Barbara Casadei graduated (cum Laude & Medaglia Teresiana) at the University of Pavia, Italy and moved to Oxford to undertake her clinical and research training. She was awarded the Joan and Richard Doll Fellowship at Green College, a DPhil in Cardiovascular Medicine in 1995, and a British Heart Foundation Personal Chair in 2012. Since 2024, she has been Head of the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. Barbara is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, holds the highest honour of the British Cardiovascular Society (The Mackenzie Medal) and is Past President of the European Society of Cardiology (2018-20). She is the co-founder of EuroHeart (www.escardio.org/Research/euroheart#), an initiative that supports the assessment and improvement of quality of cardiovascular care in 15 countries, and the incoming Editor-in-Chief of JAMA Cardiology (2026-). She leads a bench-to-bedside translational research programme focused on atrial fibrillation, which spans from investigations in human tissue and cells to clinical trials.

Joanne is a post-doctoral scientist at Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute. Supervised by Prof. Jamie Vandenberg and Dr. Andy Ng in the Cardiac Electrophysiology Lab, her research explore the electrophysiological underpinnings of sodium channelopathies and how genetic variants can cause disease through disruptions to the cardiac sodium ion channel, NaV1.5. The ability to assess a variant’s likelihood of pathogenicity can help reduce indeterminate variants in a bid to improve patient diagnosis and familial screening. 

Yuyang is currently enrolled as a PhD student in the Molecular Imaging and Nanotherapeutics laboratory. His medical research focuses on the development of novel drug constructs and treatments for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). His work aims to address the side effects of existing CVD therapies through various approaches, including engineering recombinant antibody-drug fusions for targeted therapy, utilising extracellular vesicles as drug nanocarriers, and developing next-generation mRNA for personalised medicine. Through these strategies, Yuyang strives to create safer, more effective treatments that improve outcomes and quality of life for patients with cardiovascular disease.

Emily McKinna is a final-year medical student at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney. Her research focuses on mechanisms of myocardial repair and adverse ventricular remodelling following myocardial infarction. She is currently involved in translational cardiovascular research investigating platelet-derived growth factor mimetic peptides as potential therapeutic agents to modulate post-infarction fibrosis and cardiac remodelling. Her work integrates experimental models with mechanistic studies to explore novel strategies for myocardial regeneration. Emily has a strong interest in translational cardiovascular science and the development of therapies that bridge basic discovery and clinical application. She intends to pursue physician training in cardiology with the long-term goal of establishing a career as a clinician-scientist focused on interventional cardiology and cardiovascular therapeutics.

Dr Lund is the Head of Department of Cardiology at Counties Manukau District. She became a cardiologist because she “likes fixing things” and completed her training at Greenlane Hospital followed by fellowships at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Her professional mission is “To provide world class cardiology care to a population who too often have no choice where they receive treatment”. Dr Lund specialises in community heart failure care. She was the first woman to Chair the New Zealand Committee of CSANZ, is a past Clinical Lead of the Northern Region Clinical Cardiology Network, and is the current President of CSANZ.