Award winners

Prof. Morrell set up her research group to investigate and raise awareness of sleep-related health. The group’s findings have contributed to changes to national care guidelines that have improved treatment options for patients with sleep apnoea. Prof. Morrell is also a leader in medical education and has mentored/coached many in their clinical and research careers.

Prof. Morrell is a Professor of Sleep and Respiratory Physiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. She also serves as Head of the Pears Cumbria School of Medicine and Director of Phase One (Years 1–3) at the Imperial College School of Medicine, London, UK.

Jonathan Grigg BSc, MB BS, MRCP (UK), MD, FRCPCH, FFPH (hon) is a Professor of Paediatric Respiratory and Environmental Medicine, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK; Researcher, Institute of Asthma and Allergy Prevention, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany; and Honorary Professor, University of Kwa Zulu Natal, Durban, South Africa.

Jonathan’s studies include the effect of particulate matter (PM) on airway cells, and he developed the use of loading of airway macrophages with particles as a biomarker of inhaled lung dose. His other studies have focussed on the effect of PM from other sources, including underground transport systems. He has led several multicentre and multinational collaborations, including as Director of a UK National Institute for Health and Care Research Global Health Research Group; Vice- and Chair of reports from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Heath on outdoor and indoor air pollution; Chair of the UK Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollution’s Working Party on Birth Outcomes, and Chief Investigator of several independent randomised controlled trials of paediatric wheeze therapies.

Currently, he advises the WHO as a member of its Global Air Pollution and Health Technical Advisory Group (GAPH-TAG). As a previous Head of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Paediatric Assembly, and former Chair of the ERS Tobacco Control Committee, he advocated for reducing exposure of children to inhaled toxins, including warning about vaping by young people, and advocated across Europe for “Tobacco 21”. He currently supports research as a member of the UK Medical Research Council Populations and Systems grant panel, and as an expert assessor for EU studies.

Richard Costello is a Professor of Medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Consultant Respiratory Physician. He trained at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, Ireland and later at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore, USA. Professionally, he served as Chair of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Education Council, where he and colleagues developed the ERS Respiratory Channel. Previously, he served the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland as Vice President, Director of Research, and National Specialist Trainer for Respiratory Medicine.

Academically, his work is focussed on studying how digital technology can be used to optimise outcomes in patients with respiratory disease. He has published over 200 research papers; he holds five patents and is the founder of a spin-out company Phyxiom.

Christian B. Laursen is Clinical Professor and Head of Research at Odense Respiratory Research Unit (ODIN), Department of Clinical Research, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. In his clinical work, he is Lead Consultant at the Department of Respiratory Medicine at Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark. He holds a PhD in point-of-care ultrasound.

His main clinical and research interests focus on the assessment of diagnostic tools in clinical respiratory medicine. A particular interest has been the use of thoracic ultrasound to assess patients with respiratory diseases. His research includes several diagnostic accuracy studies as well as randomised clinical trials evaluating the clinical impact of thoracic ultrasound.
He is also dedicated to education, training, and competency assessment in thoracic ultrasound.

At an international organisational level, he has chaired the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Ultrasound Group and is part of the committee organising the ERS Thoracic Ultrasound Certified Training Programme. He chaired the ERS Task Force on Thoracic Ultrasound and has been actively involved in other previous and ongoing ERS task forces. Beyond ERS, he is involved in thoracic ultrasound guidelines and recommendations from other societies, such as the European Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (EFSUMB) and the World Interactive Network Focused on Critical UltraSound (WinFocus).  

Michael Kreuter is Professor of Pulmonology at the University of Mainz, Germany, and Director of the Mainz Center for Pulmonary Medicine, which is an expert lung centre consisting of the Departments of Pneumology, Mainz University Medical Center and of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Marienhaus Clinic Mainz, Germany. Previously, he worked at the University of Heidelberg, Germany as Director of the Center for Interstitial and Rare Lung Diseases and was Director of the Clinic for Pneumology at the RKH Clinic, Ludwigsburg, Germany. Currently, he serves the European Respiratory Society (ERS) as Head of ERS Assembly 12: Interstitial Lung Diseases (ILD) and is engaged in several patient support groups.

Prof. Kreuter is board certified in internal medicine, pulmonology and haematology-oncology. He completed a clinical fellowship in Muenster, Germany, and a research fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. From 2005 to 2023 he worked at the Chest Clinic of the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and in 2023 he accepted a position as Director of the Mainz Lung Center, Mainz, Germany. His clinical and scientific interests focus on interstitial and rare lung diseases. He is conducting various research projects on comorbidities, epidemiology, biomarkers and diagnosis and therapy of interstitial lung diseases, and is engaged in educational events, such as again organising the next ERS School on ILDs in Mainz, Germany.

Ioannis Vogiatzis is a clinical exercise physiologist and Professor of Rehabilitation Sciences at Northumbria University, Newcastle, UK. Ioannis is a Fellow of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and Head of ERS Assembly 1. Ioannis has engaged with ERS for over 25 years and held officer roles within ERS Group 1.02: Rehabilitation and Chronic Care, and Assembly 1 as Secretary.

Within ERS, Ioannis is actively contributing to organising numerous educational activities such as schools, congress scientific sessions, skill workshops, postgraduate courses, and webinars. Ioannis has contributed to ERS statements on pulmonary rehabilitation, limb muscle dysfunction in COPD, standardisation of cardiopulmonary exercise testing in chronic lung diseases, respiratory muscle testing during rest and during exercise, and physical activity in COPD. He has co-chaired an American Thoracic Society/ERS joint policy statement on enhancing the implementation, use and delivery of pulmonary rehabilitation globally. Ioannis is currently an ERS task force member on three developing ERS statements and has been an Associate Editor for ERJ Open Research since 2022. Ioannis was a member of the Development Group for COPD within the World Health Organization (WHO), creating a specific set of interventions for managing COPD as part of the broader WHO "Package of Interventions for Rehabilitation" initiative, aiming to provide evidence-based guidelines for optimal COPD rehabilitation practices globally.

Raquel Duarte, MD, PhD, is a pulmonologist and Full Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar (ICBAS), University of Porto, Portugal. She holds two MSc degrees in Health Economics and Public Health, and completed her PhD in Public Health. She coordinates the Laboratory on Epidemiology of Respiratory Diseases, Mycobacterial Infection and Infectious Diseases at the Epidemiology Research Unit/Associate Laboratory for Integrative and Translational Research in Population Health at the Institute of Public Health of the University of Porto, (ISPUP), Portugal, and serves as Director of the Northern Regional Department of the Portuguese National Institute of Public Health (INSA).

Over the past 16 years, she has been actively engaged in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, coordinating nine academic units at ICBAS, University of Porto, Portugal. At ISPUP, she leads three advanced training courses on tuberculosis, non-tuberculous mycobacteria, and TB in high-incidence settings. She has supervised doctoral and master’s students in medicine and public health. She has also been involved in training medical and public health residents, promoting a strong link between clinical practice, research, and public health.

Within the European Respiratory Society (ERS), she has contributed to the planning and development of educational activities in respiratory infections, including courses, webinars, and symposia. She collaborates closely with ERS Assembly 10 (Respiratory infections) groups, working to ensure broad representation and engagement across its subgroups and aligning educational content with the diversity of the field. She has contributed to the development of educational materials and to setting pedagogical priorities within ERS Assembly 10.

In parallel, Prof. Duarte has held key national health roles, including Coordinator of Portugal’s National Tuberculosis Programme, Advisor to the Ministry of Health during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Secretary of State for Health. She also serves as an expert advisor to international bodies such as the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).
Her work bridges education, research, and policy, with a strong focus on respiratory infectious diseases and global health preparedness.

David Jackson is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine at King's College London (UK) and the cross-site Clinical Lead for Asthma Care at Guy's and Royal Brompton Severe Asthma Centres, Guy's & St Thomas’ NHS Trust (London, UK).

David received his medical degree from University College London and went on to gain an MSc in Allergy and a PhD investigating the mechanisms of virus-induced asthma exacerbations at Imperial College London (UK) under the mentorship of Professor Sebastian Johnston. David's research has focussed on understanding the mechanisms of severe asthma and eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA), the pathogenesis of exacerbations of these conditions, and using biologic therapies to refine disease endotypes.

He has authored over 150 publications in journals including NEJM, Lancet and Nature Medicine and co-edited the ERS Monographs on Eosinophilic Lung Diseases (2022) and Asthma (2025). David is Chair of the Specialist Advisory Group for Asthma of the British Thoracic Society, is Associate Editor at the journals THORAX and ALLERGY and is director of the ERS Course on Eosinophilic Lung Diseases.

Dr Bhatnagar completed his undergraduate medical training at Bristol, UK in 2004 and remained in the South West of England to undertake his further medical and respiratory specialty rotations, taking time out for a period of research and being awarded his PhD in 2015. He completed higher training and was appointed as a Consultant Respiratory Physician in 2018. In 2023, he was awarded an MRC/NIHR Clinical Academic Partnership grant and currently works as a clinical academic, holding posts as an Associate Professor at the University of Bristol’s Academic Respiratory Unit, as an Honorary Consultant Respiratory Physician at North Bristol NHS Trust, and as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern Denmark. He collaborates closely with a wide range of colleagues in the UK and internationally.

His primary research interests lie in pleural disease, with an emphasis on malignant effusion management and epigenetics; novel diagnostics and interventions for pleural conditions; and thoracic ultrasound (TUS) education and clinical practice. His research is highly cited and appears in national and international guidelines. Key publications include the IPC-Plus Trial (Bhatnagar et al, NEJM 2018), which demonstrated a role for outpatient talc pleurodesis, and the TAPPS trial (Bhatnagar et al, JAMA 2019), which addressed the question of how best to undertake inpatient talc pleurodesis.

He has taught and helped champion TUS as part of ERS for over 10 years and co-leads the ERS Congress TUS skills workshop. As a member of the ERS TUS committee, he helped to design, test and implement the ERS TUS curriculum and three-part training programme and objective structured clinical examination (OSCE), and he currently hosts the successful Bristol part-two course. He also sits on the European Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (EFSUMB) TUS professional standards and training guidelines committees.

Other achievements include co-authoring the recent British Thoracic Society Clinical Statement on Pleural Procedures; co-leading the pleural workstream for the National Institute for Health and Care Research Bristol Biomedical Research Centre; being named Royal College of Physicians Quincentennial Lecturer in 2018; co-founding and supervising the UK’s first respiratory trainee research matrix (PRISM); co-developing the mypleuraleffusion.com patient website; helping to develop endoscopy software which is now used across the NHS; and gaining ERS Clinical Research Collaboration funding to create the world’s largest pleural research collaborative (previously ICE, now IMPACT) and Co-Chairing this project for six years. He has successfully supervised numerous PhD students in both Bristol and Denmark.

Sara De Matteis gained her medicine degree at the University of Milan, Italy, where she also specialised in occupational and environmental medicine and obtained her PhD degree with a project on ‘genetic-occupational interaction in lung cancer aetiology’ developed at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA.

She won a National Institute for Health and Care Research Academic Clinical Lectureship on Occupational Medicine at National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, UK with a clinical post in the Occupational Lung Disease Clinic at the Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK.

She became an Associate Professor in Occupational Medicine at the University of Cagliari, Italy, and moved to the University of Milan to become the Director of the University Hospital’s occupational health unit and of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre on International Rural Health. She has recently been promoted to Full Professor at the University of Turin, Italy.

As an occupational physician and epidemiologist, she has more than 10 years’ experience in prevention, diagnosis, and management of occupational respiratory diseases. Her research activity has focussed on studying the interplay between individual, occupational and environmental factors in the aetiology of a broad range of respiratory conditions, from mesothelioma to COPD and asthma, by analysing large population-based epidemiological studies such as the UK Biobank study. Her current research aims to apply cutting-edge methods such as omics to clarify molecular etiopathogenetic mechanisms of occupational respiratory diseases to better prevent and cure them. She is co-leading the ARRDIA study aimed at identifying early biomarkers (miRNAs) of asbestos-related lung diseases. Also, she is co-chairing the ERS Task Force statement on work-related asthma.

As a university professor, she has always been committed to education and supervision of medical trainees and students and has led courses on occupational respiratory medicine, and epidemiology methods at undergraduate and postgraduate level.
She has published more than 100 articles in international peer-reviewed journals (H-index>30). She serves on the editorial board of several journals and is the Deputy Editor of the Occupational and Environmental Medicine Journal, and past Associate Editor of the European Respiratory Review.

She has been particularly active in the European Respiratory Society (ERS). She is the current Chair and Past Secretary of ERS Group 6.02: Occupational and Environmental Health, and member for two terms of the ERS Environment and Health Committee. Of note, she has been awarded the prestigious title of Fellow of ERS.

She sits in several international scientific committees and is the Chair of the UK and Ireland Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Society; Secretary of the Scientific Committee on Epidemiology in Occupational Health (EPICOH), the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) scientific committee on occupational epidemiology, and Fellow of the International Scientific Academy of Collegium Ramazzini.

Soni Savai Pullamsetti is Professor and Chair of “Lung Vascular Epigenetics” at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany. She is also Area Leader at the Cluster of Excellence Cardio-Pulmonary Institute (CPI) and Coordinator of the Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) Disease Area at the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), Giessen, Germany and associate faculty member of Institute for Lung Health (ILH).

Her research investigates the molecular and epigenetic mechanisms underlying pulmonary vascular remodelling and right heart dysfunction in PH. She has made important contributions to the understanding of tyrosine kinase signalling, epigenetic mechanisms, non-coding ribonucleic acids (RNAs) and transcription factor networks in the pathogenesis of PH. Her team has pioneered novel concepts such as “fetus-like” vascular reprogramming and has brought several therapies into clinical trials.

She is currently investigating age-related mechanisms in PH, including clonal hematopoiesis and mosaic loss of the Y chromosome, using multi-omics and spatial profiling to enable precision medicine approaches. She has authored over 160 publications and is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and a Fellow of the American Heart Association. She is also a member of the editorial boards of major respiratory and cardiovascular journals.

Prof. Pullamsetti maintains an active international research network and is an Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH), India, and Université Laval, Canada. As a long-standing member of the European Respiratory Society (ERS), she has made a major contribution through scientific leadership, mentoring and participation in committees and working groups.

Pierantonio Laveneziana, 48 years old, M.D. (since 2002), PhD (since 2012), is a Pulmonologist (since 2006) and Full Professor in Respiratory Medicine (2014–2015) and Physiology (since 2021; Associate Professor in Physiology from 2015 to 2021) at Sorbonne University and University Hospital Pitié-Salpêtrière and Tenon in Paris, France.

Prof. Laveneziana is Director of the “Dyspnoea and Exercise” programme at the Respiratory Department of the University Hospital "Pitié-Salpêtrière" and at the research unit UMRS 1158 at Sorbonne Université in Paris. This programme offers medical students, fellows, pulmonologists, cardiologists, internal medicine specialists and other physicians, and research fellows both from France and from outside France a teaching and learning opportunity to develop and acquire skills in the arena of unexplained exertional dyspnoea. Fellows come from all over the world: Brazil, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Hungaria, Romania, Croatia, Armenia and other countries.

Prof. Laveneziana is author of more than 200 papers and book chapters. His research focuses on pathophysiology, mechanisms and language of dyspnoea as well as the ventilatory, respiratory mechanics and gas exchange responses to exercise and activity limitation in healthy subjects and patients with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chronic heart failure, pulmonary arterial hypertension, congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, unexplained dyspnoea, and obesity.

Prof. Laveneziana has been the lead investigator in a number of important research projects. He has shown particular expertise in cardiopulmonary interactions, and in the mechanisms of exercise intolerance and exertional dyspnoea in patients with asthma, COPD, chronic heart failure, pulmonary hypertension and congenital central hypoventilation syndrome. The work on asthma, COPD, chronic heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, and recently on congenital central hypoventilation syndrome is very important and has highlighted, for the first time, abnormalities in dynamic respiratory mechanics and airway function that can occur in these patients.

Prof. Laveneziana’s interest in the mechanisms and management of dyspnoea continues and he has highlighted, more than anyone, the importance of anomalies in the pulmonary vasculature and in the ventilation/perfusion distribution that ultimately increases the inspiratory drive to the respiratory muscles, precipitating or aggravating exertional dyspnoea in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension.

More recently (2025), Prof. Laveneziana has shown an abnormal ventilatory response to exercise in patients with congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, which is related to defective exercise-induced expiratory recruitment on exertion.

MAIN RESEARCH GRANTS and AWARDS:
HORIZON-EIC-2022-2026: Low and very low-field 3D magnetic resonance spirometry for advanced regional exploration of respiratory diseases
2024: American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) Distinguished Fellow
2019: ERS Teaching Award
2013: Young Investigator Award from the 5th World Symposium on Pulmonary Hypertension
2010–2012: Marie Curie Actions – International Re-integration Grant (IRG)

Prof. Claudia Crimi is Associate Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Catania and Director of the Respiratory Intensive Care Unit at Policlinico “G. Rodolico-San Marco” University Hospital in Catania, Italy, where she also serves as a consultant in the respiratory unit and outpatient clinic. She runs a dedicated outpatient clinic for chronic noninvasive ventilation, providing long-term follow-up and personalised management for patients with chronic respiratory failure.

She completed her residency in respiratory diseases at the University of Catania and her research fellowship at the Department of Anaesthesia and Critical Care at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University, in Boston, USA. She holds a PhD in Respiratory Diseases from the University of Catania.

Her main research interests focus on severe asthma and noninvasive ventilation techniques, including high-flow nasal cannula and noninvasive ventilation, in both acute and chronic settings, with particular emphasis on patients with COPD and bronchiectasis, and on strategies to improve long-term home ventilation. She has been actively involved in clinical trials on respiratory support in acute respiratory failure, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work focusses on advancing respiratory intensive care and integrating acute and chronic respiratory support through innovation, research, and leadership.

Prof. Crimi has published extensively, with over 140 papers indexed in Scopus and more than 150 in PubMed, and she has an h-index of 35.

Within the European Respiratory Society (ERS), she currently serves as Secretary of ERS Group 02.02 (Noninvasive Ventilatory Support) and has been elected as the group’s next Chair. She also represents the Intensive Care Disease Area in the ERS Guidelines Working Group and co-chairs the ERS Task Force on Telemonitoring in Home Mechanical Ventilation. She is a member of the steering committee of the ERS Clinical Research Collaboration IMPORTANCE, which aims to harmonise care pathways in home ventilation across Europe and beyond. In addition, she serves as an Editorial Board Member for Thorax.

Diane Gray is a paediatric respiratory physician and clinical researcher at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital, University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her work has focussed on the determinants, diagnosis and prevention of lung disease in African children, producing a coherent body of high-quality, internationally recognised research in the field of paediatric respiratory health. Notably, her work in infant and preschool lung function (LF) has contributed novel data to international efforts to strengthen respiratory diagnostics, understand LF trajectories across the life course (in particular, the early life contribution), has prioritised underrepresented child populations, and has focussed on global high burden respiratory conditions.

She and her team established the first infant and preschool LF in Africa, providing the first data from low and middle income (LMIC) context and playing an active role in international efforts to develop these tools globally. She has been integral in developing national and regional respiratory physiology training programmes, meaningfully increasing much-needed access to spirometry and other resources across Africa. As both the head of African Paediatric Fellowship Programme (APFP) respiratory training programme at University of Cape Town (UCT), and the founder/Co-Chair of the Pan African Thoracic Society (PATS) African Paediatric Lung Function working group, she has facilitated a network of active respiratory researchers and clinicians across the African continent. She has broad collaborations that include local, regional and international groups, all with the express goal to strengthen the health of the African child. These include the European Research Society (ERS) Clinical Research Collaborations: The International Collaboration to Improve Respiratory Health in Children (INCIRCLE), the Global Lung Function Initiative (GLI), the Children’s Bronchiectasis Education Advocacy and Research Network (Child BEAR-NET) and the Prematurity’s Effects on the Lungs In Children and Adults Network (PELICAN) (co-chair).

Her research has focussed on ensuring that African children and African-led research are kept firmly embedded in global efforts to strengthen respiratory health. To that end, she has contributed to the clinical research environment through editorial work as Associate Editor of Respirology; is a regular reviewer for leading respiratory journals and advisory group membership: Lancet Child and Adolescent Health global board, the Forum of International Respiratory Societies (FIRS) Lung Health Task Force, and the Global Lung Function Initiative Network Advisory Committee.

She is regularly invited to present at national and international congresses, including as a keynote speaker, and has been on conference organising committees for national and international societies. She has obtained a number of competitive and substantive grants and is active in trying to develop a healthier, more equitable research culture. Awards for her work have included the South African Medical Research Council Silver Research Award, 2021. Her priority is equitable capacity building, and she greatly values her role as teacher and mentor.

Prof. Gunilla Westergren-Thorsson’s research has focussed on the molecular and cellular mechanisms driving chronic lung diseases. With a distinguished career spanning more than three decades, her work has made foundational contributions to the fields of lung inflammation, tissue remodelling, and, more recently, regeneration and repair.

She earned a PhD in Medical Sciences from Lund University, Sweden in 1992 and has since held collaborative academic positions at leading European research centres. Her early research defined how extracellular matrix components, particularly glycosaminoglycans, influence growth factor signalling and immune cell behaviour in the lung. This work helped elucidate the complex crosstalk between structural cells and inflammatory pathways that underline chronic conditions such as asthma, COPD, and pulmonary fibrosis, thereby enabling the fingerprinting of healthy and pathological lung tissue microenvironments linked to clinical parameters.

Building on this foundation, Prof. Westergren-Thorsson has more recently focussed on the mechanisms that govern endogenous lung repair and regeneration following injury. Her research has highlighted how matrix-derived cues and cellular plasticity contribute not only to disease progression but also to the potential for lung tissue restoration. These insights are informing new therapeutic approaches aimed at harnessing or enhancing regenerative processes in chronic lung disease.
With more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and sustained competitive funding, Prof. Westergren-Thorsson is also a dedicated mentor, having trained numerous graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who are now leaders in academia, healthcare, and industry. Her ability to translate complex biological mechanisms into clinically relevant frameworks has made her a valued collaborator across disciplines.

Beyond her research, Prof. Westergren-Thorsson has demonstrated exceptional leadership in the respiratory science community. She has served on the scientific committees of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and played an important role in shaping the Society’s strategic scientific direction. As organiser of ERS Lung Science Conferences and other international symposia, she has fostered cross-disciplinary collaboration and the development of early career researchers. Her leadership continues to influence the field through advisory roles, expert panels, and institutional initiatives aimed at integrating basic and translational science for improved respiratory health.

After Medical School, Prof. Bonsignore’s training was first in cardiology, then in respiratory medicine. Her research started in a physiology environment, as she worked for three years on pulmonary circulation in Norman Staub’s laboratory at University of California, San Francisco, California, USA. Another research interest has been exercise physiology, in particular the effects of exercise on the biology of airway cells and bone marrow-derived progenitors in athletes and patients with COPD. Sleep-disordered breathing has been her main research interest in the last three decades.

In the sleep field, Prof. Bonsignore was deeply involved in European Respiratory Society (ERS) activities, being Secretary and then Head of ERS Assembly 4. She has been a Fellow of ERS since 2018; has served as Co-Chair of the Sleep and Breathing Conference since 2019; and was Co-Chair of the ERS Congress 2023 in Milan, Italy.

In addition, Prof. Bonsignore has been a member of the ERS Ethics and Integrity Committee since 2020, has organised three ERS Research Seminars, and contributes to the educational activities of ERS for sleep. She was Co-Editor of the ERS Handbook of Respiratory Sleep Medicine, 2nd Edition, in 2023. Prof. Bonsignore has received the following awards: 1991 ERS Young Investigator Award; 2020 Sadoul Lecture Award, ERS Congress; 2024: Academic Career Award, Italian Society of Pneumology. In 2024 she was keynote lecturer at both the 27th European Sleep Research Society (ESRS) Congress in Seville, and at the Sleep Down Under Congress, Gold Coast, Australia.

Her scientific projects regarded obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA)-induced autonomic changes, in particular, sympathetic and baroreflex activity in OSA patients, their relationship with cardiometabolic risk and the effects of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment. She was a founder of the European Sleep Apnoea Database (ESADA) cohort – initially started as an EU COST Action before continuing as a highly successful ERS Clinical Research Collaboration – with over 50 papers published since its establishment. The ESADA project created a European research network on OSA and significantly contributed to the Horizon 2020 Sleep Revolution project.

Currently, Prof. Bonsignore is a member of the Steering Committee of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) on “Re-envisioning OSA Characterization”, and is a research consultant for Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri, Pavia, Italy.

She has been involved as principal investigator or participant in many institutional research projects and is an active member of several scientific societies, including ERS, the American Thoracic Society (ATS), the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and the American Physiological Society (APS). Prof. Bonsignore has published over 200 full papers, H-Index Scopus: 50 (30 May, 2025).

Prof. Gilbert Massard graduated as cardio-thoracic surgeon at the University of Strasbourg, France, in 1989, and completed his training with a lung transplant fellowship in Marseille, France, and at McGill University Montreal, Canada. He joined the university’s department of thoracic surgery as junior staff member in 1989 and subsequently was appointed as an Assistant Professor in 1994, and as Full Professor in 1996. He initiated the lung transplant programme as of February, 1993.

His main clinical and research areas are thoracic oncology and lung transplantation. He embraced the move in thoracic oncologic surgery ranging from maximally invasive, extended resections to the more contemporary minimally invasive approach. Starting lung transplantation during the pioneering years, he participated in the metamorphosis from an experimental procedure with a 35% 5-year survival, towards a secure, almost routine procedure with a 5-year survival rate exceeding 70%; the Strasbourg programme was identified as the most successful in France, with nationwide best 1-year and 3-year survival rates.

Academic development has been a continuous drive that let him lead two institution-building Trans-European mobility for university studies (TEMPUS) programmes. He served as coordinator of cooperation with Russian-speaking countries at the Faculty of Medicine for more than 20 years. He was a member of the French National Council of Universities from 2016–2022. Concurrently, he has been member of the board of directors of Strasbourg University Hospital.

He has served the European Respiratory Society (ERS) as an assembly secretary, assembly head, and director of external activities from 2000–2010, and Educational Programmes Director on the Education Council from 2018–2021. The European Society of Thoracic Surgeons (ESTS) welcomed him as council member in 2011, Director of Education from 2012–2018, and as President in 2018–2019. During his long term as Chairman of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS)–European Board of Thoracic Surgery (2013–2025), he co-chaired the HERMES task force group on thoracic surgery, which helped him to professionalise the yearly board exam in accordance with contemporary education science principles.

In 2019, he moved back to his home country Luxembourg and took the position of Director of Medical Education at the recently created University of Luxembourg. A bachelor's in medicine was successfully launched in 2020, and three specialist-training curricula in 2021.

Rudolf M. Huber, Professor of Medicine at the Medical School of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich, is past Head of the Division of Respiratory Medicine and Thoracic Oncology at the LMU Hospitals in Munich, Campus Innenstadt in the centre of Munich, Germany. Apart from thoracic oncology, the division is focussed on cystic fibrosis in adults, sleep medicine, allergy and immunology, obstructive lung diseases, and end-stage lung diseases. He is a specialist in internal medicine, respiratory medicine, allergology and environmental medicine. His clinical and scientific work is focused on thoracic oncology. Since 2021 Prof. Rudolf Huber has chaired the Ethics Committee of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

His research was focussed clinically and in the lab on interventional endoscopy including neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet (Nd:YAG)-laser therapy, photodynamic diagnosis and therapy, brachytherapy, and early lung cancer. In the lab, reactions of the bronchial wall and the interaction of the stroma with the tumour, as well as the different reactions to therapeutic interventions, were investigated using more complex systems like organ cultures, co-cultures and lung slices. The scientific clinical focus is now on multimodality management of thoracic tumours, focussing on radiochemotherapy of locally advanced cancer. He has more than 450 publications in peer-reviewed journals. He presented continuously at relevant international conferences like the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress, American Thoracic Society (ATS) International Congress, the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) Annual Meeting, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, and the World Conference on Lung Cancer.

In 2010, Prof. Huber initiated and chaired the Thoracic Oncology Centre Munich, a cooperation between a large chest hospital (Asklepios Fachkliniken München-Gauting) and the hospitals of the University of Munich. The Thoracic Oncology Centre is certified as an official lung cancer centre by the German Cancer Society. He also chairs the Section of Thoracic Oncology of the Cancer Centre of Munich.

Prof. Huber is also co-founder and member of the comprehensive Pneumology Centre of Munich (CPC-M) and the German Centre for Lung Research (DZL) where he was co-chairing the area of thoracic oncology.

Prof. Huber is active in several national and international societies, including positions in ERS, the American College of Chest Physicians and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer. As Secretary and Chair of the ERS Thoracic Oncology Group and leading the Thoracic Oncology Forum and the Thoracic Oncology Section, he fostered the position of thoracic oncology in ERS and was the first Head of the ERS Thoracic Oncology Assembly. Currently he chairs the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer committee on early detection and screening of lung cancer and is an active member/initiator of international task forces of ERS, the European Society of Thoracic Surgeons, and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer.

Prof. Elisabetta Renzoni is a senior interstitial lung disease (ILD) specialist at the Royal Brompton Hospital and Honorary Professor of Practice at Imperial College London, UK. Born and educated in Siena, Italy, she trained in respiratory medicine at the University of Siena under Prof. Sestini and Prof. Rottoli. She received a European Respiratory Society (ERS) research fellowship to study genetic and vascular mechanisms in lung fibrosis at the Royal Brompton under Prof. du Bois, joining the hospital permanently in 2006, supported by Prof. Athol Wells.

Her clinical expertise includes connective tissue disease-related ILD, idiopathic interstitial pneumonias, sarcoidosis, and hypersensitivity pneumonitis. She is known for her patient-centred approach. She pioneered remote ILD multidisciplinary meetings (teleMDTs) together with Prof. David Hansell, later expanding the initiative with radiologists Prof. Desai and Prof. Devaraj, establishing a network of professionals interested in ILD, and increased ILD patient care across the UK.

Prof. Renzoni leads clinical and translational research in ILD. Her work includes studies on genetic predisposition, fibroblast gene expression, vascular and lymphatic remodelling, and prognostic biomarkers. She earned a PhD from Imperial College in 2008 and has recently contributed to research on non-pharmacological ILD interventions, including a key trial on ambulatory oxygen that informed American Thoracic Society Clinical Practice Guidelines on ambulatory oxygen in ILD patients with exertional hypoxemia.

An author of over 220 peer-reviewed publications, she is a frequent international speaker, Associate Editor of Respirology, and serves on multiple editorial boards and guideline committees, including the recent ERS/European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology Guidelines for diagnosis and management of connective tissue disease-ILD.

A dedicated educator and mentor, she coordinates the ILD unit’s training of international clinical research fellows and has hosted numerous ERS fellows, several of whom now lead in ILD care and research. She chaired the ERS Group 12.02 on ILD/diffuse parenchymal lung diseases from 2018–2021 and remains an active contributor to ERS educational programmes.