Liesbet De Baets is an Associate Professor at KU Leuven and a Visiting Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. She also holds a clinical position at the Pain Clinic of University Hospital Leuven. Her research focuses on the inflammatory, psychological, and physical activity-related mechanisms involved in the relationship between poor sleep and pain in individuals with low back pain and knee osteoarthritis. She coordinates the PREMEO trial, which investigates the effect of sleep treatments integrated into best-evidence knee osteoarthritis care on pain, sleep, and physical activity.

Patrick H. Finan, Ph.D. is the Harold Carron Professor of Anesthesiology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. The Finan Lab focuses broadly on explicating psychological and neurobiological mechanisms of chronic pain. Within that broad domain, Dr. Finan’s team specifically seeks to identify how emotions and pain interact, who evidences characteristics of emotion-related risk and resilience, and when changes in emotions facilitate or inhibit the experience of pain. They employ intensive longitudinal methods to assess behavioral and objective correlates of pain in real time (e.g., sleep; emotions; opioid use; cannabis use), and utilize laboratory-based experimental methods to understand factors influencing pain perception (e.g., sleep deprivation; quantitative sensory testing; fMRI; pharmacological challenge). Additionally, they develop and test novel therapeutic interventions that engage emotion- and sleep-related mechanisms to ameliorate pain and mitigate problematic opioid use.

Nils Runge is a doctoral researcher affiliated with Vrije Universiteit Brussel and KU Leuven. He investigates the connection between sleep disturbances and chronic musculoskeletal pain. More specifically, his research examines the consistency of terminology and definitions used to describe sleep issues in this context, the relationships between subjective and objective sleep parameters and pain, and the effects of sleep interventions on pain management.

David Rice is an Associate Professor in the School of Clinical Sciences, and a member of the Pain and Musculoskeletal Conditions Research Group at Auckland University of Technology. For the last decade, he has also held a joint position in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at North Shore Hospital in Auckland. David has research interests in the neuromuscular consequences and management of joint injury and arthritis, persistent postsurgical pain and enhanced recovery after surgery. David has received several national and international research awards, is a Past President of the New Zealand Pain Society and is the current Co-Chair of the Musculoskeletal Pain Special Interest Group for the International Association for the Study of Pain. 

Dr. Barry has a background in sensory physiology and bioinformatics, with a focus on pain pathophysiology. After an undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Dalhousie University in Canada, she did her MSc through the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine, followed by a PhD at the University of Oxford with Prof. David Bennett, looking at the molecular profiling of primary sensory neurons and their role in neuropathic pain. She currently splits her time between the University of Vienna and University of Texas at Dallas using multi-omic methods to understand pain pathophysiology.

Dr. Spisak is Professor of Predictive Neuroscience at the Center for Translational Neuro- and Behavioral Sciences, University Medicine Essen, University Duisburg-Essen. With a background in computer science and neuroimaging, Dr. Spisak leads and contributes to several major research consortia, including the Collaborative Research Centers TRR289 “Treatment Expectation” and SFB1280 “Extinction Learning.” Formerly a Junior Research Group Leader at University Hospital Essen, his career spans roles in academic neuroscience, neuroimaging, and industry research. Recognized with awards such as the Top Young Science Best Paper Award and the German Pain Research Grant, Dr. Spisak specializes in predictive neuroimaging and the neural mechanisms of treatment expectation.

Dr Baskozos is a bioinformatics researcher focused on neuropathic pain, with expertise in transcriptomics, genomics, and predictive modelling. He develops computational pipelines for RNA-seq analysis and collaborates on genome and exome sequencing projects. His current work applies machine learning to clinical data, including projects funded by Diabetes UK and the PAINSTORM initiative. Healso supports experimental design and statistical analysis within David Bennett’s research group.

Lee Ji Kwan (Shawn) is a practicing clinical psychologist specialising in pain management. He is affiliated with Monash University, Malaysia, where he works as a lecturer. In addition, Shawn sits on the Board of Editorial Consultants for the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (IJCEH). Shawn has been working with patients with chronic pain in a multidisciplinary team since 2011 and has developed a deep passion for the psychological management of pain. At Monash University, Malaysia, Shawn’s teaching responsibilities include professional ethics and abnormal psychology.

Tory Madden is a clinical physiotherapist and researcher with a longstanding interest in human health, particularly in the processes that underlie persistent pain and learning. She works at the University of Cape Town as an Associate Professor in the Department of Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine and the Neuroscience Institute and is involved in Groote Schuur Hospital’s interdisciplinary Chronic Pain Clinic. She holds a ‘Y’ scientist rating from the South African National Research Foundation and currently receives funding from the US National Institutes of Health, through a K43 Emerging Global Leader award. She aims to focus her research on identifying contributors to persistent pain that can be targeted therapeutically to decrease and prevent persistent pain.  Tory is active in several IASP task forces and councillor of the South African chapter of IASP.

Bamidele Victor Owoyele is a basic researcher in the field of pain and neuroscience. He specializes in neurophysiology, sensory neuroscience looking at pain transmission and factors that could mitigate it. Victor has been involved in evaluating the effects of the rich West African Flora as used traditionally on the amelioration of pain in rodent models of acute and chronic pain as well as inflammation. He is also involved in modeling neuroinflammatory diseases such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's, and in evaluating pain and inflammation in clinical settings with his collaborators. He is the President of the Society for the Study of Pain Nigeria (SSPN) and the Chair of the Fellowships Grants and Award Working Group of the IASP.

Pablo Brumovsky is Associate Professor in the Institute of Research in Translational Medicine, where he leads the lab of Mechanisms and Therapeutic Innovation in Pain. His lab is currently focused on the characterization of the mechanisms of anti-nociceptive and anti-inflammatory actions of the oligodeoxynucleotide IMT504, in particular in relation to its modulation of mesenchymal stromal cells and cells in the immune system. As such, the interaction between these non-neuronal cells and primary afferent and spinal neurons involved in the transmission of pain is also a focus of attention in his lab.  

Dr. Brumovsky is also Associate Dean at the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences in Austral University, and an Editorial Committee member of the Pain Research Forum. He is currently the Chair of the Financial Aid Task Force of the IASP.

Kirsty is Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Imperial College London. Her research bridges preclinical and clinical approaches to investigate descending pain modulation in chronic pain. She has held academic positions at UCL and King’s College London, and received the EFIC IBSA Prize (2017), IASP Patrick D. Wall Award (2022), and British Pain Society Wall Award (2023). Kirsty is the current IASP World Congress on Pain Scientific Program Chair.  She also serves on editorial boards including Pain and British Journal of Pharmacology, and holds leadership roles within the British Pain Society, and EFIC.

Nadia is a Research Fellow at the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information Centre (EPPI Centre) within the Social Science Research Unit. Her research interests focus on automation tools and methods for evidence synthesis and systematic reviewing. She has a background in pharmacology and experience conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses to narrow the translation gap between preclinical and clinical research of chronic pain.

Josephine is a Musculoskeletal physiotherapist and chronic pain researcher. She joined LSBU in 2021, as a lecturer in physiotherapy within the Institute of Health and Social Care. She completed her MSc in Physiotherapy from Sheffield Hallam University in 2014 and completed her PhD titled; “Chronic Low Back Pain: A Representation of Liminality in Illness Identity and Professional Identity” at the University of Nottingham in 2022.

Professor Markus Ploner investigates how the human brain generates the experience of pain. His interdisciplinary research group employs methods such as electroencephalography (EEG) and non-invasive brain stimulation to understand how the brain processes pain in healthy individuals and in people with chronic pain. The aim is to develop new approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of chronic pain. His research is guided by the principles of open, reproducible science and actively involves people with chronic pain in the research process.

Professor Ploner studied medicine in Cologne and Vienna and received his doctorate from the University of Cologne. He began his research career at the University Hospital Düsseldorf, where he also completed his specialist training in neurology. In 2007/2008, he conducted research at the University of Oxford as a Feodor Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Since then, he has been working at the Department of Neurology at TUM. In 2014, he was appointed Professor of Human Pain Research, and in 2024, he became Head of the Center for Interdisciplinary Pain Medicine at the TUM University Hospital.

Dr. Franziska Denk leads the Denk lab, which studies the peripheral nervous system and its involvement in chronic pain conditions. Her group is particularly interested in why pain persists over long periods of time and is exploring the role of neuroimmune interactions and epigenetic mechanisms in this context. Their favourite tools include transgenic models and high-throughput molecular analyses on sorted cell populations (scRNAseq, ChIP-seq, CUT&Tag, ATAC-seq). They also work with induced pluripotent stem cell derived models of peripheral neurons.

She is also Co-Director of a Wellcome Trust PhD Training Scheme in Neuroimmune Interactions and in general, her team is looking to promote interdisciplinary research in an open and positive environment. They enjoy sharing data, and engage with other researchers and the public on a regular basis. 

An Honorary Life Member of the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Dr. Branney excels at challenging projects that have an impact. Dr. Branney has undertaken a programme of award winning, internationally leading work exploring how to improve experiences of healthcare through interventions that are local, proximal and distal to patients' interactions with services. Dr. Branney co-authored the UK Department for Health report, ‘The Gender & Access to Services Study’ and led the first national study of Patients’ Experiences of Penile Cancer (PEPC), which is published on the award winning www.healthtalk.org and featured on BBC Radio 4s Inside Health, the BPS Impact Portal, and The Guardian. Dr. Branney has over 100 peer-reviewed outputs and in the field of penile cancer and quality of life, four of his papers are in the top ten by citations per year. Dr. Branney is leading work exploring the possibilities of open science for qualitative methods, which includes one of the earliest studies into the topic, keynotes at the Qualitative Methods in Psychology section of the British Psychological Society biennial conference and the UK Research Integrity annual conference, videos and a paper introducing key issues, a special issue in the British Journal of Social Psychology and a number of invited seminars, one of which was recorded and has been viewed of 1,500 times. A student-focused educator, Dr. Branney has received awards from student bodies for his teaching in social psychology. Additionally, Dr. Branney has been an external examiner for undergraduate single and joint honours psychology programmes in the UK, Hong Kong and Singapore, and regularly receive invites to be an external expert for periodic reviews and an external examiner for doctorates.

Dr. Soliman is a Research Fellow at the EPPI Centre, University College London. Her background is in pharmacology and her PhD focused on improving the feasibility, efficiency and accuracy of systematic reviews while asking questions of neurobiological importance. She is now working on DESTINY - a Wellcome funded consortium - developing digital evidence synthesis tools for the responsible use of AI and automation for evidence synthesis and policy making in climate and health. A proponent of open research practices, her research has provided empirical evidence that highlights the impact of the lack of open and transparent reporting, and she is committed to improving the integrity and trustworthiness of pain research. She is a UK Reproducibility Local Network Lead and serves on the Journal of Pain as an Openness and Transparency Editor. She also has an interest in sharing her military experiences and knowledge of leadership development to engender a more positive research culture. 

Dr Aidan Cashin (PhD, BExPhys) is a NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow, Deputy Director of the Centre for Pain IMPACT at Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) and a Conjoint Senior Lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at the University of New South Wales. Prior to commencing research, Aidan pursued a successful clinical career as an Accredited Exercise Physiologist, practicing primarily in the field of chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Miriam is an experienced physiotherapist and post doctoral research fellow at the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, Australia. She has worked in various areas of physiotherapy before focusing on chronic pain physiotherapy over the last 8 years. She completed a masters in musculoskeletal physiotherapy at the University of Queensland, before undertaking her doctoral research. Miriam’s research takes a critical approach, utilising a variety of sociology theories and qualitative methodologies to challenge taken for granted norms within physiotherapy care. Her research traces distress in persistent pain care exploring how distress is produced within the clinic, and how it is recognised and navigated by physiotherapists. Miriam is passionate about increasing awareness of the social, cultural and emotional aspects of health and illness experiences and care, in order to provide more equitable and care for all people.

April Gamble earned their Doctor of Physical Therapy in the USA. They have been living full time in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq since 2017. They have over ten years of experience in community-driven efforts to develop persistent pain, mental health, and trauma-focused rehabilitation. April is the Senior Health Advisor in UK-Med where they lead the integration of rehabilitation and mental health and psychosocial support into disaster responses and the most globally deployed Emergency Medical Team. April is the Physiotherapy Director at Wchan Organization for Human Rights Violations in Kurdistan, leading interdisciplinary rehabilitation services for survivors of torture and war trauma. They are also one of the founding members of the Community of Practice for Fostering Excellence in Trauma-Informed Pain Rehabilitation, a group of rehabilitation professionals from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region collaborating to promote contextually relevant pain care in the region. April contributes to funding efforts, research activities, program and service development projects, and professional education initiatives in the USA, Kurdistan, Federal Iraq, Armenia, and the greater MENA Region. In addition to numerous conference presentations, April’s publication credits include textbooks chapters in international texts and clinical research trials and systematic reviews in peer reviewed international journals.

Clair works clinically as Physiotherapy Clinical Lead at INPUT Pain Management, Guys and St Thomas NHS Trust alongside Pain and Leadership teaching both in the Physiotherapy Division at Brunel University and External as Sen. Lecturer (Professional Practice) Physiotherapy. Clair has worked in chronic pain management for most of her career in secondary and tertiary service including overseas. She is interested in psychologically informed and narrative approaches in health care graduating in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University and Narrative Based Approaches. She is serving on national and International committees including Co-Chair of the Physiotherapy Pain Association and Co-Education Lead since 2019 and Vice-Chair of Pain and Trauma SIG, IASP (previously Pain of Torture, Organized Violence, and War SIG).

Lester Jones is an experienced educator and APA-titled Pain Physiotherapist. He has had academic positions in the United Kingdom, Australia and now Singapore (since 2018), where he is a Senior Lecturer at Singapore Institute of Technology. Much of his scholarly work has been exploring pain as a multidimensional experience and includes the application of the Pain and Movement Reasoning Model which he co-created. He was the first physiotherapist awarded MScMed(PainMgt), the inaugural chair of APA National Pain Group and was the lead tutor on pain topics for La Trobe University's Masters program for Sports and Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy. He is currently into his third term on the Pain Association of Singapore Council. He is the Secretary of the International Association of the Study of Pain (IASP) SIG Pain and Trauma (formerly Pain related to Torture, Organised Violence and War). Since September 2022, he is an elected member of the IASP Council.

Dr. O'Connell is Professor of Evidence-Based Healthcare in the Physiotherapy Division of the Department of Health Sciences at Brunel University. Neil's research interests focus on the evidence-based management of persistent pain and he has published extensively in this area. He also leads and teaches modules on clinical research methods and evidence-based practice for pre- and post-graduate clinicians. Neil was the Co-ordinating editor for the Cochrane Pain, Palliative and Supportive Care (PaPaS) group from 2020-23 and is a member of Cochrane's central editorial board. He was a member of the Guideline Development Group for the UK's National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) 2016 clinical guideline on the management of low back pain and sciatica. Neil is the current Chair of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) Methods, Evidence Synthesis and Implementation Special Interest Group (MESIGIG). Neil is the Scientific Co-ordinator ENhancing TRUST in Pain Evidence (ENTRUST-PE) network supported by the ERA-NET Neuron Cofund. See https://entrust-pe.org/ .

As Senior Lecturer in Clinical Trial Statistics at Manchester University, Dr. Wilkinson's research relates to evaluation of health interventions and methodology for this purpose. He has a particular interest in reproductive medicine, and an international portfolio of clinical trials in this field. Jack has expertise in methods for assessing the authenticity of health research, including the detection of research fraud.  He is currently leading the NIHR-funded INSPECT-SR (INveStigating ProblEmatic Clinical Trials in Systematic Reviews) project, which is an international collaborative effort to develop a tool for assessing the authenticity of randomised controlled trials. 

Amandine is a clinician and PhD student at Queen Mary University of London. Her research focuses on the relationship between physical activity and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in girls and women. She recently was the first author of a systematic review investigating how trustworthy osteopathic clinical trials have been over the past 2.5 years. Amandine is particularly interested in how physical activity can promote better health, with a strong focus on addressing gender gaps in research studies.

Dr. Hohenschurz-Schmidt is a clinician, educator, and pain researcher, currently an NIHR Development and Skills Enhancement Fellow at the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit, Imperial College London. His work focuses on improving clinical trial methods and developing physical and psychological interventions for people living with pain, particularly in the context of long-term conditions like diabetes. He serves on several research and funding committees, including the Society for Back Pain Research and on the Editorial Board of BMC Medical Research Methodology.

Dr. Draper-Rodi is the Director of the National Council for Osteopathic Research (NCOR), Associate Professor at UCO School of Osteopathy (Health Sciences University), and co-director of the Centre for Osteopathic Research and Leadership at HSU. As institutional lead for HSU within the UK Reproducibility Network and Chair of the Osteopathy Europe Research Standing Committee, his scholarly work centres on knowledge mobilisation, notably establishing the first osteopathic practice-based research network in the UK. His research streams also encompass Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) within healthcare education and practice.

Dr. Tovey is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology and former Editor-in-Chief of the Cochrane library. Since 2021, David has served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, a role he shares with Associate Professor Andrea C. Tricco. He also holds several editorial and scientific advisory roles, including Chair of the Campbell Technical Advisory Group and member of the Medical Strategy Advisory Board for Dr Evidence LLC. David was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of the Cochrane Library from 2009, overseeing the quality of Cochrane Reviews and the work of 52 Review Groups. With his team and expert methodologists, he established the Methodological Expectations for the Conduct and Reporting of Cochrane Intervention Reviews (MECIR). He also led initiatives with Cochrane’s publisher to enhance the Library’s content, presentation, and visibility. In 2019, he stepped down and was appointed Emeritus Editor-in-Chief. Before 2009, David worked in the BMJ’s Knowledge department in London, responsible for its evidence products Clinical Evidence and BestTreatments. He joined the BMJ in 2003 as Deputy Editor of Clinical Evidence, later becoming its Editor, and ultimately Editorial Director. From 1989 to 2003, David was a GP and senior partner in a large, diverse urban practice in South London.

Dr. Uttley a meta-research methodologist and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield with a fellowship examining the research integrity of systematic reviews, funded by the UKRI MRC. Her educational background is psychology which has cultivated an interest in examining how people influence research outputs. As well as leading Systematic Reviewlution, Lesley provides methodological input and advice on inclusive research on the ESRC funded Behavioural Research UK project (2023-2027) and the NIHR funded Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre (2024-2026). Lesley is a current Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, having previously been Guest Editor for the journal’s Special Issue "Methodological Aspects of Research Integrity and Research Culture.”

Erin MacIntyre is a clinician-researcher in the final year of her PhD at the Persistent Pain Research Group based at the University of South Australia. Her work explores the links between pain, movement, and visuospatial perception in people with knee osteoarthritis. Her research also focuses on the development and clinical implementation of new technology (e.g., virtual reality) that exploits these links between pain and visual perception to reduce pain and improve exercise engagement. 

Nils Runge is a doctoral researcher affiliated with Vrije Universiteit Brussel and KU Leuven. He investigates the connection between sleep disturbances and chronic musculoskeletal pain. More specifically, his research examines the consistency of terminology and definitions used to describe sleep issues in this context, the relationships between subjective and objective sleep parameters and pain, and the effects of sleep interventions on pain management.

Mark Vorensky is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Movement Sciences at the Rutgers University School of Health Professions. He received his Doctor of Physical Therapy from Ithaca College and his PhD in Rehabilitation Sciences from New York University. His research examines how social and contextual factors influence persistent musculoskeletal pain. He also examines physical therapists’ decision-making when working with individuals with persistent widespread pain.

Anabela G. Silva is a Professor at the School of Health, University of Aveiro, Portugal. Her main research interests relate to low back and neck pain prevention and management from a biopsychosocial perspective and pain in older adults.  Her team is also involved in the conception of digital health interventions (definition of functional requirements), co-creation, and testing with end users.