Marco Zampoli completed his paediatric pulmonology training in South Africa where he currently holds the position of Associate Professor in Paediatrics at the University of Cape Town. Prof. Zampoli is head of the paediatric cystic fibrosis(CF)clinic at Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital. He completed his PhD on various aspects of CF epidemiology in South Africa and Africa. His other research and clinical interests include primary ciliary dyskinesia, pleural effusions, sleep medicine and long-term home ventilation.

Dr. Felix Ratjen is a Paediatric Respirologist in the Division of Respiratory Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) and Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. He is also Program Head and Senior Scientist in the Translational Medicine research program at SickKids Research Institute and co-leads the SickKids CF Centre. Dr. Ratjen conducts multiple clinical trials addressing cystic fibrosis lung disease including new therapeutic strategies to target the underlying defect, treatment of airway infections such as first infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, airway inflammation and other important aspects of the disease. In addition, he is involved in developing and validating new outcome measures to quantify important aspects of CF lung disease that can be utilized in clinical trials. He also studies other lung diseases and over the recent years has developed an interest in the clinical evaluation of Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT), for which he is leading one of the largest dedicated paediatric clinics.

Miriam Barrecheguren is a pneumologist working at Vall d´Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona. She graduated in Medicine at the University of Santiago de Compostela in 2008. After her training in Respiratory Medicine, she obtained her PhD at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2016 on the diagnosis and management of COPD and AATD in Primary Care. Afterwards, she fulfilled a research fellow at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and obtained a Rio Hortega grant from the Health Institute Carlos III (Madrid, Spain). She was granted the honorary lecture for young researchers of the Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) in 2018. Dr. Barrecheguren was the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Early Career Member (ECM) representative in the European Alpha-1 research collaboration (EARCO) until April 2024 and is the deputy lead of the AATD core group in the ERN-lung. Her primary interests include COPD, alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) and mechanical ventilation. She has more than 90 peer-reviewed publications indexed in PubMed.