Senior Director, The George Institute for Global Health
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, The University of Sydney
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Flinders University
Australia

John Chalmers is a Senior Director and Head of Research Advisory Unit at The George Institute for Global Health. He is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at both The University of Sydney and Flinders University in Australia. John is an Honorary Consultant Physician at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Sydney South West Area Health Service. He is past-president of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Australian Society for Medical Research and the International Society of Hypertension and past-chairman of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

jchalmers@george.org.au

Principal Director, The George Institute for Global Health
Professor, Cardiovascular Medicine and Epidemiology, The University of Sydney
Australia

Stephen MacMahon is Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Sydney and Honorary Consultant Epidemiologist at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney. He holds Honorary Professorships at the Peking University Health Science Center and the University of Auckland Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, and the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand. Prior to The George Institute, Stephen was Director of the Clinical Trials Research Unit at the University of Auckland, where he also held appointments as Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Professor of Clinical Pharmacology.

smacmahon@george.org.au

Director, Cardiovascular Division, The George Institute for Global Health MD
Cardiovascular Medicine, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney , Australia

Anushka Patel is Director of the Cardiovascular Division at The George Institute for Global Health, as Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney and a Staff Specialist in the Department of Cardiology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
Anushka completed her undergraduate medical training at the University of Queensland before undergoing and her training in cardiology (leading to Fellowship of the Royal Australian College of Physicians). She has a Master of Science degree in Epidemiology from Harvard University, and a PhD in Medicine from the University of Sydney. Anushka also currently holds a five year National Heart Foundation of Australia Career Fellowship.

apatel@george.org.au

Professor, Clinical Epidemiology, Utrecht University
Director, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care
Netherlands

Diederick E. Grobbee is Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Utrecht University. He is also director of the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care and co-director of the Image Sciences Institute at the University Medical Center Utrecht. He is a board member of the Academic Alliance for Clinical Trials. Professor Grobbee obtained an MD at the University of Utrecht and a PhD in Epidemiology at Erasmus University Medical School, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. After a residency in Internal Medicine, he became an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and subsequently full Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Erasmus University. In 1989 he was a Visiting Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, US. At Erasmus he was founder and director of the Rotterdam Medical Research Foundation and co-principal investigator of the Rotterdam Study. He is a board member of the Medical Advisory Committee of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences. At the University Medical Center Utrecht, Professor Grobbee directs a large national and international program of research, teaching and training. The Julius Center conducts research in four defined areas, cardiovascular diseases, cancer in women, respiratory disease and mental health. The research program comprises studies in over 12 countries with over 200 collaborating centers and clinics. In addition, the Center operates an international core laboratory for vascular imaging. The Julius Center employs over 340 staff in Utrecht and monitoring staff in a number of other countries. Professor Grobbee directs a comprehensive international MSc programme on epidemiology. He is a board member of the Netherlands Institute for Health Sciences and program director Clinical Epidemiology. Satellite courses are given in various Central European Countries, South Africa, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia. He has been the supervisor of 95 PhD students. Professor Grobbee has been a principal investigator in many large scale epidemiologic studies and randomized trials of interventions for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases. His experience covers the full range of epidemiologic study designs including cohorts and case-control studies on drug main and side effects. Professor Grobbee has published more than 700 scientific papers, chapters and books and has been on the editorial boards of several international medical journals and national and international scientific committees. He is editor of the European Journal of Epidemiology. He chaired the Netherlands Consensus Conference on Diagnosis and Treatment of Hypertension and is member of the Consensus Committee for Cardiovascular Prevention.

D.E.Grobbee@umcutrecht.nl

Director, Laboratory of Molecular Medicine, Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal
Professor, Department of Medicine at the Université de Montréal
Canada

Dr. Hamet is a Canada Research Chair on Predictive Genomics, Chief, Gene Medicine Services (CHUM), Member, Endocrinology Services (CHUM), Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Medicine, CHUM, and past Director-Founder of the Research Centre at the Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal (CHUM) from 1996-2006. He is also a tenured Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Université de Montréal, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine at McGill University and Visiting Professor at the First Faculty of Medicine at Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Dr. Hamet received his Doctorate in medicine in 1967 from Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, a Ph.D. in experimental medicine in 1972 from McGill University, his CSPQ in Endocrinology in 1974 from the Université de Montréal. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada since 1984 and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences founded in 2005. Dr. Hamet is author and co-author of over 470 scientific publications and holds several international patents. He serves on many national and international boards including the Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Dr. Hamet receives financial support from major funding institutions, including the CIHR, the National Institutes of Health (USA), the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Valorisation-Recherche Québec and from the pharmaceutical industry. Active in many societies, Dr. Hamet is President-Elect of the International Society of Pathophysiology. In 1994, he was appointed Honorary Professor of the Shanghai II Medical University; China and he received the Golden Medal of J.E. Purkyne of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic the same year. In 2005, Dr. Hamet was appointed Honorary Member of the Czech Medical Academy and received the Michel Sarrazin Prize from the Club de recherches cliniques du Québec for his contributions to the advancement of biomedical research, as well as the Canadian Hypertension Society Distinguished Service Award.

pavel.hamet@umontreal.ca

Head, Department of Physiology
Professor, Department of Physiology
University of Melbourne
Australia

Stephen Harrap is Professor and Head of the Department of Physiology at the University of Melbourne. He is also a visiting specialist physician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He has long-standing research interests in the genetics of common conditions, in particular cardiovascular disease. As Director of the Victorian Family Heart Study and the AMIGO Study he has been instrumental in important discoveries of the genetics of blood pressure, acute coronary syndrome, height and male pattern baldness. He was the Regional Principal Investigator and Member of the International Management Committee for the recently completed PROGRESS Study regarding secondary stroke prevention. Since 2000 he has been the Regional Principal Investigator and Member of the International Management Committee ADVANCE Study of cardiovascular protection in diabetes. He is on a range of professional committees, editorial boards and advisory groups.

s.harrap@unimelb.edu.au

President, World Hypertension League; President, Chinese Hypertension League
Director, Clinical Trials and Research Centre, Chinese Hypertension League, Beijing
China

Professor Li-Sheng LIU was appointed Professor of Medicine at Fu Wai Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing, China, since 1985. She currently serves as Vice Director of the National Center for Cardiovascular Disease, Chinese. Professor LIU received her MD from Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China and completed her post-doctorate at the Hypertension Research Centre, Medical College of Alabama University in Birmingham, USA. Since 1985, she has been spearheading many cardiovascular-related trials in China, such as the Systolic Hypertension in Chinese (Syst.-China), the INTERHEART study and FEVER Study.

llschl@yahoo.com.cn

Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine
Imperial College London
United Kingdom

Neil Poulter is Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine and co-Director of the International Centre for Circulatory Health, Imperial College London, UK. He was President of the British Hypertension Society from 2003-2005, and was co-author of the 1998 and 2005 Joint British Recommendations on Prevention of CHD and CVD; the 2003 World Health Organisation/International Society of Hypertension Statement on Management of Hypertension; the 2003 European Society of Hypertension–European Society of Cardiology guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension; and the 2004 British Hypertension Society (BHS) guidelines for management of hypertension. He was Director of Operations of the UK half of the ASCOT Trial, and current research activities include regional co-ordination, member of Management Committee and Director of the North European centre for the ADVANCE study; the optimal investigation and management of essential hypertension and dyslipidaemia; the association between birth weight and hypertension; the cardiovascular effects of exogenous oestrogen and progesterone; and ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease.

n.poulter@imperial.ac.uk

Director, Danielle Alberti Centre for Diabetes Complications
Head, Vascular Division - Baker Heart Research Institute
Australia

Mark Cooper has recently been appointed Professor of Medicine and Honorary Professor of Pathology & Immunology at Monash University, Australia. He remains a Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine, Austin & Repatriation Medical Centre attached to the University of Melbourne. In 2002, Professor Cooper transferred with his group to a newly created Department at the Baker Heart Research Institute where he set up the Danielle Alberti Memorial Centre for Diabetes Complications. Subsequently he was appointed head of the newly created Vascular Division which also encompasses peptide biology, vascular biology and vascular physiology.
He had been a senior endocrinologist in the Endocrine Unit at the Austin & Repatriation Medical Centre for over 10 years and more recently has transferred to the Alfred Hospital where he holds a similar appointment. Professor Cooper studied medicine at the University of Melbourne and then completed his training at the Austin Hospital.
In 1999, Professor Cooper was awarded the Eric Susman prize from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians for his research in the field of renal and vascular complications of diabetes. In 2005, he was awarded the Australian Diabetes Society (ADS) Kellion Award for outstanding contribution to diabetes research in Australia. Furthermore, in 1999, he was awarded a large international grant from the JDFI which led to the establishment of a Centre for Diabetic Complications under his direction.

mcooper@baker.edu.au

Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Pisa
Italy

Director, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Department of Primary Health Care, University of Oxford
United Kingdom

Professor Paul Glasziou PhD, FRACGP is the Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine in the Department of Primary Health Care at the University of Oxford, and a part-time general practitioner. He has worked for many years in developing evidence-based practice, including teaching evidence-based practice to medical and postgraduate students, running regular workshops for other health care workers, editing the BMJ's Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, and chairing of the Cochrane Collaboration's Methods group on Applicability & Recommendations. He has published over 100 scientific papers and four books: "Decision Making in Health Care: Integrating Evidence and Values", "Systematic Reviews in Health Care", "Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice & Teach EBM", and the Evidence-Based Medicine Workbook. He was formerly professor of Evidence-Based Practice at the University of Queensland where his research and teaching interests included improving the accessibility and use of research evidence in medical decision making, single-patient trials, screening, and methods to assess the generalisability of clinical trials and systematic reviews. He is a member of the management committee of several of Australia's largest clinical trials (LIPID, FIELD, and ADVANCE), and was chair of the National Working Party on Preventive Guidelines. He has applied his skills to such topics as breast and colorectal cancer screening, acute and serous otitis media, cholesterol lowering, and anticoagulation for atrial fibrillation.

paul.glasziou@dphpc.ox.ac.uk

Professor, Clinical Diabetes, University of Sheffield
Director, Research and Development, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust
United Kingdom

Simon Heller is Professor of Clinical Diabetes at the University of Sheffield and Director of Research and Development and Honorary Consultant Physician in Diabetes at the Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust, UK. He received his clinical diabetes training at Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham and his research training at the University of Nottingham and Washington University, St Louis, USA.
His current research interests include the physiological responses to hypoglycaemia and hypoglycaemia unawareness, pathophysiological mechanisms of sudden death in type 1 diabetes and developing interventions to encourage more effective diabetes self-management. He was Editor in Chief of Diabetic Medicine between 2000 and 2004.

s.heller@sheffield.ac.uk

Head, Division and Department of Internal Medicine, San Gerado Hospital, Monza
Chairman, Department of the Clinical Medicine and Prevention, University of Milan-Bicocca
Italy

Giuseppe Mancia is Head of the Division and Department of Internal Medicine at the San Gerardo Hospital, Monza, and Chairman of the Department of the Clinical Medicine and Prevention at the University of Milan-Bicocca. He is past-President of the International Society of Hypertension (ISH), the European Society of Hypertension (ESH), the European Society of Clinical Investigation and the Italian Society of Hypertension (SIIA). He is past-Chairman of the Working Group on Hypertension and the Heart of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). He is member of the Executive Council of the American Society of Hypertension and chairman of the WHO/ISH Liaison Committee on Hypertension. He is Chairman of the Committee for the ESH/ESC Guidelines on Hypertension and has been member of the Task Force for CVD prevention of the Joint European Committee. He is ordinary or honorary member of several scientific Societies and has received as number of International research awards among which the Heymans Award of the International Society of Pharmacology, the Merck Sharp & Dohme Award and the 2006 Volhard Award of the International Society of Hypertension, the Folkow Award of the European Society of Hypertension, the International Arrigo Recordati Prize, the Invernizzi Prize of Medicine, the Spinoza Award and Honorary Professorship of the University of Amsterdam and the Honorary Cardiology Chair of the University of Cordoba. He has given the Wright Lecture (Australian High Blood Pressure Council) the Tigersted Lecture, the Pickering Lecture (British Hypertension Society) Giuseppe Mancia’s research interests are pathophysiology, clinical pharmacology and therapy of hypertension, congestive heart failure and other cardiovascular diseases.

giuseppe.mancia@unimib.it

Head of Endocrinology, Diabetology and Metabolic Disorders Department, Bichat-Claude Bernard Hospital, Paris
Director of the INSERM Research Unit U695
France

Michel Marre is currently Head of Endocrinology, Diabetology and Metabolic Disorders Department, Bichat-Claude Bernard Hospital and Director of the INSERM Research Unit U695 where he focuses on genetic determinants of type 2 diabetes and its vascular complications.
He completed his undergraduate medical training at Broussais Medical School, Paris. From 1983 to 1987, Professor Marre’s special areas of interest included clinical studies on kidney function, hypertension and the use of ACE inhibitors in diabetic patients. From 1987 onwards, he pursued clinical studies in the same area as head of Diabetes Unit at the Angers University Hospital, and later as Head of the Diabetes Department in Bichat Hospital, Paris. From 1994, his principal topic of interest dealt with the genetic factors influencing nephropathy in type 1 diabetes.
Professor Marre is a member of ALFEDIAM (Association de Langue Française pour l'Etude du DIAbète et des maladies Métaboliques), EASD (European Association for the Study of Diabetes), ADA (American Diabetes Association), Société Française d'Endocrinologie, Société Française d'Hypertension Artérielle and ESH (European Society of Hypertension).

Professor of Medicine, Medical Department M (Diabetes & Endocrinology)
Aarhus University Hospital
Denmark

Carl Erik Mogensen is Professor of Medicine at Medical Department M (Diabetes & Endocrinology) at the Aarhus Unversity Hospital. His research interests include the prevention of renal disease, the kidney in diabetes and hypertension, and, kidney physiology with an emphasis on the mechanisms of proteinuria. He has published approximately 410 papers on these subjects and has received numerous international awards. He was Head of the Medical Council of the Danish Diabetic Association from 1983 to1990 and President of the Danish Diabetes Association from 1990 to1994. He is a member of a range of professional organisations, advisory boards and has editorial boards and has edited several books on diabetes.

carl.erik.mogensen@ki.au.dk

Senior Director, The George Institute for Global Health,
Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Sydney
Australia

Bruce Neal is a Senior Director at The George Institute for Global Health, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney, Heart Foundation Career Development Fellow and an Honorary Consultant Epidemiologist at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
Bruce completed his medical training at Bristol University in the UK in 1990 and spent four years in clinical posts during which time he gained membership of the UK Royal College of Physicians. Prior to taking up his current post in 1999, he spent four years working as an epidemiologist at the Clinical Trials Research Unit in Auckland, New Zealand, where he completed his PhD in Medicine.

bneal@george.org.au

Professor, Department of Endocrinology, Beijing 301 Hospital
China

Chang Yu Pan received her MD degree from Harbin Medical University in 1956 and was postgraduate trainee of Endocrinology at the PUMC from 1963-1965,and visiting investigator at Okynawa University in Japan from1985-1986,as well as visiting fellow at Tulfts University in Boston USA from 8196-1987. Chang Yu Pan is an active member of numerous national and international scientific organisations, including the Chinese Medical Association and ADA. Pan is an editorial board member of key Chinese medical journals. Her research interests include the detection, prevention and treatment of diabetes and its complications. She was the principle investigator of the Chinese Diabetes Prevention Study with acarbose, and is a member of the International Management Committee of ADVANCE. She is also the National leader of the Origin international intervention trials. She has published more the 300 articles in peer reviewed journals both in China and internationally.

Director, Clinical Trials Research Unit,
Professor of Epidemiology, Director, Clinical Trials Research Unit
School of Population Health, The University of Auckland
New Zealand

Anthony Rodgers is a public health physician, specialising in epidemiology. Dr Rodgers is the Director of the Clinical Trials Research Unit at the University of Auckland. His research experience includes co-ordinated of several international cardiovascular disease clinical trials and overviews of cardiovascular disease determinants.
Dr Rodgers was principal author for the ‘World Health Report 2002: Reducing risks, promoting healthy life’, the main annual publication of the World Health Organization. This report assessed the global disease burden due to major risk factors. Most recently, Dr Rodgers has been Principal Investigator of the world’s first trial of the polypill, and is part of an international team working to research this intervention in developed and developing countries.

a.rodgers@ctru.auckland.ac.nz

Professor of Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Leicester
Consultant Physician, University Hospitals Leicester, Leicester Hypertension Clinic
United Kingdom

Bryan Williams is Professor of Medicine, University of Leicester School of Medicine; Consultant Physician, University Hospitals Leicester and Consultant Physician to the Leicester Hypertension Clinic and Lead Clinician for Acute Medicine. Professor Williams graduated in Medicine at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, and holds a certificate of clinical specialist training in Renal Medicine and General Internal Medicine. After his initial medical appointments in London, he trained in Internal Medicine and Nephrology in Leicester, completed a research fellowship at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, Colorado, USA, and returned to the UK to accept a British Heart Foundation Research Fellowship. Professor Williams research interest are in hypertension and vascular disease. His early research work focussed on mechanisms of vascular cells injury but more recently, his work has focussed on clinical aspects of hypertension and clinical physiology. He has published widely in these areas and is regularly invited to deliver keynote/plenary lectures on hypertension and vascular disease to National and International meetings and is a member of the editorial boards of many major journals.

bw17@leicester.ac.uk

Professor of Medicine and Director, Biostatistics Core, Department of Medicine
The Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York
USA

Mark Woodward currently works at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, on secondment from the George Institute. He holds long-term honourary academic appointments at Mahidol University, Bangkok and Glasgow and Dundee universities in Scotland. Professor Woodward obtained his PhD from the Department of Applied Statistics at the University of Reading, UK, where he subsequently worked for several years, most recently as Senior Lecturer in Statistical Epidemiology. He was previously the Director of the Institute of Statisticians' Training and Development Centre in the UK and has served on the governing Councils of both this Institute and the Royal Statistical Society. Professor Woodward has written two textbooks on medical statistics, the latest of which, Epidemiology: Study Design and Data Analysis, had its second edition published in 2005. He is an author of around 200 publications and is currently Associate Editor of Statistics in Medicine. Professor Woodward has extensive experience of work in developing countries, including more than two years as Training Advisor to the Central Statistics Office in Zimbabwe. He has also worked for several aid agencies, including the Asian Development Bank, the World Health Organization and the UK Department for International Development. In 2004/5 he worked for the United Nations, helping develop their training package for the Millennium Development Goals.

mwoodward@george.org.au