Professor Michael Ryan is the Associate Chief of Staff for Research at the William Jennings Bryan Dorn Veterans Affairs Hospital, and a Professor of Pharmacology, Physiology & Neuroscience at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia, SC. Professor Ryan’s laboratory has made research contributions in two major areas. The first relates to understanding how immune system activation mechanistically promotes the pathogenesis of hypertension. Evidence suggests that human hypertension is associated with immune dysfunction including the production of autoantibodies commonly associated with autoimmune disease. Using an experimental model of the autoimmune disorder systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Professor Ryan’s laboratory has contributed significantly to the understanding of both renal and vascular mechanisms during SLE, and how they are influenced by inflammatory cells and mediators.

The second relates to understanding mechanisms that lead to increased cerebral vascular risk during preeclampsia. Patients with preeclampsia have increased risk for developing stroke, cerebral oedema and seizure with mechanisms that remain unclear. His laboratory has recently focused on an experimental model that mimics characteristics of preeclampsia and demonstrates an important role for impaired cerebral vascular tone, blood flow autoregulation, and inflammatory cytokines in this process.

Professor Philip Calder is Professor of Nutritional Immunology in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and of the Association for Nutrition and has been a member of the Biochemical Society since 1987. Professor Calder is currently President of The Nutrition Society and President-Elect of the Federation of European Nutrition Societies. His research investigates the importance of specific nutrients in maintaining optimal cell and tissue function across the life course and the application of the findings in public health and clinical situations.

Professor Calder has received several awards for his work including the ESPEN Cuthbertson Award (2008), the BAPEN Pennington Award (2015), the Danone International Prize for Nutrition (2016) and the DSM Lifetime Achievement Award in Human Nutrition (2017). Professor Calder was Editor-in-Chief of the British Journal of Nutrition (2006-2013) and is currently an Associate Editor of several journals including the Journal of Nutrition and Clinical Science.

Mark Cooper is Professor of Diabetes and head of the Department of Diabetes within the Central Clinical School at Monash University. Professor Cooper's research interests are in diabetes and its three major complications: kidney disease, heart disease and blindness. Professor Cooper has received many awards and is an eminent researcher in the field of diabetes and its complications. His work has profoundly improved our understanding of this disease and has been of direct benefit to millions of sufferers around the world. His distinguished body of research has led to new treatments for sufferers of diabetes that are today considered standard. He has played a key role in translating exciting discoveries in the laboratory to clinical care with seminal studies defining various treatment strategies to reduce the burden of diabetic complications.

Christian Delles studied medicine at the Universities of Freiburg, Germany, and Innsbruck, Austria. He undertook his MD research in Professor Paul Dietl's lab at the Department of Physiology in Innsbruck and joined Professor Roland Schmieder's group at the Department of Nephrology, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, in 1997. Here he worked on renal haemodynamics in arterial hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases; pathophysiology of endothelial dysfunction; and pathophysiology of left ventricular hypertrophy. In parallel he completed his specialist training in Internal Medicine.

He joined the British Heart Foundation Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre in 2003 as a Research Fellow funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and became Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Physician in 2005. He became a Reader at the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences in 2011 and is currently Professor of Cardiovascular Prevention and Deputy Director of the BHF Centre of Excellence.  

Satoru Eguchi MD PhD FAHA started his academic career as a physician scientist in Japan concentrating on cardiovascular endocrinology in 1989. His research has been specifically focused on cardiovascular G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signal transduction and its functional significance linked to cardiovascular diseases. In 1994, he joined the laboratory of Dr Tadashi Inagami (Vanderbilt University), a highly recognized scientist in the area of renin-angiotensin research. After gaining invaluable experience, Professor Eguchi successfully completed his postdoctoral training in 1996.

His Journal of Biological Chemistry 1998 publication with Dr Inagami regarding the EGF receptor transactivation mechanism by angiotensin II (Ang II) in cultured vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) has been sited more than 400 times, which helped him become independent and obtain extramural funds. Since then, Professor Eguchi and his research group have been recognized as one of the leading authorities of Ang II signal transduction and the functions linked to vascular pathophysiology.

Professor Francine Marques is a Professor of Genetics and Genomics, in the School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science at Monash University. She is an National Health and Medical Research Council Emerging Leader, Viertel Charitable Foundation Senior Medical Research Fellow, and National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow. The purpose of her research team is to build exceptional scientists that help to improve cardiovascular health, using translational approaches to lower blood pressure via the gut microbiome. Her team discovered that dietary fibre reduces blood pressure via metabolites produced by the gut microbiome when they ferment fibre, and identified the downstream mechanisms that underpin these responses in animals and humans, leading to the first clinical trial using gut microbial metabolites to lower blood pressure.

This work has been published in Circulation, Hypertension, Nature Cardiovascular Research, Nature Reviews Cardiology, Nature Reviews Nephrology, and others. She is also interested in guidelines and check lists for microbiome studies, which have been published in Nature Medicine, Hypertension and the American Journal of Physiology – Renal Physiology. She won 28 awards including the 2019 American Heart Association Hypertension Council Goldblatt Award, 2020 High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia and 2021 International Society of Hypertension Mid-Career Awards, and the 2021 Australian Academy of Science Gottschalk Medal, and was a finalist for 11 awards, including the Eureka Prize Emerging Leader in Science. She serves on several editorial boards including Clinical Science, Cardiovascular Research, Journal of Human Hypertension, Physiological Genomics, and Hypertension. 

Rayna Gonzales is an associate professor of vascular biology and inaugural member of the newly established Translational Cardiovascular Research Center at the University of Arizona College of Medicine Phoenix (UACOMP). She received her post-doctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Sue P. Duckles at the University of Irvine in the field of vascular pharmacology and her research was supported by an American Heart Association (AHA) Postdoctoral Fellowship. She then received AHA Scientist Development Award and was recruited to the UACOMP as a founding faculty member in 2007 where she established her independent research program.

Gonzales’ research contributions are centered around understanding cerebrovascular pathogenesis of ischemic injury. Current research areas of interest include i) investigating the influence of gonadal sex steroids on the regulation of hypoxia- or ischemia-induced inflammatory signaling pathways in the cerebral vasculature and ii) determining the impact of selective sphingosine-1 phosphate receptor modulation on endothelial and smooth muscle health and function during ischemic injury. Her lab utilizes in vitro human brain vascular cell models and an in vivo experimental stroke model to study mechanisms associated with endothelial activation, barrier integrity loss, and vascular inflammation in the setting of acute ischemic stroke.

Professor Karin Jandeleit-Dahm is a clinician scientist and has been involved in cardiovascular research in the area of diabetes, hypertension and kidney disease for more than 15 years. She is the Deputy Head of the Diabetes Department at the Central Clinical School, Monash University, leads her own laboratory ‘Diabetes and Kidney Disease’, as well as leading a Research Group at the German Diabetes Centre in Duesseldorf, Germany. She holds Professorships of Medicine at Monash University and with the University of Hannover, Germany and has previously been President of the Australian Atherosclerosis Society.

Her clinical appointments include the Alfred Hospital and the Baker Diabetes Clinics. She has recently been awarded a fellowship of the Australian Academy for Health and Medical Sciences. Her main research area focuses on the micro-and macro-vascular complications in diabetes. She has developed and published on new models of diabetes-associated accelerated atherosclerosis and aims to identify novel targets to better treat and prevent cardiovascular disease in diabetes. Her work has been published in high-impact journals including Circulation, Circulation Research, the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Diabetes and Diabetologia. She serves on several Editorial Boards including Diabetologia, PLos One, Clinical Science, the Journal of Molecular Medicine and the Internal Medicine Journal of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, Australia.

Jonathan Lamb returned to Imperial College in 2009 to the Chair of Immunoregulation in the Division of Cell and Molecular Biology, having previously been the Professor of Immunology at St Mary's Hospital Medical School/Department of Biology at Imperial College from 1990 to 1997. During the interim period he was the Professor of Respiratory Science at Edinburgh University and Head of UK Human Biomarker Laboratory, GlaxoSmithKline, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Following undergraduate degrees at Edinburgh and Oxford Universities he completed his PhD in immunology in 1980 at London University. Jonathan has been a scientific board member for a number of organizations including the Medical Research Council, World Health Organization, and ARC (Australian Research Council) and is currently a member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council pool of experts.

Professor Lamb’s research interests focus on the regulation of inflammatory responses, in particular how the host deciphers and integrates internal and external signals that determine the outcome of protective and pathogenic immunity. Understanding the underlying mechanisms that lead to inappropriate immune responses has potential applications in the longer-term by contributing to the development of new treatments of a variety of diseases. In order to address these scientific questions, he is using zebrafish to model mammalian disease phenotypes and to study host inflammatory responses in real-time from the molecular to whole organism level. 

Dr. Madhur is the Division Chief of Clinical Pharmacology and Associate Professor of Medicine in the Divisions of Clinical Pharmacology and Cardiovascular Medicine at Indiana University. She is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Anatomy, Cell Biology, and Physiology at Indiana University. Dr. Madhur’s research focuses on the interplay between the immune system and hypertension, including renal, vascular, and cardiac complications of hypertension. Dr. Madhur’s laboratory, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and American Heart Association (AHA), has defined pathways by which the T cell derived pro-inflammatory cytokine, including interleukin 17A (IL-17A), IL-21, and interferon gamma regulate renal and vascular function. Her group is also investigating how innate immune cells contribute to cardiac remodeling in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.

Maria Luisa S. Sequeira-Lopez, MD. FAHA, is the Harrison Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics and Biology at the University of Virginia. Dr. Sequeira-Lopez received her MD from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina (1990), completed a Pediatric Residency (1994) and Fellowship (1997) at the Hospital Garrahan, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Next, she joined the University of Virginia, School of Medicine, USA (1998) for a postdoctoral training in kidney development and renin cell differentiation and obtained a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship, followed by continuous funding from the National Institute of Health.

Her research program examines the fundamental contributions of kidney vascular development to disease and regeneration with a special focus on renin cells. She identified the earliest progenitors for all cells in the kidney vasculature and the mechanism whereby they differentiate into renin cells, smooth muscle cells, and endothelial cells. Her work has demonstrated a crucial role of kidney vascular progenitors in tissue regeneration with enormous implications in kidney disease and hypertension.

Oleg Palygin is Professor of Medicine and SmartState® Endowed Chair in Renal Disease Biomarkers in the Division of Nephrology at the Medical University of South Carolina. He received his PhD in Biophysics from the Bogomoletz Institute of Physiology in Kyiv, Ukraine, followed by ostdoctoral training in physiology, neuroscience, and renal physiology at the University of Iowa, the University of Warwick (UK), and the Medical College of Wisconsin. He joined the Medical College of Wisconsin faculty in 2014 and was recruited to MUSC in 2021, where he was promoted to Professor in 2025. 

Professor Palygin is a founding member and Co-Director of the Kidney Translational Research Center (KTRC) at MUSC, where he leads efforts to integrate mechanistic renal physiology with human-based translational research. His research focuses on the physiological and pathophysiological roles of ion channels, transporters, and signaling pathways in the kidney, with particular emphasis on mechanisms linking renal dysfunction to cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. His laboratory employs advanced electrophysiology, intravital and super-resolution imaging, redox biology, and multi-omics approaches, combined with studies in human kidney tissue and patient-derived samples, to investigate renal epithelial and glomerular cell function in health and disease. Key areas of investigation include ion channel regulation and electrolyte homeostasis, kidney–brain axis contributions to hypertension and stroke, oxidative and nitrosative stress in renal cells, and mechanisms of albuminuria and glomerular injury. 

Professor Ilja Striz graduated from the Medical Faculty of Charles University in Prague in 1983 and during his following affiliation at the Institute of Chest Diseases in Prague completed his PhD and received clinical certifications in Internal Medicine and Medical Immunology. After visiting Ruhrlandklinik in Essen, Germany in 1990, he worked at the Pulmonary and Critical Care, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, USA (1993-1995). Currently, Professor Striz is Head of the Department of Clinical and Transplant Immunology at the Institute for Clinical and Experimental Medicine (IKEM) and Professor of Immunology at the 1st Medical Faculty of Charles University in Prague, and is Vice-President of the Czech Society of Allergology and Clinical Immunology and of the Czech Immunological Society.

Professor Striz´s research interests focus on cytokine interactions of innate immune cells, particularly macrophages and epithelial cells. In addition to transplant immunology as the main topic, he is also involved in projects dealing with autoimmune or allergic diseases.

Professor Jennifer Sullivan is the Dean of the Graduate School at Augusta University and Professor of Physiology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.  Professor Sullivan’s laboratory is focused on gaining greater understanding of the mechanisms controlling blood pressure in males and females.  Her most recent work has focused on the role of the immune system in the control of blood pressure. Evidence suggests that human hypertension is associated with immune dysfunction. Using a number of rodent experimental models of hypertension, Professor Sullivan’s laboratory has established that biological sex impacts the T cell profile, and greater anti-inflammatory T regulatory cells are critical to the ability of females to limit increase in blood pressure contributing to sex differences in hypertension.

Additional studies are focused on renal ischemic injury as a model of acute kidney injury. Professor Sullivan is examining both sex differences in the recovery of renal function following an ischemic insult, and the impact of ischemic injury prior to pregnancy on maternal and fetal outcomes. 

Professor Ross Vlahos is a Principal Research Fellow and Head of the Respiratory Research Group in the School of Health and Biomedical Sciences at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He has a long-standing interest in respiratory diseases, in particular asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). His research has included the effects of existing and novel anti-asthma drugs on airway hyper-responsiveness and airway wall remodelling. More recently, Professor Vlahos’ research aims to identify novel strategies for the prevention and treatment of COPD and its comorbidities (e.g. skeletal muscle wasting, cardiovascular disease, stroke, and cognitive dysfunction).

Professor Vlahos has co-authored more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals, has had continuous National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC) of Australia funding since 2001 and has played a major role in commercially funded work that has confidentiality/patent agreements. He has served on numerous national (e.g. NHMRC Australia) and international (e.g. Medical Research Council UK) Grant Review Panels, various international conference committees (e.g. American Thoracic Society, European Respiratory Society) and is currently on the Board for the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists (ASCEPT).

Professor Zhiming Zhu is Director of Center for Hypertension and Metabolic Diseases, Department of Hypertension and Endocrinology, Daping Hospital, Army Medical University, Chongqing Institute of Hypertension, China. Professor Zhu received his medical degree in 1985 and Master of Science in Cardiology from the Third Military Medical University, Chongqing in 1988 and obtained his doctorate degree from Faculty of Medicine, Muenster University, Germany in 1993. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship and as a Research Associate at Department of Cell Biology and Physiology in University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA from 1994 to 1997.

He is a Visiting Professor in Riley Heart Research Center at School of Medicine in Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis in 2002. Professor Zhu’s research interests focus on the mechanism and treatment of hypertension and metabolic syndrome. Of special interest is the role of transient receptor potential (TRP) channels in the pathogenesis of cardiometabolic diseases. He is a Fellow of American Heart Association and Fellow of International Society of Hypertension. He has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers.