Speaker biographies

Jennifer Dickens

Clinician Scientist at the University of Cambridge and honorary consultant at Addenbrooke’s and Royal Papworth Hospitals

Dr Jenny Dickens is a Clinician Scientist at the University of Cambridge and honorary consultant at Addenbrooke’s and Royal Papworth Hospitals.  She has a research and clinical interest in interstitial lung disease with particular focus on familial pulmonary fibrosis. Dr Dickens trained in Cambridge; her MRC Research Training Fellowship on disease mechanisms in alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency sparked a wider interest in how pathogenic protein variants cause respiratory disease.  Her postdoctoral research, first as an MRC Clinician Scientist and now as an APF Mike Bray Research Fellow and new group leader, has focussed on developing novel alveolar organoid models to understand how surfactant protein variants are handled by lung epithelium and how their expression may trigger interstitial lung disease. She has developed the familial pulmonary fibrosis service at Royal Papworth hospital to offer specialist care to this cohort and to complement her ongoing work. 

Amadou Gaye

Genetic Epidemiologist, Meharry Medical College

Dr Amadou Gaye is a genetic epidemiologist with a distinguished academic and research career. Raised in Senegal, he developed a deep interest in science and health disparities early in life. He completed his undergraduate degree in Biotechnology at Fachhochschule Mannheim, Germany, and earned a master’s in bioinformatics from the University of Leicester, UK. Dr Gaye was awarded a full scholarship to pursue a PhD in Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Leicester, followed by advanced postdoctoral training in Data Science at both the University of Leicester and the University of Bristol. He then moved to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, where he spent nine years conducting research in cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Dr Gaye is now based at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, where he continues his work at the intersection of genomics, data science, and health equity. Dr Gaye’s research is centered on three primary themes:

1. the development of innovative biostatistical methods for epidemiological and genomic studies,
2. investigating the genetic and environmental determinants of multifactorial conditions, with a particular emphasis on cardiometabolic diseases and cancer in populations of African ancestry,
3. advancing capacity-building initiatives for underrepresented groups in genomics research.

In his applied research, Dr Gaye explores the interplay between genetic, environmental, and socio-demographic factors contributing to cardiometabolic diseases and cancer in African descent populations. As Chair of the Department of Integrative Genomics and Epidemiology at Meharry Medical College, he leads research integrating genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, and socio-environmental data to address health disparities and improve cardiometabolic health outcomes in historically underserved populations.

Stefano Guerra

Professor of Medicine, University of Arizona 

Stefano Guerra is a Professor of Medicine, the Dahlberg Endowed Chair in pulmonary research, and the Director of the Population Science Unit at the Asthma and Airway Disease Research Center, University of Arizona. He is a leading expert in the natural history of obstructive lung diseases, the early roots of adult respiratory conditions, and the use of biomarkers and omics tools to identify the molecular components of asthma and COPD. One of his main areas of research focuses on the role and clinical applications of club cell secretory protein (CC16) in these respiratory conditions.

Professor Ian Hall

Professor of Molecular Medicine, University of Nottingham

Professor Ian Hall is Director of the Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre hosted by the NUH Trust and the University of Nottingham. He completed his clinical studies at the University of Oxford before moving to Nottingham for specialist training and an initial research period. Subsequently he was an MRC travelling fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and National Asthma Campaign Senior Research Fellow back in Nottingham. From 2009-2015 he was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. He holds the Boots Chair in Therapeutics. Professor Ian Hall's main clinical interest is in Respiratory medicine, especially asthma. He runs a research group which works on the genetics and cell biology of airway disease.

Catherine John

Associate Professor in Genetic Epidemiology and Public Health and Honorary Consultant in Public Health, University of Leicester 

Dr Catherine John is a clinical academic in public health and epidemiology, with expertise in development of cohort studies and the use of longitudinal and linked healthcare data to understand the epidemiology and genetic epidemiology of chronic diseases. Catherine is a co-investigator on two large cohort studies, the EXCEED study (a cohort of over 11,000 adults focusing on chronic disease) and UK-REACH (a cohort of healthcare workers, focusing on COVID-19 risk and ethnicity). Catherine is clinically qualified and clinically active as a specialty registrar in public health, practising in local authority public health where her interests include development of strategy and policy to address the social determinants of health, and community engagement and co-production. Her other interests include development of research capacity in low- and middle-income settings (particularly sub-Saharan Africa), representation of underserved communities in health data science, and effective public engagement in the context of longitudinal studies. 

Darrell Kotton

Professor of Medicine, Center Director, Boston University and Boston Medical Center

Darrell N Kotton, MD is a physician-scientist who cares for patients with lung disease and leads a research program focused on understanding the basic biology of lung injury and repair. He is the inaugural endowed David C Seldin Professor in the Department of Medicine and in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine. Since 2008 he has served as the founding director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine of Boston University and Boston Medical Center.

Om Kurmi

Associate Professor Research, Centre for Healthcare and Communities and Principal Investigator of Nepal Family Cohort Study 

Dr Om Kurmi received his undergraduate degree from Tribhuwan University, Nepal and PhD in Public Health from the University of Aberdeen, UK. He completed his post-doctoral training at the University of Birmingham, UK, in the Institute of Occupational Medicine. He worked as a Senior Scientist in Respiratory Epidemiology at the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit, Nuffield Department of Population Health, the University of Oxford, UK. He worked as an Assistant Professor in Respiratory Epidemiology in the Division of Respirology, Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. Currently, he is working as an Associate Professor in Epidemiology and Evidence-based Healthcare Research at Coventry University. He is the chair of the Respiratory Epidemiology Group (6.01) of the European Respiratory Society and the Fellows of the Royal Society of Public Health. He has worked in several large prospective cohorts across all geographical regions, including in biobank studies. His primary research expertise is Respiratory Epidemiology and Environmental Health Epidemiology, and he has been teaching observational research methods and problem-based learning to undergraduate and postgraduate students. He has set up a family cohort in two regions of Nepal to understand the major determinants of health, particularly lung health in children. 

Erik Melén

Clinical Researcher and Senior Consultant in Pediatric Allergy, Karolinska Institutet

Professor Erik Melén, MD, PhD, is a clinical researcher and senior consultant in pediatric allergy at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, where he leads a 10-person research group. As the Principal Investigator of the large BAMSE birth cohort, he has led numerous studies investigating the complex interplay between genetics, environmental factors, and the development of allergic and respiratory disease in children and adults, as well as long-term prognosis and outcomes. Prof. Melén has extensive experience collaborating on international research projects worldwide.

Francesca Polverino

Professor of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

Francesca Polverino, MD, PhD, is endowed Lester and Sue Professor, and Professor of Medicine, tenured, at the Baylor College of Medicine – Houston. Her clinical and research interest is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In 2010, after completing her medical degree and doctorate, she moved to the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where she studied the pathobiology and the systemic manifestations of COPD. Dr. Polverino published seminal papers focused on the mechanisms leading to the onset and progression of COPD. She discovered that patients with emphysema-predominant COPD have upregulated and off-targeted B cell responses with autoimmune features (AJRCCM 2010, 2015, 2019, 2023). She has also identified two molecules that are expressed in the lung and are protective against cigarette smoke-induced lung damage and COPD: Club Cell Protein 16 (CC16, European Respiratory Journal 2015), and A-Disintegrin and A Metalloproteinase Domain 8 (AJRCCM 2018), and has described the first non-human primate model of COPD (American Journal of Pathology 2015).

From a clinical standpoint, Dr Polverino reported for the first time that patients with COPD also suffer extensive kidney damage (AJRCCM 2017) and that common drugs such as metformin can protect against the pulmonary damage observed in COPD (AJRCCM 2021). In the last few years, Dr Polverino's laboratory has pioneered the use of digital spatial profiling for the study of lung pathologies (Cells 2022, Sci Rep 2023). Dr Polverino’s research interest is also focused on the understanding of pre- and peri-natal factors that determine lung function limitation early in life (early COPD). In 2017, Dr Polverino became an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, then joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in August 2018, where she led the COPD translational research group.

She has been awarded several prestigious international recognitions, including the Parker B Francis Fellowship (2016), the Rising Star of Research Award from the American Thoracic Society (2018), and the Medal of Honor for Scientific Merits from the President of Italian Republic, the European Respiratory Society COPD GOLD medal (2022), and the Parker B Francis award by the American Thoracic Society (2023). In January 2021, she has been recruited to the Baylor College of Medicine to lead an effort aimed at expanding the COPD translational research program within the college. Her team is now pioneering the integration of omic platforms (radiomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics) to dissect (early) COPD pathogenesis. In 2023, she became the ATS RCMB program committee chair and standing member of the NIH Lung Injury, Repair, and Remodeling (LIRR) Study Section.