She has more than 50 peer-reviewed publications indexed in PubMed.