#EFIC2027 Plenary Sessions

Rohini Kuner is a Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology in the Medical Faculty of Heidelberg University, Germany. She received a PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Iowa (USA) in 1995, gained postdoctoral experience at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (Heidelberg), led a DFG-financed independent junior group, and has been a full Professor since 2006 and Institute Director since 2009 at Heidelberg University.

Her research spans cellular, molecular, and network mechanisms of plasticity in chronic pain. Her work has elucidated the molecular basis of structural remodelling of neural circuits over the transition to chronic pain, identified novel molecular mediators of tumour-nerve interactions, and bridged the fields of non-pharmacological neuromodulation-based therapies and neurobiology. She leads a large DFG-financed consortium on chronic pain (www.sfb1158.de), spanning more than 40 preclinical and clinical research groups, and has been awarded two ERC Advanced Grants. She teaches Medical Pharmacology at Heidelberg University and has mentored over 70 scientists at diverse career stages.

Dr Petersen received his Master of Science degree in 2011 and a PhD in neuroscience in 2014. In 2021 he received his higher doctorate degree in medicine based on his work profiling patients with osteoarthritis and linking these profiles to clinical treatment outcomes. His long-term mission is to develop the concept of "Personalised Mechanistic Pain Medicine", providing the correct treatment to the right patient in a fast, evidence-based, and safe manner. He studies factors that modulate pain mechanisms and aims to target these mechanisms using tailored interventions to provide pain relief for patients with chronic pain.

Dr Petersen has published more than 100 scientific peer-reviewed manuscripts. He serves the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) as a member of the Fellowships, Grants, and Awards Working Group and chairs the Musculoskeletal Special Interest Group under IASP. He is a member of the Scientific Programme Committee for the 13th Congress of the European Pain Federation.

Dawn Dowding is Professor in Clinical Decision Making and Head of the Division of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester, UK. She is a health services researcher and nurse with expertise in healthcare decision making and nursing informatics. Her particular interest is the development and evaluation of decision support tools, and the application of health information technology to assist decision making in practice.

She is an elected Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) and the American Academy of Nursing, a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a member of the Digital Nursing forum at the Royal College of Nursing, and Vice Chair for Advisory Groups for the International Medical Informatics Association Nursing Group. Dawn completed her registered nurse training at St Bartholomew's College of Nursing and Midwifery, London, holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology with Nursing Studies from City University, London, and a PhD in Psychology and Nursing from the University of Surrey, UK.

Ben Seymour's lab addresses the computational and systems neuroscience of pain. The research is part theoretical, building realistic models of neuronal information processing to understand pain perception and behaviour, and part experimental, testing these theories using a range of methodologies, especially fMRI. His research aims to develop new technology-based therapies for treating pain in clinical populations.

He is a Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellow at Oxford University, working jointly at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging and the Oxford Institute for Biomedical Engineering, and a visiting researcher at ATR Labs (Kyoto). He is a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute with an interest in safe AI control systems, and an honorary consultant neurologist at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust with an interest in behavioural homeostasis and sleep, pain, and fatigue neurology.

Lene Vase is a Professor of Psychology and Placebo Effects at Aarhus University. Her research has identified key aspects of expectations and clarified how they influence treatment outcomes across both pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions, highlighting ways to optimise clinical trials. Her work has been supported by the European Commission, the Independent Research Fund Denmark, and the Lundbeck Foundation. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals, including The Lancet and The BMJ, and has served as an editor for PAIN and as a member of the Scientific Committee for the World Congress on Pain.

Markus Ploner is a Professor of Human Pain Research at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and head of the Interdisciplinary Center for Pain Medicine of the TUM University Hospital. He studied Medicine in Cologne and Vienna, trained as a neurologist at Heinrich-Heine University Dusseldorf, and was a research fellow at the University of Oxford. Motivated by his clinical experience, he aims to understand how the brain translates threat into pain, and what goes wrong in this process when patients experience ongoing pain without appropriate threat. He also investigates how non-invasive neuromodulation approaches can modulate this process.

Patrik Ernfors studied molecular biology at the University of Uppsala and received a PhD in neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. After postdoctoral training at the Whitehead Institute, MIT, USA, he returned to a faculty position at Karolinska Institutet in 1993. Among many academic functions, he has served as head of the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics and as a member of the Board of Research at Karolinska Institutet. His honours include the Fernstrom Prize, the Anders Jahre Medical Research Award to young scientists, the Goran Gustafsson Prize in Medicine, and the Fifth Prize of the Dargut and Milena Kemali Foundation for the Neurosciences.

Dr Greg Weir is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, where he leads a research programme investigating the neurobiology of pain. He established his laboratory in Glasgow following doctoral training with Prof Zameel Cader and postdoctoral research with Prof David Bennett at the University of Oxford. His group uses molecular and genetic approaches to uncover the fundamental drivers of neuropathic pain and to develop new therapeutic strategies.