Professor Pierre Boutouyrie, Paris, France

Pierre Boutouyrie is MD, Ph.D., specialized in Cardiovascular Medicine and Pharmacology. He currently works at Université de Paris, Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Paris, and the Paris-Cardiovascular Research Center PARCC, French Institute of Health and Medical Research. Pierre Boutouyrie is head of Pharmacology department at Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou. He does research in Hypertension, Rare vascular diseases, Spatial Medicine; Diabetology, Internal Medicine (General Medicine) and Cardiology. He leads many project, notably on arterial stiffness, atherosclerosis, cardiovascular adaptaiton to extreme conditions. Pierre Boutouyrie team is composed of PhD and postDoc students from many international origins, from the 5 continents. 

McDonald Lecture: Friday @ 14.45

Professor Rosa Maria Bruno

Rosa Maria Bruno (MD, PhD) is Internal Medicine and Hypertension specialist, head of the Unit of Clinical Pharmacology and Women’s Cardiovascular Health at the Hopital Européen Georges Pompidou and full professor in Pharmacology at Université Paris Cité (Paris, France). Her research is focused on novel approaches for the non-invasive evaluation of vascular ageing in hypertension and other diseases, with a focus on sex and gender differences.

ARTERY/VascAgeNet: Vascular ageing translation to practice: mind the gaps and follow the trends!: Friday @ 09.40

Professor Eric J. Stohr

Leibneiz University, Hannover

Eric Stöhr is Professor in Sport & Health & the current Director of the Institute of Sport Science at the Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. He completed his PhD at Brunel University London, UK, under the mentorship of Rob Shave and José Gonzàlez-Alonso. From 2016-2019 he was a Marie-Curie Fellow at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Columbia University Irving Medical Center, working to understand the role of arterial pulsatility in advanced heart failure patients. Since 2022, he has been heading the COR-HELIX (the Cardiovascular Regulation and Human Exercise Laboratory – Integration and Xploration) where he aims to further explore the integrated function of the cardiovascular system. In October 2022, he proposed that the heart did not operate according to a compensatory control principle but rather an unspecific control principle, suggesting that the current view of the heart does not sufficiently describe its function. Future work aims to identify the novel mechanisms governing cardiovascular control.

Invited opening lecture: Thursday @ 9.15am

Professor Kevin Murphy

Cardiff University Brain Research Imagining Centre

Prof. Kevin Murphy is a Wellcome Senior Research Fellow based at the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC). He is Head of the Brain Imaging Group in the School of Physics and Astronomy. Since 2010, he has held 3 Wellcome fellowships.

Recent research focusses on measuring age-related arterial stiffening in the brain. There is a strong causal link between reduced arterial elasticity in the body and neurological problems such as small vessel disease, stroke and many forms of dementia. Prof. Murphy is developing innovative MR imaging techniques: a Cerebrovascular Stiffness Toolbox that can link brain vessel stiffness at all vascular scales to capillary level damage.

Prof. Patrick Segers

Ghent University, Belgium

Patrick Segers is professor in cardiovascular biomechanics at Ghent University. His research includes experimental and computational fluid dynamics simulations and fluid structure interaction simulations, advanced image-based patient/animal specific biomechanical models as a complement of in vivo clinical and pre-clinical research, with a main focus on the cardiovascular system. Recent cardiovascular research projects aim for a better understanding of the longer term evolution of cardiovascular disease, and the impact of treatment on disease progression in aortic dissection and aneurysms, with models encompassing the cellular scale and biophysical modelling of the extracellular matrix through poroelastic models, and the (mechanical) interaction of cells (particularly vascular smooth muscle cells) with the extracellular matrix.

Virtual twins as tools for personalized clinical cardiovascular care (VITAL): Thursday @ 16.15

Basky Thilaganathan

Director of Fetal Medicine, St George’s Hospital, London

Basky Thilaganathan is Director of Fetal Medicine at St George’s Hospital, London. He has authored over 450 publications with a major interest is placental dysfunction leading to pre-eclampsia, growth restriction and stillbirth (TED talk: http://bit.ly/2i1SqDk). He led on the algorithm-based screening at St Georges which has led to an 80% reduction in preterm pre-eclampsia and a 30% reduction in perinatal death (https://vimeo.com/rcog/authorinsights16361). He is the Clinical Director of the Tommy’s National Centre for Maternity Improvement (https://vimeo.com/638468663/23d205d029) located at the RCOG and is Editor Emeritus of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynaecology. He represents the RCOG on the UK National Screening Committee and the DH Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle oversight committee. The unit he leads was recently covered in a TV series https://rb.gy/awdjf and the Times magazine https://rb.gy/votfy

Symposium – Maternal Haemodynamics: Friday @ 11.00

Professor Wilfried Gyselars Hasselt University, Belgium

Researcher – visiting Professor Physiology at Hasselt University, Belgium and maternal-fetal specialist at Ziekenhuis Oost Limburg, Genk Belgium. Head of the Hasselt University Research Project on Maternal Hemodynamics with special focus on the (patho)physiology of the maternal venous compartment.

Symposium – Maternal Haemodynamics: Friday @ 11.00

Professor Gary Mitchell,

Cardiovascular Engineering, Inc.

USA

Using AI and Standardized Peripheral Arterial Waveforms to Assess Biologic AgeGary F. Mitchell, MD is a cardiologist and internationally acknowledged leader in the field of vascular stiffness and pulsatile hemodynamics.  He received his medical degree from Washington University in St. Louis and completed his training in Medicine and Cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he served as a staff cardiologist until 1998.  In 1999, he became founder and president of Cardiovascular Engineering, Inc., which is an NIH-funded small business that designs and develops innovative devices that measure arterial stiffness.  He joined the Framingham Heart Study as a Framingham Investigator in 1999 and became a collaborator on the AGES-Reykjavik and REFINE-Reykjavik Studies in 2006 and the Jackson Heart Study in 2010.  Using devices designed and built by Cardiovascular Engineering, he has overseen detailed assessments of arterial stiffness and pulsatile hemodynamics in more than 20,000 research participants in these studies. Recent work has focused on bidirectional relations between arterial stiffness and cardiometabolic disease and on the role played by mechanical coupling of left ventricle and aorta in normal left ventricular systolic and diastolic function.

Using AI and Standardized Peripheral Arterial Waveforms to Assess Biologic Age: Friday @ 15.45

Christoph Lees MD FRCOG

Christoph is Professor of Obstetrics as Imperial College London; Honorary Consultant in Obstetrics and Head of Specialty for Fetal Medicine at the Centre for Fetal Care, Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust; Clinical Director for Fetal Medicine for North West London and Visiting Professor KU Leuven (Belgium).  His research interest is on fetal assessment and in particular the use of Doppler ultrasound to assess the health of the baby, scanning in labour, and non-invasive fetal surgery. He is the Chief Investigator of The Trial of Umbilical and Fetal Flow in Europe (TRUFFLE), a Collaboration of 51 Centres across Europe; co-founder of the International Working Group of Maternal Haemodynamics and Intrapartum ultrasound ISLANDs group. He was awarded £2.2m grant from the Medical Research Council for first in human studies of high-intensity focused ultrasound in 2017, a £2.5m grant from the NIHR in 2019 to undertake the TRUFFLE 2 RCT and a £2.1M grant from the NIHR for a study on ultrasound of breech pregnancy at 36 weeks in 2023.

Maternal Haemodynamics Symposium: Friday @ 11.00