Award winners

Athol Wells, MD, is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College, London. He trained in New Zealand and took up his current post at the Royal Brompton Hospital in 1999. He was the head of the Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) Unit at the Royal Brompton Hospital from 2007 to 2016 and continues to chair the Royal Brompton Hospital ILD research group.

Francesco Forastiere, MD, PhD, environmental epidemiologist, is currently visiting professor at Imperial College, London (Environmental Research Group).

As public health officer, he has served the Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Region Health Service, Rome, for almost four decades, dealing with environmental and occupational exposures and their impacts on health. With a medical background in respiratory and occupational medicine, Master of Science in Epidemiology (LSHTM, London) and PhD in Epidemiology (University of Linkoping, Sweden), he has studied the health effects of numerous environmental and occupational exposures. He has been PI in several EC-funded projects, from the Fourth Framework Programme up to the most recent Horizon initiatives.

Professor Felix Herth has been Head of the Department of Internal Medicine, Pulmonology and Critical Care Medicine at Thoraxklinik, Heidelberg, since 2004, and CEO and CMO of Thoraxklinik, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, since 2015.

Dr Marieke Duiverman is pulmonologist at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands, focussing on home mechanical ventilation (HMV) and (chronic) respiratory failure. She combines clinical work for patients with chronic respiratory failure with research in this field and education.

Najib Rahman Directs the Oxford Respiratory Trials Unit and works clinically as a pleural specialist. Having qualified in Oxford he underwent the medical senior house officer rotation at Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham, and re-joined Oxford as a Specialist Registrar in 2003. He undertook a DPhil and MSc in this period and was appointed Director of the Oxford Respiratory Trials Unit and Consultant Lead for Pleural Disease in Oxford in 2011.

Dr Beydon is a paediatric pulmonologist and head of the department of lung function tests and sleep studies at the University Hospital Armand Trousseau in Paris, France

Dr Beydon has started her career at the University Robert Debré Hospital, in Paris, where she developed a pulmonology unit and a therapeutic education of patient structure. She also worked in the paediatric lung function test laboratory of the hospital before moving to take the lead of the lung function tests and sleep unit in Armand Trousseau hospital. Her interest is in techniques adapted to test preschool children. She developed and evaluated the interrupter resistance device through many studies. She has set-up a method to perform methacholine challenge for this age group, but has worked on other techniques such as the tidal re-breathing technique to measure DLCO or tidal breathing nasal Nitric Oxide measurements.

Bianca Schaub holds a Heisenberg Professorship at the University Children´s Hospital, LMU Munich, Germany. She is Head of the Department of Allergology, leading the research laboratory of allergy/immunology at comprehensive research center

Martijn Nawijn is a Professor in Functional Genetics of Chronic Respiratory Disease at the GRIAC research institute, University of Groningen Medical Center, Groningen, The Netherlands. Prof. Nawijn performs translational research into the molecular mechanisms active during inception, exacerbation and remission of chronic inflammatory diseases of the respiratory tract.

Dr. Imran Satia graduated in Medicine from the University of Cambridge in 2006. He gained his Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (London, UK) and completed his specialist training in general internal medicine and respiratory medicine in the North-West Deanery. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Manchester in the mechanisms of cough in asthma and was awarded the British Medical Association James Trust Award. Imran was subsequently awarded the European Respiratory Society Respire3 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Imran is currently on Faculty at McMaster University, Canada and the Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health. He consults on patients with refractory chronic cough and asthma and has a broad research interest in understanding the mechanisms and developing treatments for these troublesome conditions.

Chin-Chung Shu is a pulmonologist in Taiwan devoted to investigating nontuberculous mycobacterial lung disease (NTM-LD). He has been awarded the Young Investigator Award in TSPCCM and APSR as well as Ta-You Wu Memorial Award from the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan.

Dr Eckert is a Mathew Flinders Professor at Flinders University, Australia. He serves as Director of the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health where he leads a comprehensive translational team of over 60 multidisciplinary researchers. His research focuses on identification of the causes of sleep apnoea, optimisation of existing therapies, and development of new tailored therapies.

Merel Hellemons, MD, PhD, is assistant professor and pulmonologist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam. She works as medical-scientific director of the Erasmus MC lung transplantation program, and is a consultant in lung transplantation, with a particular focus on patients with interstitial lung disease.

Heather Zar is Professor & Chair, Dept. of Paediatrics and Child Health and Director, SA-MRC Unit on Child & Adolescent Health, at Red Cross Childrens Hospital, University of Cape Town. She is past-President of the Forum of International Respiratory Societies, of the Pan African Thoracic Society, and serves as an advisor to WHO, UNICEF and the Gates Foundation. She is passionate about reducing global health inequities and ensuring access to effective interventions for all children.

Prof. Martijn Spruit is an executive board member at Ciro and professor at Maastricht University. His research is driven by his ambition to improve the health status of patients with chronic respiratory disease.
As a physiotherapy/rehabilitation scientist, his research builds towards a paradigm shift in the organization of care of this large patient population. A shift beyond the traditional focus on drug therapy, towards an integrated allied healthcare. He (co-)authored of more than 390 peer-reviewed English-language papers and has been engaged towards ERS and ELF for many years in different roles, including Head of Assembly 9 and co-chair of multiple international Task Forces.

Joanna Pepke-Zaba, PhD, FRCP, consultant respiratory physician at Royal Papworth Hospital, Cambridge UK, director of Pulmonary Vascular Diseases Unit 2003-2019. She was instrumental in organization of pulmonary hypertension (PH) service in UK specifically the National Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension (CTEPH) program. She is affiliated with University of Cambridge and her research is concentrating on the translational programs in the field of PH with focus on CTEPH and PAH. She has trained generations of research fellows, serves on various scientific, educational, international boards and societies, is section editor of The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation. She has published over 200 papers, h index 61.

Stefano Gasparini was Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Università Politecnica delle Marche Medical School, Ancona (Italy) until October, 2022. He held the role of a Director of the Pulmonary Diseases Unit of the Ancona Hospital from 2002 to 2019. From 2009 to 2015 Stefano was a Secretary and Chairman of the ERS Study Group “Interventional Pulmonology”. He was a President of the Italian Association of Hospital Pulmonologists (AIPO-ITS) from 2016 to 2017.

Prof. Dr Tobias Welte is a Head of the Department of Respiratory Medicine and Infectious Diseases at Hannover Medical School in Germany. He combines clinical with research and education. Currently, he is a Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the German Lung Foundation and German Sepsis Foundation. He has a guest professorship at Sigmund Freud University Vienna. Tobias is a past president of the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS).