Professor Maciej Tomaszewski is a clinician-scientist interested in cardiovascular and renal disease, in particular – hypertension. After completion of his MD, he was awarded a junior International Society of Hypertension clinical research fellowship (at the University of Glasgow) and subsequently career development awards from the Wellcome Trust, the Scottish Chief Scientist Office, and USA National Institute of Health (NIH). In 2006 he was appointed to a competitive New Blood Lectureship at the University of Leicester. Between 2009 and 2015 he was a senior clinical lecturer at the Department of Cardiovascular Sciences in Leicester. In 2015 he was awarded Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine in the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Manchester, and an honorary consultant physician position at the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. He is a co-lead for the Integrative Cardiovascular Medicine Theme of NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre and Deputy Director of British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence in Manchester. Professor Tomaszewski is known for his international leadership in hypertension. He is a member of the Scientific Council of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH). Between 2016 and 2018 he served as ISH Secretary and between 2020 and 2022 he was President of the Society and chairman of both its Scientific Council and the Executive Committee. He has been on Editorial Boards of leading hypertension journals including Hypertension, Journal of Hypertension, Journal of Human Hypertension and Blood Pressure. He is Associate Editor for Cardiovascular Research and International Consulting Editor for Hypertension Research and chairs the International Society of Hypertension-European Society of Hypertension Journal of Hypertension Committee. He is also a Fellow of the American Heart Association, International Society of Hypertension, and Royal College of Physicians (London). Professor Tomaszewski played an active role on the Programme Committees of several international meetings organised by the International and European Society of Hypertension and served on Guidelines Taskforces/Committees dedicated to the management of hypertension. He received several academic accolades including awards from the European Society of Hypertension, the International Society of Hypertension, the American Heart Association, and the European Atherosclerosis Society. His basic research focuses on genetic mechanisms of cardiovascular and renal diseases. He established one the largest collections of human kidney tissue characterised at genome-, transcriptome-, and epigenome-wide levels to facilitate translation of findings from genome-wide association studies into specific genes, molecules, and pathways underpinning the genetic associations with blood pressure, chronic kidney disease, and other complex polygenic traits. The insights delivered from Human Kidney Tissue Resource-based projects have been published in top journals including Nature Genetics, European Heart Journal, Nature Communications, Kidney International, Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, etc. Professor Tomaszewski’s clinical research focuses on the management of difficult-to-treat hypertension. He led the implementation of high-performance liquid chromatography-based urine analysis as a direct, non-invasive, and objective screening tool for non-adherence to antihypertensive treatment. He has been driving the integration of the biochemical screening for non-adherence to blood pressure lowering therapy into the routine diagnostic strategy for resistant hypertension locally, nationally, and internationally through his contributions to Global Hypertension Practice Guidelines and the European Society of Hypertension Working Group on Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy and Adherence (of which he was a founding member). He is a chief investigator and chair of the Trial Management Committee of the British Heart Foundation-funded multi-centre BiOmarkers in Urine, anTihypeRtensive trEAtment and blood pressure Control in Hypertensive patients (OUTREACH) study.

Dr. John Elrod is the founding Director of the Aging and Cardiovascular Discovery Center in the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University. He leads a multidisciplinary research lab working in the fields of mitochondrial biology, metabolism, and fibrosis in the context of cardiac injury, heart failure, and neurodegeneration.

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.

Eleni Giannoulatou leads the Computational Genomics Group at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. Her research focuses on identifying the underlying genetic determinants and causes of cardiovascular disease. Eleni received her Doctor of Philosophy in Bioinformatics from the University of Oxford, UK in 2011. She undertook postdoctoral work at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford and the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford. Eleni holds an NHMRC Investigator Grant and is an Honorary Heart Foundation Future Leader fellow.