Dr. Lumley's primary scholarly interests are on emotions, stress, and physical health. Much of the research that he, his students, and colleagues conduct involves developing and testing emotion-focused interventions to reduce stress and improve health. For example, in numerous studies, they have examined the effects of written or verbal emotional disclosure. More recently, they have developed and tested "Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy" (EAET) for people who have primary pain conditions, such as fibromyalgia, headaches, chronic musculoskeletal pain, irritable bowel syndrome and pelvic pain.

Dr. Meulders is Associate Professor of Experimental Health Psychology at the UM Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience and visiting professor at KU Leuven. She is an experimental psychologist and pain scientist with extensive expertise in learning theory and laboratory conditioning models. Her research has focused on the psychological mechanisms in the transition from acute to chronic pain, and particularly, on learning processes in pain-related fear and avoidance behavior, and more recently, on how social factors may influence these learning processes. Her research group develops and employs sophisticated experimental, ecologically valid, and clinically relevant paradigms (robotic-arm operant avoidance paradigm) and novel techniques (VR) both in healthy volunteers and clinical populations, to increase fundamental knowledge about these learning processes to ultimately promote treatment innovation and tackle pain-related disability.

Associate Professor Fereshteh Pourkazemi is a researcher, artists, a clinical physiotherapist with over 18 years of experience and a leading academic within the Discipline of Physiotherapy at The University of Sydney. She is internationally recognised for reshaping models of chronic ankle instability management, integrating her expertise in chronic pain assessment and management into this field. A/Prof Pourkazemi currently leads multidisciplinary projects exploring innovative social interventions (including arts) for managing chronic pain and other chronic health conditions. As an educator, she holds the Senior Fellowship of Advanced Higher Education, and recently (2021-23) led the development of the Doctor of Physiotherapy (DPT) program at The University of Sydney. 

Mr. Taverner has lived experience with numerous chronic conditions, including Fibromyalgia, Functional Neurological Disorder, Arthritis, Prinzmetal Angina, Anxiety, Depression and Glaucoma. And cooking is his go to therapy!  

Ian now provides cooking demos, talks, classes and programmes to numerous Charities, Hopsitals, Organisations and Expo Events all over the world, championing accessible, repeatable and enjoyable cooking

Dr. Hirsh is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Indiana University Indianapolis and Director of the Pain Research Laboratory. He received his PhD in Clinical & Health Psychology from the University of Florida and completed postdoctoral training in rehabilitation research at the University of Washington School of Medicine. His laboratory examines how individual-level factors (e.g., biology, cognition, emotions) interact with interpersonal and socio-contextual factors (e.g., cultural heritage, social class, relationship status) to influence the experience of and judgments about pain. These research findings are then used to develop, test, and implement interventions to enhance equity and outcomes in pain care.

Associate Professor Tasha Stanton leads the Persistent Pain Research Group at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and is co-Director of IIMPACT in Health at The University of South Australia, Adelaide. She is a clinical pain neuroscientist, with original training as a physiotherapist. Her research group works closely with consumers and with clinicians to identify real-world problems and devise new solutions. She has a specific interest in chronic pain, osteoarthritis, pain science education, and novel technologies, such as virtual and mediated reality, to enhance exercise engagement.

Dr. Tania Di Renna, BSc., FRCPC., Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, completed her medical school and Anesthesiology residency training in Ottawa.  She obtained a chronic pain fellowship at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and has spinal cord stimulation training from Montreal Neurological Institute. 

She is currently the Medical Director of the Toronto Academic Pain Medicine Institute (TAPMI). TAPMI is a partnership of 5 academic hospitals that manage chronic pain in Toronto. She practices anesthesiology and chronic pelvic pain at Women’s College Hospital. She has a long leadership career in Chronic Pain. She served as the co-chair of the HQO Guidelines for Chronic Pain, the co-chair of the Ontario Chronic Pain Network and Ontario Representative for Pain Canada.  She is now the President-Elect of the Canadian Pain Society.

Nucelio Lemos underwent his medical graduation, as well as his Gynecology, Urogynecology and MIS training and PhD in Gynecology at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of Santa Casa de São Paulo, Brazil. He then attended a third Fellowship, in Pelvic Neurodysfunctions, by the International School of Neuropelveology in Zurich, Switzerland.

In 2011, he founded the Pelvic Neurodysfunction Clinics of the Department of Gynecology of the Federal University of São Paulo, which he still currently chairs and where he develops extensive research and teaching of all fields of Neuropelveology; namely:

 - treatment of Intrapelvic Nerve Entrapments and Neuropathic Pain of Intrapelvic Etiology;

 - Knowledge Transfer in Nerve-Sparing Radical Pelvic Procedures (including endometriosis and pelvic malignancies);

 - and rehabilitation of paraplegic patients through the Laparoscopic Implantation of Neuroprosthesis. The implementation of this specialty center and research lines was the main goal of his clinical post-doctoral work, which he completed      on January 2023.

He is past Chairman (2013-2016) of the Scientific Committee of the International Continence Society and Founding Member and past Chairman of the Scientific and Education Committee of the Latin American Pelvic Floor Association (ALAPP; 2014-2019) and past Director at Large of the American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (2020-2021).

As of January 2017 he has been recruited by the Temerty Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto, at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of Mount Sinai and Women’s College Hospitals where he continues to develop the research started in Brazil.

He has established a referral program for complex benign pelvic surgery, including complex laparoscopic reconstructive procedures, fistula care and complex pelvic pain, including advanced endometriosis, pudendal neuralgia and other intrapelvic neuralgias, and surgical treatment of mesh complications.

In the Summer of 2023, Dr. Lemos was promoted to full Professor of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the University of Toronto, in recognition to the international impact of his work.

Professor Mohamed Mabrouk is a Consultant Gynaecologist and Minimal Access Reproductive Surgeon, with special interests in endometriosis, advanced endoscopic surgery.

He is one of the founders of the Cambridge Endometriosis Centre, Cambridge University Hospitals, U.K..

Professor Mabrouk is an Adjunct Professor of Gynaecology in the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Demark. He is also a Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Alexandria University, Egypt, and is the President of the Middle East Society of Gynaecologic Endoscopy (MESGE).

Professor Mabrouk received his training and earned the European Board in Obstetrics and Gynaecology from Bologna University, Italy. His MD thesis was in collaboration between Bologna and Alexandria Universities and he obtained his PhD in Endometriosis management from VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

He was appointed as a consultant Gynaecology Surgeon in the Sacred Heart Hospital in Negrar, Verona, Italy and worked as a senior consultant in the Endometriosis Centre of Bologna University Hospital, Italy.

Professor Mabrouk is a recognised international expert in the field of endometriosis, surgical anatomy and minimally invasive surgery. He is also author and co-author of numerous International, peer-reviewed publications and three books.

Yanhong Liu, MD, PhD, is an Associate Chief Physician of Anesthesiology and Associate Professor at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, where she holds the rank of Senior Colonel in the People's Liberation Army. Dr. Liu completed her PhD in 2006 and received postdoctoral training in clinical research at Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital from 2010 to 2012. She has 20 years experience in clinical anesthesia and spearheads China's Acute Postoperative Pain Study as one of the leading principal investigators.

Alexander Stahmann, MSc. is the CEO of the German Multiple Sclerosis Registry. He completed his training as a medical computer scientist at the University of Göttingen in 2013 and worked as research associate at the Department of Medical Informatics at the University Medical Center Göttingen till 2016. Since 2016 he is a member of the board of the registry and since 2018 CEO of the non-profit society for research and project development in multiple sclerosis. The NGO is the data holder of the German MS-Registry, established in 2001. The Registry is involved in national and international research collaborations and serves as a data source for EMA mandated PASS.

David Holloway joined the electronic Persistent Pain Outcomes Collaboration (ePPOC) as Director in May 2022, after an extensive career in both the public and private sector, most recently as Director of Quality and Safety for an Australian community nursing and aged care organisation. ePPOC has been collecting pain outcomes data for more than a decade across Australia and New Zealand and is currently progressing towards the third iteration of its dataset. 

David has held a varied range of operational management and clinical governance roles covering both face-to-face and telehealth delivery models and completed his PhD thesis on the efficacy of virtual environments in increasing competence and confidence of nursing students in relation to medication administration.

Dr. Vollert is a chronic pain researcher from Germany, where he did his PhD in neurophysiology at the University of Heidelberg. After six years at Imperial College in London,UK, he has joined the University of Exeter, UK, as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in October 2023.

His background is in data science and statistics, and he collaborates with clinicians across the UK and Europe to analyze multifaceted datasets searching for predictors of developing chronic pain (for example after surgery) and predicting response to treatment to enable personalized pain medicine. He uses a wide array of methods -sensory phenotyping, patient-reported outcomes, -omics – and machine learning to identify mechanistic subgroups.

Arya Rao, a MD-PhD candidate in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program at Harvard Medical School and the chair of the MESH AI group at Massachusetts General Hospital. Arya graduated from Columbia University, where she studied Biochemistry and Computer Science. She broadly aims to apply novel machine learning methods to problems in healthcare, ranging from therapeutics to medical education to administrative efforts.

Walter Greenleaf, PhD, is a neuroscientist and medical technology developer at Stanford University. With over thirty-five years of experience in medical research and product development, he is a leading authority in digital medicine and the clinical application of virtual reality technology.

Walter has developed systems that address a wide range of conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, stroke, addictions, autism spectrum disorder, depression, neurodegenerative diseases, traumatic brain injury, neurorehabilitation, and other complex challenges in healthcare.

He serves as an advisor to the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, the Stanford Wearable Electronics Program, and the Virtual Reality & Immersive Technology Clinic at Stanford. Walter was the founding Chief Science Officer for Pear Therapeutics and currently holds the position of Chief Science Officer at Interaxon. In addition to his research at Stanford University, he is a technology and neuroscience advisor for several medical product development companies and investment groups.

Associate Professor Tasha Stanton leads the Persistent Pain Research Group at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) and is co-Director of IIMPACT in Health at The University of South Australia, Adelaide. She is a clinical pain neuroscientist, with original training as a physiotherapist. Her research group works closely with consumers and with clinicians to identify real-world problems and devise new solutions. She has a specific interest in chronic pain, osteoarthritis, pain science education, and novel technologies, such as virtual and mediated reality, to enhance exercise engagement.

Li Hu, PhD, is a Professor at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He received his PhD from the University of Hong Kong in 2010 and has been a principal investigator at the Institute of Psychology (CAS) since 2016. His research focuses on unraveling the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying pain perception and its modulation. Employing advanced cross-species paradigms, multimodal neuroimaging techniques, and cognitive neuromodulation approaches, his work mainly aims to identify reliable neural indicators associated with pain sensitivity and discriminability. Additionally, he actively investigates novel non-pharmacological analgesic strategies, such as neuromodulation and cognitive-behavioral interventions, and explores the underlying neural mechanisms that drive their efficacy. His research was been supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Beijing Natural Science Foundation, and industry collaborations.

David A. Seminowicz, PhD, is Professor and Wolfe-Western Fellow, Department of Medical Biophysics, Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, University of Western Ontario. He earned a BSc from the University of Guelph, a PhD at the University of Toronto and completed postdoctoral training at McGill University. He was faculty at University of Maryland, Baltimore, from 2010-2022. He was also Principal Research Scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia, in Sydney, from 2019-2022. His work has focused on the cognitive aspects of pain, individual differences in the response to pain, and the consequence of chronic pain on brain structure and function. His studies have clarified how pain-related and cognitive-related brain activity interact and how passive and active pain coping strategies affect these types of activity. His work further suggested a brain mechanism through which chronic pain might affect cognitive ability and continues testing this hypothesis in intervention studies in people with chronic pain. The clinical populations in these studies include chronic low back pain, chronic and episodic migraine, and burning mouth syndrome. Dr. Seminowicz has also used rodent MRI to ask a question that could not easily be addressed in humans, such as how the brain changes over time from before the onset of an injury that leads to chronic pain to the time when the disease affects cognitive and affective behaviors. Ongoing studies in Dr. Seminowicz’s lab employ longitudinal designs to assess how interventions affect brain function and whether pain biomarkers can be developed. Another line of work examines the role of the claustrum in cognitive control and pain. The main techniques in his lab include quantitative sensory testing, EEG, structural and functional MRI, and simultaneous EEG-fMRI. His main funding has been from the NIH, CIHR, NSERC, intercampus initiatives, private foundations, and industry.

Dr. Jimmy Barus is a neurologist who has been interested in pain medicine, especially chronic non-cancer pain, since the beginning of his career. He participated as a contributor to the IASP's Multidisciplinary Pain Clinic (MPC) toolkit project, actively introducing and advocating for multidisciplinary pain services in Indonesia. Through the IASP's MPC toolkit training, where he was one of the trainers, the concept of this service was reintroduced in Indonesia with all its challenges. He also became a pioneer in the use of this toolkit as a reference for multidisciplinary pain services by practicing it at the hospital where he worked, while encouraging its use in similar services managed by participants of the 2021 Indonesia MPC toolkit training. He currently serves as vice president of the Indonesian Pain Society and secretary of the council of the Association of Southeast Asia Pain Societies (ASEAPS).

Professor Blythe is a public health physician and pain epidemiologist, whose work has made a major contribution to understanding how pain conditions affect populations, and also to the growing recognition of pain as a major public health problem and as the leading contributor to the global burden of disability. She has also worked in promoting the uptake and use of research evidence in pain education, and in global and national health policy.

Dr. Calvo's research interest is complementary to her clinical work. Her general aim is to better understand the mechanisms behind neuropathic pain. She studies both animal models and patients employing a variety of techniques ranging from transgenic mouse models to human psychophysical studies and genetics. She currently has two active lines: neuropathic pain in dermatological diseases, and pain modulation by potassium channels. Apart from research, Dr. Clavo currently attends a chronic pain patient unit twice a week within the Interdisciplinary Pain Management Team at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Dr. Cardosa is a Consultant Pain Specialist who retired from Selayang Hospital in 2016 after serving for more than 30 years in the Ministry of Health (MOH) Malaysia. Currently, she is a visiting consultant pain specialist at Hospital Tuanku Muhriz UKM in Kuala Lumpur. Dr. Cardosa has done pioneering work in the field of Pain Management in Malaysia – this includes starting the first Acute Pain Service in the MOH in Hospital Kuala Lumpur in 1993, setting up the first multidisciplinary pain clinic in theMOH in Hospital Selayang in 2000, and helping to set up the first inpatient palliative care unit in the MOH in Hospital Selayang in 2002. She was also responsible for implementing Pain as the 5th Vital Sign in the MOH in 2008, and subsequently spearheaded the “Pain Free Hospital” initiative of the MOH in 2011.

Since her retirement from full-time clinical practice, she continues to be actively involved in teaching pain management in Malaysia and in the ASEAN region. She was President of the Malaysian Association for the Study of Pain (MASP) for 10 years and now serves as Advisor to the MASP. She was a faculty member of the first IASP Southeast Asia Pain camp in 2011, and has continued to be involved in running the 5 subsequent biennial pain camps (2013-2023), which are run by the Association of Southeast Asian Pain Societies (ASEAPS), where she serves as a council member.

Professor Michael Nicholas is a Clinical Psychologist with over 40 years of experience in the field of pain. He is the Director of Pain Education at the Pain Management Research Institute - Kolling Institute, Sydney Medical School and the Director of multidisciplinary pain management programs (including ADAPT) at the MJC Pain Management & Research Centre at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney.

Professor Que is the Program Director at the Center for Pain Medicine, University of Santo Tomas Hospital Faculty of Medicine and Surgery.  She was the first Filipino overseas-trained expert in Pain Management having obtained her masters’ degree and hands-on clinical studies at the University of Sydney in Australia.

Dr. Quyen is an anesthesiologist and a graduate of the IASP Clinical Pain Management Fellowship at Siriraj Hospital. He currently serves as the Chief of the Pain Clinic at Hospital 199 in Da Nang, Vietnam.

Actively engaged in advancing pain management in Vietnam, he has helped organizing many pain education programs in Vietnam, including IASP Toolkit training programs and Essential Pain Management. As a pioneer in establishing interdisciplinary pain clinics in Vietnam, he is dedicated to improving patient care through a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach.

Steven Cohen earned his medical degree from Mount Sinai, followed by an anesthesiology residency at Columbia University and a pain fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. A retired U.S. Army Colonel, he has been deployed four times in support of operations in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Currently, Cohen is the inaugural Edmond I. Eger Professor of Anesthesiology, Vice Chair of Research and Pain Medicine, and a professor across multiple disciplines at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. He also serves as Director of Pain Research and Professor at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Previously, he has also held a faculty position at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Cohen’s groundbreaking research has been published in top medical journals, including The Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, JAMA, and The New England Journal of Medicine. From 2021 to 2023, ExpertScape ranked him as one of the top global chronic pain experts. He is also the Principal Investigator on the largest NIH HEAL study and multiple federally funded multicenter trials. Beyond his research, Cohen is also the President-Elect of ASRA-Pain Medicine, the largest pain organization in the U.S.

Luana Colloca is an NIH-funded physician-scientist who conducted ground-breaking studies that have advanced scientific understanding of the psychoneurobiological bases of endogenous systems for pain modulation in humans including the discovery that the vasopressin system is involved in the enhancement of placebo effects with a dimorphic effect. Currently, her team conducts basic and translational research on genomics of orofacial chronic pain, brain mechanisms of expectancy - and observationally-induced hypoalgesia - and immersive virtual reality. Her research has been published in top-ranked international journals including Biological Psychiatry, Pain, Nature Neuroscience, JAMA, Lancet Neurology, Science and NEJM. The impact of her innovative work is clear from her outstanding publications, citation rate, numerous invited lectures worldwide and media featured by The National Geographic, The New Scientist, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, Nature, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, News and World Reports.