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Group leader of the Translational Cardiology group. Her translational research is focused on epicardial fat (from 2005) as a preclinical model for the discovery of non-invasive biomarkers and new therapies for cardiovascular disease. She has contributed to 60 publications in peer-reviewed journals (h-index = 22, >1500 citations), of which she is the main author of the majority. She is the co-owner of 2 patents based on methods for stratifying patients with atrial fibrillation risk or rehospitalization for heart failure and/or death after catheter ablation or hospital admission for heart failure. She is a reviewer of multiple journals, guest editor of Cells, and editor of World Journal of Diabetes.

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Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. His main research focuses on human adipose tissue biology and how it can be studied in a clinically meaningful way to improve the care of patients suffering from obesity and its cardiometabolic complications. Published studies focused on immune cells and molecular pathways mediating inflammation, autophagy, and stress signaling responses that are characteristic of the adipose tissue of patients with high cardiometabolic risk obesity sub-phenotype(s). Mouse and cellular models have been used to understand the short-term responses to obesogenic environment and to obesity reversal. Assaf has authored and co-authored >130 papers in peer-reviewed journals (h-index = 54, >14,500 citations), representing his own group’s work and multiple collaborative studies spanning diverse approaches and disciplines of biomedical research, including epidemiology, clinical intervention studies, human observational cohort studies, animal and cell physiology, and molecular biology.

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Paula Longhi graduated from Buenos Aires University (UBA) with a degree in Biochemistry and obtained her PhD in Immunology at Cardiff University, UK, in 2006. She joined the Laboratory of Ralph Steinman at The Rockefeller University, New York, as a postdoctoral fellow, where she worked on the design of dendritic cell-based vaccines to prevent many illnesses such as HIV, malaria and cancer. In 2013, she joined Queen Mary University in the UK as a Lecturer at the William Harvey Research Institute and was subsequently awarded a BHF Intermediate Basic Science Research Fellowship to establish her independent research career. Her current research interests are focused on the role of dendritic cells and adaptive T cell responses in metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases, with a particular emphasis on adipose tissue inflammation.

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Group Leader at the Research Institute of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (Barcelona). She has published 160 articles (h-index = 41, >500 citations) including original manuscripts, consensus and position papers, and reviews. She has served as principal investigator and co-investigator of multiple research projects (National and European projects either funded by public agencies or industry). Her work has been awarded several times and has received the L’Oréal-UNESCO foundation for Women in Science Award (2012) and the Outstanding Achievement Award from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC; 2019). She holds several positions of trust. Within the European Society of Cardiology, she is current Chair of the Working Group on Thrombosis (2020–2022) and Council Member of the Council of Basic Cardiovascular Science (2018–2022). Within the European Society for Clinical Investigation, she is the current councilor (ESCI; 2019–2022) and is the President-Elect (2023–2027). In addition, she has served as Board Member of the National Funding Agency for Cardiovascular Diseases from the Health Research Fund of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III Spanish Ministry of Health (2018–2020) and is Board Member of the Technical Commission for the Evaluation of National Research Projects in the Biomedical area for the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (2021–2023). Regarding technological transfer, she is co-owner of 4 patents (2014, 2016, 2018, and 2019) in the cardiovascular area and co-founder of 3 spin-offs (2014, 2017, and 2021). She has contributed to continuing education courses and masters (National and International level) and serves as Section Editor of numerous prestigious journals in the cardiovascular field.