28th July: Future Perspectives in Paediatric Research – European Networks & Infrastructures Collaboration
Speakers
Marek Migdal
Marek Migdał, MD, PhD, graduated from the Medical University of Warsaw in 1979. He has been employed at the Children’s Memorial Health Institute (CMHI) since then, initially in the Department of Paediatrics and later in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care. In 2018, he became the Director of CMHI. He completed research internships in France in 1985-1986 and 1990. He specialized in paediatrics and lung diseases, defending his doctoral dissertation in 1990 on lung function measurement in newborns with respiratory failure. He has authored over 230 publications and lectures on paediatric intensive care. He has coordinated several international research grants, including EU-CHS, GRIP, SMART, ID-EPTRI, and c4c. Currently he is EPTRI’s treasurer.
Ricardo Fernandes
Dr Fernandes is Chief Medical Officer of conect4children Stichting, Lead of the Portuguese Pediatric Clinical Trials Network STAND4Kids, Associate Professor in Clinical Pharmacology and Consultant Paediatrician. He has extensive experience in paediatric clinical trials, methodology and research networks, and currently serves as elected Co-Chair of Enpr-EMA.
Luca Sangiorgi
Dr Sangiorgi is clinical geneticist and Director of the Department of Rare Skeletal Diseases at the Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli in Bologna. He is Coordinator of ERN-BOND (European Reference Network for Rare Bone Diseases), a network connecting specialised centres across Europe to improve care and research for patients with rare bone conditions. He has extensive experience in rare disease research, clinical networks and international collaboration.
Radislav Sedlacek
Dr Sedláček is Director of the Czech Centre for Phenogenomics (CCP) at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Head of the Functional Genomics programme at BIOCEV. The CCP is a key research infrastructure within INFRAFRONTIER ERIC, providing advanced platforms for genetic engineering, systematic phenotyping, preclinical testing and cryopreservation of animal models for human disease research. His work focuses on genome editing, rare disease models and translational approaches for monogenic disorders.
Karel Allegaert
Professor Allegaert, president of EPTRI, is paediatrician-neonatologist and clinical pharmacologist, Professor at KU Leuven and Consultant at Erasmus MC Rotterdam. His research focuses on developmental pharmacology, neonatal medicine and translational approaches supporting safer and more effective medicines for children.
Donato Bonifazi
Dr Bonifazi is Coordinator of EPTRI, Chair of the TEDDY European Network of Excellence for Paediatric Research and Strategy Leader at CVBF. He has extensive experience in paediatric clinical research and European collaborative projects, including leadership roles in EU-funded multinational paediatric clinical trials. He has served as member of the Coordinating Group of Enpr-EMA, representing TEDDY, and is among the founders of INCiPiT, the Italian Network for Paediatric Clinical Trials, and Young Persons Advisory Groups (YPAGs) in Italy and Albania.
Harald Schwalbe
Professor Schwalbe is Executive Director of Instruct-ERIC and Professor of Chemistry at Goethe University Frankfurt. His research focuses on structural biology approaches, including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, to investigate proteins, RNA and DNA involved in biological processes and disease mechanisms.
Emidio Capriotti
Professor Capriotti is Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, where he coordinates the master’s degree in bioinformatics. His research focuses on structural bioinformatics, genomic variation and computational approaches for understanding disease mechanisms. He is also involved in ELIXIR the European infrastructure supporting life science data management, sharing and analysis where he serves as co-leader of the ELIXIR Rare Disease Community.