Speakers

Professor Idit Matot MD is a professor of anesthesiology and intensive care at the Tel Aviv University, Sackler School of Medicine. She is the director of the surgical division and the chair of the division of anesthesiology, intensive care and pain at the Tel Aviv Medical Center in Israel. Professor Matot is the chair of the Scientific Committee of the European Society of Anaesthesiologists and Intensive Care (ESAIC) (first woman and first Israeli to hold this position). Before this position in Europe, she was a member of the Research Committee and Transfusion Committee, chair of the Geriatric Anesthesia Committee and a member of the Nomination Committee of the ESAIC. Professor Matot is a member of the National Council for Surgery, Anesthesia & Intensive Care. Between 2017-2020 she was the president of the Israel Society of Anesthesiologists.

Professor Matot has received several prestigious awards including the Honorary Member of the ESAIC (lifetime) in 2022, corresponding member of the German Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine (DGAI) in 2022, and the Horace Wells award from the International Federation of Dental Anesthesiology Societies (will be granted in 2023). She received her MD at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem in Israel. Following medical school, she spent three years as a research fellow at the department of anesthesiology, University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, studying the pulmonary vascular bed. She completed her anaesthesia residency in the department of anesthesiology and critical care medicine at the Hadassah Medical Center, Hebrew University, Jerusalem after which she returned to the University of Pennsylvania for further studies on lung injury and a few years later to the department of anesthesiology at Stanford University in California. Her research interests include both experimental research related to the liver (perfusion, hemodynamics, effects of blood transfusion and the regeneration process), lung (pulmonary hypertension and tone dependent responses), and clinical outcome research in the perioperative period.

Professor Matot has received multiple prestigious grants including an award grant from the American Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists, GIF, ISF and more. She served in several significant positions (including chair of the Admission Committee to medical school) at the Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University. She has published more than 100 peer review papers in prestigious journals and is an invited speaker to many international meetings.

Idit is married to Israel (for 40 years!), has two good looking and successful sons (married) and five amazing grandchildren. She loves cooking, dancing, jogging, enjoying the theatre, Maccabi Haifa soccer team, travelling, and obviously having a good time with the grandchildren.

Dave Story is Professor and Foundation Chair of Anaesthesia at the University of Melbourne; and Head of the University Department of Critical Care. His main research interest is clinically and cost-effective approaches to reduce perioperative risk, complications, disability, and mortality. He also does translational work in acid-base disorders; environmental impact research, and is a consumer investigator in diabetes care.

Dave is a Staff Anaesthetist at the Austin Hospital where he provides perioperative care for most procedural specialties including liver transplantation. His academic and ANZCA roles include supporting students, trainees, and fellows in pursuing research, education, and leadership.

His love of the outdoors led to research in altitude physiology, subsequent anaesthesia career, environmental advocacy, and recreational hiking and bike riding.

Dr Nuala Lucas is a consultant anaesthetist at London North West University Healthcare Trust. Her major interest is obstetric anaesthesia. She is the president-elect of the Obstetric Anaesthetists’ Association and chairs the Education Sub-committee. Nuala is the anaesthetic co-lead for the UK Confidential Maternal Death Enquiries (MBRRACE-UK). She is a senior editor for the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia. She was the sole anaesthetic member of the guideline development groups for the National Institute of Health & Care Excellence guidelines for caesarean section (2011), intrapartum care (2014) and twins (2019). Her research interests include airway management in obstetric anaesthesia and complications of obstetric anaesthesia. In 2020 she was awarded an Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British (MBE) in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to anaesthesia during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021 she was awarded the Featherstone Professorship by the Association of Anaesthetists.

Dr Wijeysundera is a staff anesthesiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital, and a professor in the department of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Toronto. In addition, he is a professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto, and a senior adjunct scientist at ICES (formerly known as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences) in Toronto, Ontario. Dr Wijeysundera holds the Endowed Chair in Translational Anesthesiology Research at St. Michael’s Hospital and University of Toronto.

His research program aims to better predict, prevent, and treat complications following major surgery. He leads important multicentre studies in perioperative medicine, including the completed METS study that compared approaches to assess preoperative functional capacity (>1400 participants at 25 international centres), as well as the ongoing FIT After Surgery study (targeted 2000 participants at 16 Canadian centres) that evaluates the incidence, predictors, and impact of significant postoperative disability in older adults. Dr Wijeysundera’s program has generated more than 290 peer-reviewed publications and received more than $8 million in funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, and the Ontario government.

Dr. Wijeysundera is an associate editor at Anesthesiology, and an editorial board member at the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia and Circulation.

Professor Amanda C de C Williams is professor of clinical health psychology at University College London, UK, and a clinical psychologist at the Pain Management Centre, University College London Hospital. She is also psychology section editor for the journal PAIN, and provides research consultancy in human rights, particularly on pain in torture survivors. Amanda has been active in research and clinical work in persistent pain for over 30 years, with interests in evaluation of psychologically-based treatments (mainly by systematic review and meta-analysis); in expression of pain and its interpretation by clinicians; in the use of technological devices to support pain management in the person’s own environment; and in pain from torture. Professor Williams has written over 300 papers and chapters on aspects of pain and psychology.

Professor Nickel’s clinical expertise and research covers inflammatory, infectious, pain and other benign diseases of the urinary tract. He has over 600 publications, has been a member of the editorial board of 14 urology journals, immediate past-editor of the AUA Update Series, editor of the microbiome/urologic infections section for Grand Rounds in Urology, invited to present in over 50 countries, and has been continuously funded by the US National Institutes of Health and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for over two decades. He was president of the Canadian Urological Association in 2017.

Professor Nickel was awarded a CIHR Tier I Canada Research Chair (2007-2022), AUA Distinguished Contribution Award, AUA Latimer Medal, SIU Academy Award, and was the first recipient of the SIU Elhilali Award for contributions to international urology research. He was named an Honorary Member of the AUA in 2021 for contributions in urologic research and leadership.

Sibs Anwar is a Pain Physician as well as Cardiac Anaesthetist at the Barts Heart Centre (and Cleveland Clinic London) where he leads an inpatient, as well as follow-up, service for persistent postsurgical pain. He conducts basic science and translational research into the transition from acute to chronic pain states following surgery.

Sibs is the President of the Pain Medicine Council at the Royal Society of Medicine and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School. He is the Section Editor for Pain at the Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia.

Dr Louise Speedy is an Anaesthetist and Intensive Care Physician based at Te Matau a Māui Hawkes Bay Hospital, New Zealand. She is also a Medical Officer with the NZ Army, currently a Reserve Force Major with the Deployable Health Organisation. Her areas of interest include perioperative decision making, shared goals of care and trauma management.

Kristin L. Schreiber, MD/PhD, is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, and Vice Chair of Faculty Development in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She completed her MD and a PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, investigating reciprocal neural-immune interactions involved in infection and the development of persistent pain. She completed residency training at the University of Pittsburgh, and fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she practices clinically as a Regional Anesthesiologist and Physician Scientist, receiving funding from the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Science Foundation (NSF). Her research program investigates the development of chronic pain after surgical injury, as well as worsening of chronic pain after cancer diagnosis or during social isolation.

She employs pragmatic assessment of psychosocial and psychophysical phenotypic factors, in addition to biomarkers, clinical characteristics, and socio-demographics, to better predict which individual patients are most at risk. Her perioperative interventional studies incorporate this dense biopsychosocial assessment of individual patients into their design, to allow more nuanced assessment of differential efficacy of preventive perioperative interventions among patients, ranging from regional anesthesia and ketamine to yoga-based exercise and open-label placebo. In her quantitative sensory testing lab, she investigates differences in pain processing among individuals, including how subjective pain relates to changes in physiology, and what aspects of pain processing are modulated by non-opioid analgesic techniques.

Jamie Sleigh is Professor of Anaesthesiology at the Waikato Clinical Campus, of the University of Auckland, Hamilton, New Zealand. He grew up in Zimbabwe, and specialised in anaesthesia in the United Kingdom, before moving to New Zealand in 1988. He has practiced in both intensive care medicine and anaesthesia, and has been active in research for more than 30 years. His current research interests include: the practical use of EEG in anaesthesia and consciousness; EEG signal processing; modelling of brain dynamics in anaesthesia; and the use of ketamine ester analogues for perioperative sedation and analgesia.

Professor Davidson is a Senior Staff Anaesthetist at the Royal Children’s Hospital, head of Anaesthesia Research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and a Professor in the Departments of Paediatrics and Critical Care, University of Melbourne. Andrew is also the Medical Director of the Melbourne Children’s Trials Centre, and Chair of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists Clinical Trials Network. He trained in anaesthesia in Melbourne, Nottingham, Rotterdam and Boston. He has been elected a fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Science. He is also Editor in Chief of Pediatric Anesthesia and an Executive Editor for Anesthesiology.

Professor of Anaesthesia and Critical Care, University College London, UK
Adjunct Professor, Duke University Medical Centre, NC, USA
Chair, Evidence Based Perioperative Medicine (EBPOM)
Director, Xtreme Everest Oxygen Research Consortium
Founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal, Perioperative Medicine
Founding Editor-in-Chief, TopMedTalk
Founding Board Member Perioperative Quality Initiative (POQI)
Co-President of the International Board of Perioperative Medicine

Professor Michael (Monty) G Mythen is a Smiths Medical Professor of Anaesthesia and Critical Care at University College London and Chair of Evidence Based Perioperative Medicine (EBPOM). Monty is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Perioperative Medicine, Editorial Board British Journal of Anaesthesia, founding Editor-in-Chief of TopMedTalk and the founding Board Member Perioperative Quality Initiative (POQI).

Samuel Ajizian, MD, FAAP, FCCM, CPPS is a board certified Pediatric Intensivist with over 20 years of clinical practice in the Pediatric ICU. Dr. Ajizian received his MD from the University of Southern California and completed pediatric residency and Chief Residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. He then entered the U.S. Air Force where he served 3 years on active duty as a pediatrician and Flight Surgeon in F-16s. He then completed pediatric critical care fellowship at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, University of Tennessee.

Dr. Ajizian joined Medtronic in 2015. His first role was Vice President, Medical Affairs for the Patient Monitoring and Recovery business unit. In this capacity, he oversaw safety issues for devices in the field, and provided medical direction cross functionally for product development, research, education, and the engagement of key opinion leaders globally. In 2018, he assumed direction of the MITG Medical Safety Office. In this role, he oversaw patient safety investigations, Issue Impact Assessments, and management of high-level safety and regulatory issues supporting from the medical side. He is co-chair of the Medtronic Medical Safety Council and works across the enterprise to help drive Patient Safety excellence. In 2020, Dr. Ajizian became interim director of the MITG Scientific Communications team. In this role, he oversaw the production of key compliance related deliverables to our stakeholders including Clinical Evaluation Reports. In late 2020, Dr. Ajizian became the CMO for Patient Monitoring, and VP for Clinical Research & Medical Science for Patient Monitoring and Respiratory Interventions. In these roles, he helps advise the OU on business strategy, including BD&L ventures, as well as research, publications, safety, and education across both OUs.

Andrew Klein is a Cardiothoracic Anaesthetist at Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Anaesthesia, which has an Impact Factor of 12.9 and the number one journal in Anaesthesiology and Pain worldwide . He is on the Board and Council of the Association of Anaesthetists, the membership organisation for > 11,000 anaesthetists in Great Britain and Ireland. He sits on the Board and Council of the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia (NIAA), which manages research grant funding in the UK. He was the Royal College of Anaesthetists Macintosh Professor in 2020-21.

Andrew’s main research areas are high-flow nasal oxygen to improve recovery after major surgery and pre-operative anaemia and the effects of iron replacement therapy.

Andrew is a keen cricket supporter and member of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) at Lord’s in London, and a lifelong and long-suffering West Ham United season ticket holder.