Speakers 2022

Claes-Göran af Björkesten, Finland

Mattias Block, Sweden

Mattias Block is senior consultant colorectal surgeon at the Department of Surgery at Sahlgrenska University Hospital/Östra where he also is the Head of the Colorectal Unit since 2014. He graduated as MD at Lund University in 2000. His internship was performed in Norway in Elverum and Mehamn. He was trained at the hospitals of Uddevalla/Trollhättan as well as Sahlgrenska from 2002 – 2008 and has been working within the trauma unit at Tygerberg Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa. Mattias wrote his PhD thesis on reconstructive surgery and pathophysiological aspects in Ulcerative Colitis in 2014. He has published numerous articles within colorectal surgery and especially on surgery within IBD. He is reviewer and member of the editorial board in various scientific papers. Mattias has held several presentations concerning IBD surgery, both in surgical environment and for the general public. Together with Pär Myrelid and Jonas Bengtsson he has also arranged an international work shop on Kock pouch surgery as well as advanced reconstructive IBD-surgery and has previously arranged a number of national and international meetings within the field. Mattias is member of the board of the Swedish Society of Colorectal Surgery. From 2017 to 2019 he has been co-chairman of the Swedish Society of Gastroenteroogy and from 2019 he will become chairman.

Michael Bretthauer, Norway

Christianne Buskens, Netherlands

Jean-Frédéric Colombel, USA

Professor of Medicine
Director of the Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center and the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Inflammatory Bowel Disease Research Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA

Jean-Frédéric Colombel has been the director of the Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center since January 2013. Professor Colombel began his career at CHU de Lille, France in 1980 where he was Professor of Hepato-Gastroenterology from 1991, and Head of the Department of Gastroenterology from 2010 to 2012. Since 1984, his research has focused on IBD. Thanks to the development of multiple local, national and international collaborations, he has been able to contribute to important advances in the pathophysiology of IBD. Professor Colombel has trained several generations of fellows both in the US and in Europe, and many of them are now key opinion leaders in IBD in their respective countries. This leadership in IBD has been recognised and he was elected as the President of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) (2008–2010) and Chair of the International Organization for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IOIBD) (2010–2012). Professor Colombel was awarded the United European Gastroenterology Federation (UEGF) Research Prize in 2009 and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation (CCF) Clinical Research Award in 2014 and the Sherman Prize in 2018. The main concretisation of Professor Colombel’s work has been the publication as primary author or co-author of more than 960 peer-reviewed papers, most of them in the domain of IBD. Professor Colombel has been an associate editor of major gastroenterology journals including Gut, Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Gastroenterology (current).

Wladyslawa Czuber-Dochan, UK

Dr Wladyslawa (Wladzia) Czuber-Dochan is a senior lecturer in Adult Nursing at the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care, King’s College London.
Dr Czuber-Dochan has researched and published extensively on a range of topics related to Inflammatory Bowels Disease (IBD), such as fatigue, pain, distress, stoma formation, and food-related quality of life. Her research has contributed to the current understanding of fatigue in IBD. Dr Czuber-Dochan has developed IBD-fatigue patient self-assessment scale, that has been translated and validated in countries world-wide for use in research and clinical practice. Her recent focus is on developing and testing the acceptability and effectiveness of complex behavioural online interventions for fatigue and pain in IBD.
Dr Czuber-Dochan is a member of the Scientific Boards for Crohn’s & Colitis UK and Nurse-European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation. She currently supervises seven PhD students and several Master’s level students.

Subrata Ghosh,
UK

Subrata Ghosh is the Chair and Head of Medicine, College of Medicine and Health at University College Cork since March 2021. He is a principal investigator and deputy director at APC Microbiome Ireland. Subrata did his doctoral research on the immunology of inflammatory bowel disease at University of Edinburgh where he was appointed as faculty. His research interests are precision medicine in IBD, innovative clinical trials, immune cell plasticity, targeted immunotherapies in IBD, interaction of nutrients, microbes and immune system, gut inflammation and nutrition, innate immunity and epidemiology and health care in IBD. His research has been published in New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Nature Medicine, Gastroenterology, Gut and American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. He has delivered over 700 international invited lectures including named keynote lectures. Previously he was the inaugural director of the Institute of Translational Medicine, and Professor of Translational Medicine, University of Birmingham between 2016 and 2020. Between 2009 and 2016 he was the Professor and Chairman of Medicine, University of Calgary, and Head of Medicine, Alberta Health Services, Canada. Between 2002 and 2008 he was the Professor and Chair of Gastroenterology at Imperial College London.

Subrata Ghosh is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, UK and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He is the theme lead for Integration cluster of the International Organisation for Study of IBD (IOIBD). He has been the recipient of numerous individual and large team grants from CIHR, AIHS, MRC, NIHR, Wellcome Trust, CCFA, CCUK and CCC, as well as industry partnered research projects. He has served on numerous committees, councils and grant panels regionally, nationally and internationally, and been chief editor, associate editor and editorial board member of a number of international reputable journals.

Kristin Hammesboen Bjørlycke, Norway

Charlotte Hedin,
UK

Charlotte Hedin comes from Britain and did her medical training at Oxford University and then AT and ST- training in London, principally at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel. She earned her PhD in 2013 at King’s College London (”Microbial, immunological, phenotypic and genetic markers of risk: Aspects of Crohn’s diseases that are shared by unaffected siblings”). In 2013 she moved to Stockholm with her Swedish husband and three children, which soon became four children. After learning some Swedish she began her post as resident physician in gastroenterology at Karolinska University Hospital in 2014. Since 2017 she has held a clinical post-doc at Karolinska University Hospital and in addition was given a UEG ”Rising Star” award. She is now the research head of the Karolinska Gut Group, leading the group members in the research of luminal gastroenterology. Since 2018 she has served as a committee member within ECCO. Her research focuses on the role of the gut microbiota in inflammatory bowel disease, and also how the gut microbiota affects the development and function of the human immune system in healthy and diseased individuals.

Christian Jakobsen, Denmark

Christian Jakobsen is working as a consultant in paediatric gastroenterology at the department of paediatrics at Hvidovre University Hospital and is affiliated with the Copenhagen IBD center. Christian’s research is focused primarily on paediatric IBD and his main interest is in the epidemiology of paediatric IBD including disease course and prognosis.

Stefan Lindgren, Sweden

Petter Malmborg, Sweden

Asbjørn Mohr Drewes, Denmark

Current position, work address and ORCID: Professor and Chief Physician, Director of Mech-Sense and Centre for Pancreatic Diseases, Department of Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Aalborg University Hospital, Mølleparkvej 4, 9000 Aalborg.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7465-964X

Education: MD from Aarhus University 1983. Specialist in internal medicine and gastroenterology in 1997.

Degrees: Defended his PhD thesis at Aalborg University in 1998 and his doctoral thesis (DMSc) at Aarhus University in 1999. Received the European Diploma in Pain Medicine (EDPM) in 2017.

Main academic positions:
• Associate Professor from 1996
• Professor in visceral pain from 2003
• Full Professor (Chair) in Medicine & Gastroenterology from 2007

Pernilla Stenström, Sweden

Ketil Størdal, Norway

Ketil Størdal (b. 1966) is a full professor in pediatrics at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is also working as a consultant pediatrician at Oslo University Hospital, after specialist training in general pediatrics and pediatric gastroenterology. He defended his thesis at the University of Oslo in pediatric gastroenterology in 2006, and headed the main neonatal unit in Botswana during 2007-2009. 

His main research area is the epidemiology of autoimmune diseases in children. He is also supervising research in neonatal resuscitation, with more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and supervision of several PhD candidates. For several years he has been teaching at the University of Oslo, London School of Tropical Medicine, and Univ. of Botswana. 

Dr Størdal is a member of ESPGHAN since 2004 and of the specialist interest group in celiac disease since 2017. From 2017-19 he was the president of the Norwegian Pediatric Association, and is in the lead of the Norwegian Choosing Wisely campaign.

Joana Torres,
Portugal

Joana Torres received her medical degree from the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and completed her fellowship in Gastroenterology at the Hospital Center of Coimbra, Portugal. After post-doctoral training in Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, she completed her PhD at Medicine Faculty, University of Lisbon, and was appointed Assistant Professor. She is currently working in Hospital Beatriz Ângelo, Loures, Portugal as a Gastroenterology Assistant. She is an active member of the European Crohn and the current chair of the
Ecco´s Guideline committee (GuiCom).

Dr. Joana Torres has given several invited lectures at international meetings and has authored more than 70 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Her research focus in populations at risk for developing inflammatory bowel disease with the goal of better understanding the events taking place before disease is diagnosed, with the aim of finding better treatments and developing preventive strategies.

Hagit Tulschinsky, Israel

Séverine Vermeire,
Belgium

Séverine Vermeire obtained her MD degree at the KU Leuven in 1995 and a PhD at the same University in 2001 on “Genetic Polymorphisms and Serologic Markers in Inflammatory Bowel Disease”. She further trained at the Universidad Nacional de Asuncion, Paraguay (1993), at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics , University of Oxford (1997-1998) UK and at the Montreal General Hospital (McGill University) in Canada (2000–2001). Since 2003 she is staff member at the Gastroenterology Department of the University Hospitals Leuven and is appointed Full Professor of Medicine at the KU Leuven. Since 2016, she is Head of the De-partment of Chronic Diseases, Metabolism & Ageing (CHROMETA) at the KU Leuven.

Dr Vermeire is actively involved as principle investigator in RCTs with new therapeutic com-pounds and has been lead investigator on several of these programs. Her scientific work resulted in more than 500 peer-reviewed articles so far and focusses on the role of the mi-crobiome and genetic susceptibility in IBD and on identifying predictive signatures of treat-ment response. Dr Vermeire participated in the International iCHOM consortium on devel-opment of Patient-Centered Outcomes for Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

She was awarded several grants including an Advanced H2020-European Research Council (ERC) Grant (2016-2021) and a VIB Grand Challenges project on microbiota modulation strat-egies in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases together with Professor Jeroen Raes (2018)

Séverine Vermeire was President of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) from 2014-2016 and of the Belgian IBD Research & Development (BIRD) Group from 2011-2013