Keynote-föreläsare

Markus Heilig is professor psychiatry at Linköping University and a Wallenberg Foundation Clinical Fellow. He received his MD and PhD from Lund University, Sweden, 1986 and 1989, resp. After a post-doc with George Koob at The Scripps Research Institute, LaJolla, CA 1990 – 1992, he returned to Sweden to complete a psychiatry residency, and then served at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, in various clinical and academic leadership capacities between 1995 – 2004. In 2004, he became the director of intramural clinical and translational research at the National Inst on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. In 2015, Heilig was recruited back to Sweden and Linköping Univ as the founding director of a Center on Social and Affective Neuroscience, a major initiative supported by the Swedish Research Council, Linköping University and the region of Östergötland.

Heilig’s program studies brain brain mechanisms behind addiction and anxiety disorders, using translational approaches. The overall objective is to identify novel therapeutic targets. Research strategies in the program span from analysis of gene expression and its epigenetic programming, through behavioral studies in rodent models, to human experimental medicine that utilizes behavioral, neuroendocrine, psychophysiological and functional brain imaging based methods. This research has over the years generated >300 peer-reviewed papers, including publications in Science, PNAS, Lancet and other high impact journals, yielding some 35000 citations, and an h-index of 97. Heilig has also authored a textbook on addiction for medical professionals, and popular science books for the lay public.

Heilig is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a Wallenberg Foundation Clinical Fellow, a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, an editor at Neuropsychopharmacology, and a scientific advisor to the Swedish Medical Products Agency. He has received numerous awards.

Charlie is Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Edinburgh, a UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellow and Consultant Gastroenterologist in the Edinburgh IBD Unit.

Charlie’s core mission is to improve outcomes for people living with IBD.
His team are working on predicting outcomes in IBD, using routinely collected NHS data and dedicated multi-modal prospective cohorts to build predictive models.

He is Chief Investigator of the PREdiCCt study, which has recruited 2650 patients in clinical remission with detailed baseline phenotyping (clinical, psycho-social, lifestyle, environmental, dietary,
microbiome and genomics) and longitudinal follow-up.

Charlie is a passionate educator lecturing widely to healthcare providers globally and direct to patients about the current and future management and causes and consequences of IBD.

He is a global digital opinion leader, running the Atomic IBD newsletter, a social blog, a YouTube channel and the leading global twitter account on IBD.

Prof Lees has published widely (135 papers on IBD on PubMed) with a current H-index of 54.

Matt Rutter is Professor of Gastroenterology at Newcastle University and the University Hospital of North Tees in the United Kingdom. He specialises in advanced diagnostic colonoscopy, polypectomy, colorectal cancer screening and surveillance. He sits on the English Bowel Cancer Screening Programme advisory committee. He is founder and ex-chair of the European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy Quality Improvement in Endoscopy committee, founded the UK’s National Endoscopy Database and chairs the UK’s Joint Advisory Group for GI Endoscopy committee and World Endoscopy Organisation interval cancer subcommittee.

He has published and lectured worldwide on quality in endoscopy, screening and colonoscopic surveillance, receiving the British Society of Gastroenterology Hopkins Endoscopy Prize in 2006 and 2020 and the Royal College of Physicians Goulstonian Lectureship in 2008. He co-authored BSG (2010), NICE (UK, 2011), European (ECCO, 2012) and SCENIC (USA, 2015) colitis surveillance guidelines, was the lead author for the BSG/ACPGBI management of large non-pedunculated colorectal polyps guidelines (2015), and lead author for the BSG/ACPGBI/PHE post-polypectomy surveillance guidelines (2020).

He is regional screening lead for quality assurance in colonoscopy and regional (both NHSE North East and Yorkshire, and NENC ICS) endoscopy lead.