Conferences

Action Research Professor of Neurology, Director of the Stroke Prevention Research Unit, University of Oxford

Peter Rothwell is the Action Research Professor of Neurology in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford. He qualified in medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1987 and after completing his early postgraduate clinical training he moved to Oxford as Clinical Lecturer in Neurology in 1996. He was awarded an MRC Senior Clinical Fellowship in 1999 and set up the Stroke Prevention Research Unit in 2000, which now employs over 40 research staff.

He was awarded Professor of Clinical Neurology in 2004 and was elected a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2008, a National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator in 2009 and a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator in 2011. He has published over 400 scientific papers and several books. His research interests include primary and secondary prevention of stroke, the effects of blood pressure on the brain, and the risks and benefits of aspirin.

He is clinically active, working as a Consultant Neurologist for the Oxford University Hospitals Trust and contributing to clinical services for general neurology and stroke prevention. He has received several awards for other areas of his research, including the Inaugural British Medical Journal Award for Outstanding Contribution to Clinical Research (2009), the Foulkes Foundation Medal, Academy of Medical Sciences (2009), the World Stroke Organisation President’s Biennial Award for Outstanding Research (2010), a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (2011), the Kinmonth Medal, Royal College of Surgeons (2012), the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education (2013) and The Inaugural International Aspirin Foundation Senior Scientific Award (2014).

Dong Zhao, chief physician, PhD, doctoral tutor, deputy director of Beijing Institute of heart lung and blood vessel disease, director of epidemiology research department, An Zhen Hospital, Beijing, China

Experts Committee member for: Disease Control of the Ministry of Health, National Cardiovascular Center, Chinese Society of Cardiology, Cardiovascular Disease branch of Chinese Physicians’ Association, International Society of Atherosclerosis.

Vice chairman for: Chinese Society for prevention of chronic diseases, Cardiovascular Disease Branch of Chinese Female Physicians’ Association.

Involved in Chinese Guidelines and international guidelines update: Prevention and Treatment of Hypertension, Prevention and Treatment of Dyslipidemia, Guideline for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention. World Health Organization Guidelines for cardiovascular disease prevention and American Heart Association guidelines of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in women. Published more than 200 hundreds papers in professional journals.

Award: the first prize of Scientific Progress Award of the Ministry of Education in 2011, the Chinese Medical Prize in 2013, the second prize of Scientific and Technological Progress in Beijing City in 2005.

Professor Yongjun Wang, chief physician, professor, doctoral tutor, vice president of Beijing Tiantan Hospital affiliated to Capital Medical University

Executive vice president or Chairmen: Chinese Stroke Association, Chinese Society of Neurology, Stroke Prevention and Control Society, Chinese Preventive Medicine Association.

Editor of journals: Chinese Journal of Stroke, Chinese Journal of Internal Medicine, CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, Stroke, a member of the World Stroke Organization.

Research interests: cerebrovascular disease clinical and applied basic research work. He published CHANCE study which was adopted by AHA/ASA 2014 “Guidelines for the Prevention of Stroke in Patients With Stroke and TIA”, and “2014 Chinese Guidelines for the Secondary Prevention of Ischemic Stroke and TIA”. He has published more than 100 SCI papers as the first author or corresponding author.

Award: the first prize of Beijing Science and Technology Award, the first prize of Science and Technology of the Chinese Preventive Medicine Association, the first prize of Science and Technology Progress Award of Ministry of Education, the outstanding achievement award of “2014 WuXi PharmaTech Life Chemistry Research Award”. “Beijing scholar” in 2015.

Professor Sir John Burn obtained an MD with distinction, a first class honours degree in human genetics from Newcastle University, where he has been Professor of Clinical Genetics since 1991 and a consultant specialist since 1984. He led the regional NHS Genetics Service for 20 years and helped to create the Centre for Life which houses an education and science centre alongside the Institute of Genetic Medicine and Northgene Ltd, the identity testing company he launched in 1995. He chairs DNA device company QuantuMDx. He was knighted in 2010, chosen as one of the first 20 ‘local heroes’ to have a brass plaque on Newcastle Quayside in 2014. He received the Living North award in 2015 for services to the North East 2000 – 2015. He is also a non-Executive Director of NHS England.

I am a chronic disease epidemiologist. I have a particular interest in the roles that individual lifestyle choices (diet, exercise, smoking), metabolic factors (obesity, high cholesterol, and hypertension), and biochemical and genetic markers play on the risk of coronary artery disease and stroke. Also of interest is the impact that vascular disease has on other organ systems, including cognitive dysfunction and renal disease.

Recently, I have initiated a number of research projects to investigate the diverse nature of atherosclerosis and I serve as the director of the Geriatric Research and Education Center (GRECC) at the VA Boston Healthcare System.

Dr Andrew T Chan is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and an attending gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) with a clinical specialty in familial gastrointestinal cancer syndromes. He is Chief of the Clinical and Translational Epidemiology Unit and the Program Director for gastroenterology training at MGH. His research focus is in clinical and translational epidemiology of colorectal cancer, with a focus on chemoprevention with aspirin.

Christopher Hawkey is Professor of Gastroenterology at the Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre. His main interests are in the field of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs and inflammatory bowel disease. In both areas his approach is to try to identify targets in small exploratory studies and then evaluate them in large and/or outcomes studies.

Dr John WK Chia is Senior Consultant, at the National Cancer Centre Singapore. Graduating from the National University of Singapore, he later obtained his Membership of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh in 2002 and upon completing his Oncology Boards, he underwent fellowship training in “Immunotherapy for Solid Tumors” – with Malcom Brenner at the Centre for Cell and Gene Therapy, Baylor College, Houston, for the development of cancer vaccines and adoptive T-cell therapy. He undertook a second clinical fellowship in with Prof Stan Kaye at The Royal Marsden Hospital London from 2011 to 2012 in the advanced management of Gynecological cancers.

Dr Chia is active in clinical trial research; and has developed and/or led numerous clinical trial studies– including immune check-point inhibitors, cancer vaccines, adoptive T cell therapy, and small molecule targets for cancer and he holds scientific research grants both locally and internationally.

Dr Ruth Langley is based at the UK Medical Research Council Clinical Trials Unit at University College London where she jointly leads the Cancer Group; and has a clinical consultant post at the Brighton and Sussex University Hospital.

She has a particular interest in gastro-oesophageal malignancy and has co-ordinated a series of trials and associated translational studies, and has led the investigation of the use of transdermal oestrogen in the treatment of prostate cancer.

Dr Langley is the Chief Investigator of an international trial (Add-Aspirin) designed to assess the effect of aspirin as an additional adjuvant agent in several common solid tumours.

Dr Valerie O’Donnell is Professor of Biochemistry and Co-Director of the Systems Immunity Research Institute, Cardiff University. She uses mass spectrometry to uncover new lipids involved in inflammatory processes, and is funded by British Heart Foundation and Welcome Trust. She is an ERC Advanced Investigator. Following a PhD in Bristol, studying enzymology of NADPH oxidase in neutrophils, she completed post doctoral fellowships in Bern, Switzerland and with Bruce Freeman and Victor Darley-Usmar at University of Alabama at Birmingham. She moved to Cardiff in 1999 on a Wellcome Trust CDA Fellowship. Her research group studies vascular inflammation, applying informatics, machine learning and statistics to global analysis and discovery lipidomics projects which aim to uncover new mechanisms of lipid signaling in disease.

Bianca Rocca, MD, PhD is Professor of Pharmacology at the Catholic University School of Medicine in Rome (Italy). Prof. Rocca trained as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Experimental Therapeutics, University Pennsylvania of Philadelphia (USA) with Prof. Garret A. FitzGerald. Prof. Bianca Rocca is member of the Editorial Board of the ‘European Heart Journal-Cardiovascular Pharmacology’, listed in the Top Italian Scientists, she has co-authored over 100 articles with over 5500 citations in peer-reviewed journals, including: Nature Medicine, Science, Blood, Circulation, Journal of Clinical Investigation, PNAS (USA), Annals of Internal Medicine, ATVB, Nature Clinical Practice in Cardiovascular Medicine, JACC, European Heart Journal, Diabetes. She has been appointed by the European Society of Cardiology as the Chairperson of the Working Group on Thrombosis (2016-2018). Her H-index is 36. Main scientific topics of interest are: antiplatelet drugs, eicosanoids, primary haemostasis, platelets, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, cardiovascular diseases.