A/Prof Christina Bursill (BSc (Hons 1) PhD, Adelaide University; Postdoc, Oxford University, UK) is a leader in cardiovascular biology, with expertise in the biology and mechanisms of atherosclerotic plaques and mechanisms of diabetes-impaired angiogenesis and wound healing. After a six-year postdoc at The University of Oxford, she returned to Australia to lead the Immunobiology Group at the Heart Research Institute as part of a National Heart Foundation Career Development Fellowship. In 2017 A/Prof Bursill moved to Adelaide, having received a National Heart Foundation (NHF) Lin Huddleston fellowship, where she is Co-director of the Vascular Research Centre at South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). As CIA A/Prof Bursill has received >$4 million in competitive research funding in the last 3 years. A/Prof Bursill has published >100 papers, supervised >15 PhD students to completion, and currently leads a research team of eight people. A/Prof Bursill currently co-chairs the South Australian Cardiovascular Research Network Executive Committee, is a board member on the International Atherosclerosis Committee and has held roles as board member for the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance (ACvA) and past-President of the Australian Atherosclerosis Society.

Emilio HIRSCH is Professor of Experimental Biology at the Medical School of the University of Torino, Italy since 2005. He is EMBO member, FISHR, and Director of Molecular Biotechnology Center, Medical Faculty of the University of Torino, Italy. He authored 301 publications and has an h-index of 93 (google Scholar). Among his contributions he identified PI3K signaling enzymes as crucial players in heart failure and cardiotoxicity, recently spotlighting the role of PIK3C2A in premature aging (Gulluni et al., Science 2021). He co-founded Kither Biotech, extending PI3K modulation from the heart to rare pulmonary diseases.

Associate Professor Nathan Palpant received PhD training at the University of Michigan and postdoctoral training at the University of Washington’s Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. In 2015 he established his independent research group at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience. Dr Palpant is a Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow and recipient of the International Society for Heart Research Young Investigator Award and the Lorne Genome Millennium Science Award. His research program focuses on mechanisms of cardiovascular development disease and involves interdisciplinary approaches in stem cell biology, genetics and genomics, and drug discovery. Dr Palpant is co-founder of Infensa Bioscience, which aims to develop new therapeutics for ischemic heart disease.

Together with the suppression of synchronization of aging (sync-aging), we are now trying to establish a method to reverse aging with the senolytic approach (specific depletion of senescent cells) (Please also see; www.cv-aging.com).

Yutang Wang is a Senior Lecturer in biomedical science at Federation University Australia. He is named in the 2023 Stanford’s list of World’s Top 2% Scientists. He has a broad research interest in investigating the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases including atherosclerosis, hypertension, diabetes, aortic aneurysm, stroke and myocardial infarction.

Professor Fadi Charchar is the Director of the Health Innovation and Transformation Centre at Federation University. Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and Visiting Chair at University of Leicester, UK. Professor Charchar is the President of the International Society of Heart Research. He previously completed a Wellcome Trust Fellowship, an NHMRC Career Development Fellowship and a British Heart Foundation Lectureship in the UK. His research interest is in the understanding of the genetic mechanisms of cardiovascular disease with publications in the Lancet, Nature, and Nature Genetics.

Dr Martin Stiles is Director of Electrophysiology at Waikato Hospital, New Zealand and an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Auckland. He has chaired International Expert Consensus Documents on the Investigation of Cardiac Arrest and on ICD Programming. He is the Scientific Programme Chair for the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society. He Chairs the Scientific Committee of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand and was the Programme Director for the 2022 Annual Scientific Meeting, Gold Coast.