The 1st International Online Conference on Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine

University Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany;Prof. Dr. Matthias Thielmann is a Professor of Cardiac Surgery, and the Head of Coronary Surgery at the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, West-German Heart and Vascular Center Essen, University Duisburg-Essen. He is Secretary General and Executive Committee Member of the European Society for Cardiovascular and Endovascular Surgery (ESCVS), and Secretary of the European Society for Cardiology (ESC) Working Group Nucleus for Cardiovascular Surgery. He is a member of the National Guideline Committee for chronic CAD and a member of the EACTS Guideline Committee. He is also a member of the Essen Ethics Commission of the Faculty of Medicine, University Duisburg-Essen. His clinical interests include acute coronary syndromes, cardiac biomarker research, ischemia/reperfusion injury research, cardio-protection, coronary artery bypass grafting, minimally invasive valve surgery, aortic valve surgery, mitral and tricuspid valve repair, transcatheter and endovascular techniques, outcome research, and beating heart surgery.

Alessandro Manzoni Hospital, Department of Nephrology, Lecco, Italy;Prof. Locatelli is Past President of the European Renal Association – European Dialysis and Transplant Association (ERA-EDTA), International Society of Blood Purification (ISBP), and the Italian Society of Nephrology (SIN), He is an Honorary Member of Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and Turkish Societies of Nephrology and he is International Distinguished Medalist and he received the Garabed Eknojan Award of US National Kidney Foundation. Locatelli is also an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, U.K. ( FRCPB). He has been chairman of the Lombardy Regional Dialysis and Transplantation Registry. He also served as chairman of the board of European Best Practice Guidelines (EBPG) and on the board of National Kidney Foundation, Dialysis Outcome Quality Improvement, NKFDOQITM, and on the executive board of directors of Global Guidelines and Kidney Disease Improvement Outcome KDIGO. He was President of the World Congress of Nephrology 2009 in Milan. Locatelli is President of the International Society of Geriatric Nephrology since 2007 and a Council member of the International Society of Nephrology Subject Editor of Nephrol Dial Transplant, Associate Editor of J Nephrol, Nephron Clinical Practice, Blood Purification, International Journal of Artificial Organs member of the Editorial Board of J Am Soc Nephrol, past associate Editor of Am J Kidney Dis (2001-2004). He also serves as a reviewer of a number of Journals (including the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet).

Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom;Professor Brand was recruited as a Professor and Chair of Developmental Dynamics in October 2009 from the University of Würzburg, Germany, where he was a Professor of Molecular Developmental Biology and Head of a Working Group in Cardiac Developmental Biology since 2004. He was a Group Leader at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology (Professor Hans-Henning Arnold), University of Braunschweig, Germany, from 1994 to 2004. He did his postdoctoral training with Professor Michael D. Schneider at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, U.S.A, from 1991 to 1994. For his Ph.D. he worked at the Max-Planck Institute for Physiological and Clinical Research in Bad Nauheim, Germany (Professor Wolfgang Schaper), from 1988 to 1990. He studied Biology at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, from 1980 to 1987. Professor Brand's research focuses on cardiac development and ageing. He is interested in the development of the proepicardium, an embryonic structure that develops into the epicardium and the coronary vasculature. He is interested in the signaling process involved in left-right asymmetry development of the heart. Finally, he works on a novel class of membrane proteins, the Popeye proteins, which are involved in stress adaptation of cardiac pacemaker activity.

Lucerne Cantonal Hospital, Lucerne, Switzerland;TBA