Anthony is a Nurse Practitioner in Queensland, Australia. He completed his PhD on pain management for caesarean section in 2016 as part of his leadership role in the acute pain service at Ipswich Hospital. His RCT considered the biopsychosocial nature of acute pain and included a follow-up study three months after caesarean delivery. In the following year, his work was recognised with an Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award by the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology. Since then, Anthony has worked as a clinician managing pain for chronic disease and disability in the correctional setting followed by three years in palliative care. Anthony has published his clinical insights and expertise by writing pain management textbook material for Elsevier in Fundamentals of Nursing Practice and Lewis’s Medical Surgical-Nursing. He hopes to conduct future research on nurse practitioner well-being and support in the workplace. 

Anthony is married 30 years and has two sons plus one grandson. He is a fanatic rugby union fan, recently attending the Rugby World Cup in France 2023. Otherwise, the house and garden call on him to support his wife who is a busy primary school teacher.

Marc obtained his medical degree at the Catholic University Leuven Belgium. He completed his anesthesiology residency in 1996 and in 2000, he received his PhD degree following research related to metabolic support of the stunned myocardium. Until 2010 he was clinical director of obstetric anesthesia and non-operating room anesthesia. From 2010 till 2022 he was Head of the Department of Anesthesiology at UZLeuven.  Currently, he is Coordinator of the Anesthesia training/residency program and Professor at the Leuven University. He has given >650 invited lectures, has published over 390 articles and more than 30 book chapters. His H-index at SCOPUS is 58. He was within the top 1% most cited authors in his field in 2020 and within 0.1% in 2021. 

He is editor of 4 textbooks in obstetric anesthesia: “Maternal Critical Care” (2013, Cambridge University Press), “Obstetric Anesthesia” (2016, Oxford University Press), “Anesthesie en de Normale Zwangerschap” (2017, Acco) and “Anesthesiologie en Zwangerschap” (2024, Acco). He was President of ESRA, he is member of the Executive Committee of the OAA and he is PROSPECT Chair. Currently he is Editor-In-Chief of the European Journal of Anaesthesiology and of the European Journal of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care. 

His current research focuses on obstetric anesthesia and postoperative pain management. 

He is married with Eva and has five children, Sofie, Michiel, Bas, Ella and Juliette. He loves to travel and play golf. Italian food and wine make him smile ! Dog Toto and cat Copper make sure he is never bored. Dog Toto accompanies him at his regular early morning runs.

Thomas Nevian studied physics and biophysics in Heidelberg, Germany, St. Andrews, UK and at the Cornell University, USA. He performed his PhD work with Prof. Dr. Bert Sakmann at the Max-Planck-Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, investigating cellular mechanisms of plasticity in cortical neurons. After his dissertation in 2003 and two further years as post-doc in Heidelberg, he became a group leader in the Department of Physiology at the University of Bern (Switzerland).  In 2010 he received a Research-Professorship of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF-Professor). In 2012 he was appointed Tenure-Track-Assistentprofessor and since 2014 he is Full Professor of Physiology (Ordinarius) at the University of Bern and Co-Director of the Department of Physiology. His research in Neuroscience was awarded with the Pfizer Research Prize twice (2008, 2016) and in 2012 he received the Theodor-Kocher-Preis as best young researcher of the University of Bern. In 2015 he received an ERC-Consolidator grant to study the neuronal networks involved in pain processing in the cerebral cortex. He is a member of the steering committee of the Clinical Neurosciences Bern (CNB) and was Secretary of the Swiss Society for Neuroscience.

Thomas Nevian investigates the fundamental mechanisms of signal processing in the brain using state-of-the-art microscopy and electrophysiology techniques. His research group investigates the biophysics of neurons, principles of memory formation and the development of chronic pain. Here the main focus is to understand nociceptive processing in the anterior cingulate cortex, a brain region that is involved in the emotional evaluation of the experience that comprises pain.

Daniel Segelcke graduated at the Ruhr University of Bochum, where he received extensive training in behavioral biology and animal pain models for migraine. Following his PhD in 2012, he joined the laboratories of Esther Pogatzki-Zahn (EPZ) at the University of Münster to investigate behavioral, cerebral processing and proteome signatures in animal models for post-surgical, pathogene pain, neuropathic pain, and bone-tumor induced pain. He successfully established novel rodent behavior assays, devices and analytic methods to investigate multidimensional pain modalities in rats and mice in longitudinal studies. Machine learning approaches performs some of these analysis methods. During his time at the University of Münster, he raised peer-reviewed funding for a preclinical systematic review, which investigate the impact of buprenorphine (opioid) in biomedical animal research. During his time at the University of Münster, he raised peer-reviewed funding for a preclinical systematic review, which investigate the impact of buprenorphine (opioid) in biomedical animal research.

David Finn is Established Professor of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Principal Investigator and Founding Co-Director of the Centre for Pain Research at University of Galway, Ireland. Professor Finn graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Biotechnology from University of Galway and a PhD in Neuroscience from University of Bristol, and he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nottingham.  His research focuses on the affective and cognitive dimensions of pain, stress-pain interactions, and neuroinflammatory processes, with an emphasis on the endogenous cannabinoid system. He is Past-President of the International Cannabinoid Research Society (ICRS) and of the Irish Pain Society. He has been a member of the Presidential Task Forces for Cannabis, Cannabinoids and Chronic Pain of both the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and the European Pain Federation (EFIC), and leader of the Basic Science Work Package for the IASP Task Force. He is a member of the EFIC Working Groups for Translational Pain Research and Pain Research Strategy, the IASP Task Force for Use of Animals in Pain Research, a member of the Scientific Programme Committees for the IASP 2026 and 2024 World Pain Congresses, NeuPSIG 2025, EFIC 2022, and a member of EFIC Council.   Professor Finn is a member of the Editorial Boards of multiple international scientific journals including Pain, Journal of Psychopharmacology, Frontiers in Neuropharmacology, Frontiers in Pain Research, and the Scandinavian Journal of Pain. He has published over 190 peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters and frequently lectures at international conferences.

Adrienne is a physiotherapist and clinician scientist with 30 years of clinical, research and education experience. She is a Team Leader/Senior Research Fellow at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Associate Professor within the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Melbourne. In 2019 she was awarded a Translation of Research into Practice Fellowship through the Medical Research Future Fund.

Adrienne's passion for improving the lives of children with cerebral palsy and other developmental disabilities and their families grew from her PhD studies completed in 2008 and a two-year post-doctoral fellowship at McMaster University, Canada. Since then her clinical research activities have grown substantially.

Adrienne has presented extensively on the management of children with cerebral palsy and have developed strong collaborations with key clinicians and researchers nationally and internationally.

Meredith Smith is a Lecturer in Physiotherapy within the School of Allied Health Science and Practice. She is a clinical paediatric physiotherapist, with expertise in paediatric rehabilitation and three dimensional gait analysis. Meredith is currently completing a PhD on the topic 'Tailoring Chronic Pain Assessment for Children and Young People with Cerebral Palsy'. Meredith previously completed a Masters of Advanced Paediatric Physiotherapy Practice through Monash University, including a research translation project focusing on community physiotherapy surveillance in cerebral palsy. Meredith is a titled APA Paediatric Physiotherapist and a committee member for the APA Paediatric special interest group. Meredith also continues to work clinically at Novita and the Women's and Children's Hospital.

Nadine is a physiotherapist who works in the movement program, Kids Rehab WA at Perth Children's Hospital. She has a special interest in children who have dyskinetic cerebral palsy and assessment of pain when children cannot self-report. Her recent research has focussed on movement interventions for children to decrease pain.

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.

Laura E. Simons is a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and an attending psychologist at the pediatric pain management clinic at Stanford Children’s Health. Dr. Simons is a committed researcher and clinician with a focus on psychological assessment and development of treatment interventions to improve the lives of youth with chronic pain. Prior to joining Stanford in 2016, she was an attending psychologist/associate professor at Boston Children’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Over the decade she spent at BCH she worked in the chronic pain clinic, pediatric headache program, and pediatric pain rehabilitation center (PPRC).

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.

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.

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.