33rd Annual Congress – DIGITAL

He completed his medical education and training in anaesthesia and intensive care at the Medical School of the University of Istanbul, Turkey, where he was later appointed as Head of Intensive Care. After moving to the Netherlands in 1989, he worked in Erasmus MC and Sophia Children’s Hospital Rotterdam as an anaesthetist and paediatric intensivist respectively. He moved to AMC in Amsterdam, where he was the Deputy Director, before taking up his current position in 2002. He was responsible for the reorganisation of the four intensive care units at the University Medical Center Utrecht and creating one department, before designing and moving to the new, award winning, state-of-the-art ICU.

He has authored more than 150 published or in-press peer-reviewed papers. Before serving the Society as President of ESICM, Prof. Kesecioglu was Chair of the Division of Scientific Affairs and Chair of the Ethics Section.

Previously, he worked for 14 years as an NHS Consultant at St George’s Hospital, London, United Kingdom. His research focus is on Improving outcomes in Perioperative Care, as well as Data Science and Physiology of Shock, Acute Respiratory Failure, and Sepsis.

Prof. Cecconi is part of the Executive Committee of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign and the COVID-19 SSC Guidelines and has worked with WHO on the recent COVID-19 Clinical Guidelines. Since September 2020, he has been overseeing the development of the C19_SPACE training programme funded by the EU. This programme is developed for health care professionals not usually working in ICUs to master the necessary skills to help European hospitals during the second surge of COVID-19 and potential future pandemics.

At the beginning of the Pandemic in Europe, he was among the first physicians to warn the rest of the World about the challenges of COVID-19. For his service to the medical and scientific community, he has recently been awarded the knighthood of the order of merit of the Italian Republic.

From 2003-2009, he was Chairman of the Joint Intensive Care Committee (GIC), where he introduced the European Diploma for Intensive Care (EDIC) - which he helped co-develop within the ESICM (European Society of Intensive Care Medicine) - in the Netherlands. He also developed the system of regular audits in intensive care units in the Netherlands and chaired this body of national audits on quality in intensive care (NKIC) from 2004-2013.He has held various positions within ESICM, including General Secretary, Chair of the Trauma & Emergency Medicine (TEM) Section, EDIC committee, Deputy Chair of the CoBaTrICE (Competence Based Training in Intensive Care in Europe) Committee, and member of the European Board of Intensive Care Medicine.

He has authored over 300 scientific publications and as an intensive care trainer at VUmc, has been responsible for the training of more than 120 intensivists. His scientific interests include the methodology of scientific research, vasoactive substances, renal function in heart failure, nutrition, vitamin C and therapeutic hypothermia, in addition to end-of-life care for the patient and their loved ones.

Lera previously served on the faculty at MIT and at Stanford. Her research is on the relationships between mind, world, and language and her illuminating talk will explain how we create meaning and use knowledge, and how the languages we speak shape the ways we think. 

Carole has been involved in the development of the role of advanced clinical care practitioner since its pilot, ten years ago. Alongside practising as an ACCP in her ICU, Carole has been involved in developing the role nationally via the National Framework for Advanced Critical Care Practitioners.

She is Honorary Research Fellow to the University of Plymouth and is the immediate Past Chair of the ESICM Nursing & AHP Committee, responsible for developing nursing and AHP activities for the Society. This role not only includes educational provision, but also ensures that nursing and AHP contributions continue to expand as part of the fabric of the Society.

Professor Mer is involved in various aspects of clinical research and postgraduate and undergraduate teaching and serves as an examiner for the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa in several disciplines. He is a past President of the Critical Care Society of Southern Africa (CCSSA) and is the current Chair of the ESICM Global Intensive Care Working Group.

He is an invited member of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) and ESICM venture that is currently addressing sepsis in developing countries, and in 2018, was invited to become a panel member of the international Surviving Sepsis Campaign guidelines. He also serves as a Council member of the recently formed African Sepsis Alliance. Mervyn has led the theoretical and practical sepsis prevention and management training courses to improve knowledge of sepsis and global infections in resource-limited countries on behalf of the Society’s Fund, ALIVE.

Dr Bailey is an Emergency Medicine Intensivist and currently practices at the Durham University Medical Center Department of Pathology. She graduated from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and went on to do a residency at the Medical College of Pennsylvania (known as Drexel University College of Medicine), where she served as Chief Resident.

After residency, Dr Bailey created and completed a faculty fellowship of critical care at the Medical College of Pennsylvania. After her fellowship, Heatherlee stayed on at the College where she served in a variety of roles, including Assistant Programme Director, Director of Critical Care Education, and Student Clerkship Director. After this, she transitioned to Duke University, where she served as Director of Critical Care Education before taking her current position at the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

He is a clinical and basic research investigator at the University of Tokyo. His research interests include acute kidney injury and sepsis. His current research involves AKI biomarker development and clarification of pathophysiology of sepsis-induced AKI.

Dr Doi is Fellow of the American Society of Nephrology (FASN) and the Japanese Society of Internal Medicine (FJSIM), Councillor and Board Certified Nephrologist of the Japanese Society of Nephrology, Board Certified Senior Member of the Japanese Society of Dialysis Therapy, and Councillor of the Japanese Society for Blood Purification in Critical Care.

She completed her Fellowship in Intensive Care Medicine in 1988, received her initial Board Certification in Critical Care Medicine in 1988 and Nephrology in 1990. Dr Estenssoro was President of the Argentinian Society of Critical Care (SATI) from 2008 to 2009 and is an active member of the American Thoracic Society.

She is additionally a member of the Editorial Board of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, and has been Associate Editor of the Annals of the American Thoracic Society (2012-17) and Associate Editor for Latin America of Intensive Care Medicine (2016-2017). Dr Estenssoro's areas of professional expertise and interest include ARDS, Post-ICU syndrome, and sepsis/septic shock.

After his residency at the University of Cincinnati, he completed a fellowship in Critical Care Medicine at the National Institutes of Health and a fellowship in Infectious Disease at the Massachusetts General Hospital. His research interests primarily focus on clinical research and therapeutics in influenza and other emaverging infectious diseases.

He has led a portfolio of several multi-center international, FDA regulated (IND) treatment studies for influenza (including plasma therapy and combination antivirals), and most recently has led NIAID’s Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT) for advancing therapeutics for COVID-19.

He graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a BSc(Hons) in Physiology in 1999 and MBChB in 2002. He completed basic training in medicine in Glasgow and anesthesia in Edinburgh. During this time, he led a series of high altitude research projects in Bolivia and founded a high-altitude research charity, Apex.

He was appointed as a clinical lecturer on the ECAT (Edinburgh Clinical Academic Track) at the University of Edinburgh in 2008, and completed a Wellcome Trust-funded PhD in statistical genetics in 2012. He was awarded a Wellcome-Beit Prize Intermediate Clinical Fellowship in 2013.

He led a global consensus on harmonisation of research studies in outbreaks for the International Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Consortium (ISARIC), and worked with WHO on H1N1 influenza, MERS, and Ebola.

After completing clinical training in 2014, he worked as a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT before returning to the Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh. He also works as a consultant in the intensive care unit at the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh.

He is MD, specialized in Family and Community Medicine, MSc and PhD in Public Health. His professional experience includes the clinical practice, managerial positions of Primary and Specialised Healthcare in private and public institutions and healthcare planning. He was Deputy General Director of Quality and Health Planning of the Ministry of Health of Spain between 2004 and 2008.

He worked as Health Attaché in the Spanish Permanent Representation to the EU and coordinator of the area of Health in the Spanish Presidency of the EU between 2008 and 2011. From 2011 to now, he was working as Seconded National Expert and as Policy officer in DG SANTE developing the legal and organisational bases for the set-up of the ERNs.

Prof. Machado has become a leading expert in sepsis. She is one of the founders and now CEO of the Latin America Sepsis Institute (LASI), having been its President. She is also part of the Executive Board of the Global Sepsis Alliance and the Executive Committee for the World Sepsis Day. She has served on the board of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign International Guidelines and the International Sepsis Forum (ISF) Council since 2014.

With 230 research works and 19155 citations, she has recently been involved in the Executive and Steering Committees of the CoDEX randomised clinical trial to determine whether intravenous dexamethasone increases the number of ventilator-free days among patients with COVID-19-associated ARDS. Flávia will be speaking more on the significance of the trial’s results and answering questions in a Meet the Expert session on Monday 7 December (16.00-16.45 hrs).

As Lead for the Management of Outbreak Response for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, Dr Diaz is responsible for the Unit that develops and coordinates clinical operational strategies at a global level. This includes strategies for healthcare workers’ preparedness and supply chain readiness

Janet is an accomplished specialist in intensive care medicine with expertise in clinical medicine and global health. She previously served in a clinical capacity at the California Pacific Medical Center, and as MD of the MICU at San Francisco General Hospital, and was Assistant Clinical Professor at the University of California San Francisco. She has published extensively on critical care and pulmonary medicine.

Prof. Myatra is an active member of the ESICM Haemodynamic Section, an appointed member of the ESICM Diversity Task Force and a guest editor of the Society’s official journal, Intensive Care Medicine, since 2019. Another important contribution to the Society is her role of Mentor in the ESICM NEXT Mentoring Programme.

Sheila is the lead author of the first published ICU intubation guideline - “Guidelines for Tracheal Intubation in the ICU”, the lead author of the guideline on “Unanticipated Difficult Tracheal Intubation in Adults” by AIDAA, and was the coordinator for the development of the first national difficult airway guidelines (IJA Dec.2016).

Sheila has developed a test in hemodynamic monitoring called the “tidal volume challenge” (CCM Mar. 2017) and was one of the 13 international experts to work on the Project for Universal Management of the Airways (PUMA), to develop a universal airway management guideline in 2019.

Margaret is currently Director of the RECOVER Clinical and Research Program for patient-and family-centred follow-up care after critical illness, conducted in collaboration with the Canadian Critical Care Trials group (CCCTG). Her research focuses on understanding the long-term impact of critical illness on patients and their caregivers. She has been awarded the Critical Care Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Thoracic Society in recognition of her research contributions, teaching excellence and service to the Society’s Assembly on Critical Care. She was awarded Honorary Member of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine in 2019.

She has authored or co-authored over 150 manuscripts and book chapters on topics related to outcomes after critical illness in patients and family caregivers and is the co-editor of the textbook of post-ICU medicine with co-editors Doctors Stevens and Hart. She has published two editorials and three manuscripts in the New England Journal of Medicine on outcomes after ARDS and family caregivers after prolonged mechanical ventilation and is a frequent international speaker on outcomes after critical illness.

He studied medicine at Lund University in 1985, later specialising in infectious disease at Linköping University Hospital. In that capacity, in 1990, he treated the first patient in Sweden with a viral hemorrhagic fever, believed to be a case to be either the Ebola or the Marburg virus disease.

From 1990 to 1993, he worked for the WHO in Laos to create vaccination programs. From 2002 to 2003, he also worked as a national expert for the European Commission to prepare at the EU level for public health threats such as anthrax, smallpox, and other infectious diseases.

Tegnell obtained a research-based senior Medical Doctorate from Linköping University in 2003 and an MSc in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 2004. After holding several positions in various government agencies, since 2013, he has been serving as Sweden's State Epidemiologist. In this position, he played a key role in the Swedish response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sweden's pandemic strategy has been described as trusting the public to act responsibly: instead of wide-ranging bans and restrictions, authorities have advised people to maintain good hand hygiene, work from home if possible and practice social distancing, while those over 70 have been urged to self-isolate as a precaution. 

In addition, he is Director of the Research Group on the Management of Acute Respiratory Failure and Outcomes in Critically Ill Immunocompromised Patients, the founder and Director of the French FAMIREA Study Group, with 100 centres opened throughout France aimed at improving effectiveness of communication with family members of ICU patients.

His research interests include care of the immunocompromised critically ill, pneumonia, as well as ethical aspects of care, including patient and family needs in critical care. His most recent COVID-19 research has covered increased mortality in patients with severe SARS-CoV-2 infection; international variation in the management of severe COVID-19 patients; symptoms of burnout in intensive care unit specialists facing the COVID-19 outbreak and a 5-point strategy for improved connection with relatives of critically ill patients with COVID-19.

Elie is the current President-Elect of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the former Editor-in-Chief of the Society’s journal, Intensive Care Medicine, and a Past Chair of the ESICM Ethics Section. Throughout the congress, he will join several Round Tables and Interactive Sessions, such as How to handle the COVID-19 crisis: in the ICU and at national level (Monday, Channel Copenhagen, 13:45-14:30 hrs).

Joanne is actively engaged in working with patients, carers and the lay public in the design, execution and dissemination of research activities. She has set up various patient forums and has published and held research grants with patients and caregivers. Her work has informed Scottish Government policy, including the CMO (Scotland) Realising Realistic Medicine annual report and the Scottish Government’s Health Literacy Action Plan. Joanne has also recently led the development of an international white paper examining the use of peer support as a mechanism to support recovery in critically ill patients.

Her principle research interest is related to long term outcomes following critical illness. Specifically, she is focused on how the social determinants of health influence recovery in this group. She also leads an international collaboration aimed at improving long term outcomes for patients and caregivers following critical illness (@CAIROrg). At present, Joanne is PI on a number of national and international studies and collaborates with colleagues from Australia, the USA and Canada.

Joanne was awarded the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) Presidential Citation Award (2018 and 2019) for services to the critical care community.

Dr Derde is the Chair of the Dutch Intensivists Task Force for Infectious Threats and co-author of the ESICM/SCCM/SSC guidelines on COVID-19.

She is a member of the ESICM/ESCMID/ERS Severe CAP Guideline Committee and also the Dutch multi-disciplinary committees developing national sepsis guidelines and influenza guidelines. During the congress, she will also moderate the Case-Base Fundamental sessions on Septic shock (Monday, Channel Paris, 9:05-11:45 hrs) and interview Prof. Angus on Publishing in times of pandemics (Wednesday, Channel Copenhagen, 11:00-11:45 hrs). 

She was awarded a doctorate degree in health care from King’s College, London. Her research interests include non-adherence to CLABSIs preventive practices, quality improvement interventions towards infection control and prevention, behaviour change and Critical Care Telemedicine.

She strongly supports multidisciplinary collaborations and teamwork in the critical care setting and is an elected member of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine N&AHP Committee and an active member of the Society’s Journal Review Club.

She received her PhD on Neuromonitoring and the non-invasive assessment of intracranial pressure in 2018. She is the Deputy Chair of the ESICM Neuro Intensive Care (NIC) Section and the author of several publications focused mainly on Neuro Critical Care and Mechanical Ventilation.

Professor Sprung was the Chairman of the Committee on Ethics Section of the US Society of Critical Care Medicine from 1987 to1994 and of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM) from 1996 to 2001 and 2004 to 2007. He was the Chairman of the Israel Society of Critical Care Medicine from 1990 to 1993 and the Chairman of the Medical and Scientific Subcommittee of the Israel Terminally Ill Law-2005.

Professor Sprung has been active in research into sepsis, septic shock and ethical issues for more than 40 years and has published extensively in all of these areas, with more than 300 original publications and 50 books or book chapters.

He is fellowship-trained and board-certified in critical care medicine, neuro critical care, and anaesthesiology. He treats patients with critical illnesses, such as sepsis, ARDS, AKI, traumatic brain injury, trauma, stroke, and immunological disorders of the brain.

Dr Stevens’ research uses molecular analysis and imaging to identify specific biologic signatures of injury and illness. This research explores mechanisms of critical illness/injury and recovery, with the goal of discovering and validating patient-specific biological signatures in acute conditions such as traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest, and sepsis and to validate novel targets for therapy and increase the accuracy of classification and prediction. To achieve this, he has established an interdisciplinary research group composed of biomedical engineers, biostatisticians, data scientists, neuroscientists, systems biologists, and neuro-radiologists.

Dr. Stevens is on the Council of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and chairs the Committee on Computational Critical Care Medicine at the SCCM. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Thorax, and serves on the Editorial Boards of Critical Care Medicine, Neurocritical Care, and Frontiers in Neurology.

Dr Stevens is the principal investigator of the Neuroimaging for Coma Emergence and Recovery (NICER) project, which examines MRI features of the brain connectome to enhance classification and prediction in patients recovering from severe brain injury.

He is the Vice Chair (Research) in the University Department of Anaesthesiology and Pain Medicine. He is also an Honorary Professor of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the George Institute of Global Health in Sydney, Australia.

His research interests include improving outcomes from critical illness and major surgery and he has led a large number of multicentre trials in these areas. He has over 183 peer-reviewed publications, $33million of research grants and an H index of 52.