Felix Ratjen
Felix is the Division Chief of Paediatric Respiratory Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children, Professor of Paediatrics at The University of Toronto, Program Head and Senior Scientist at the Research Institute in the Translational Medicine research program. He is co-leading the CF Centre at SickKids. Felix’s main research interest is in cystic fibrosis lung disease including new therapeutic strategies to target the underlying defect, treatment of airway infections such as first infection with Pseudomonas aeruginosa, airway inflammation and other important aspects of the disease.
Harm Tiddens
Harm Tiddens is a Professor in pediatric pulmonology and is the medical director of AI company Thirona where state-of-the-art AI algorithms analyse CT scans. Harm previously was head of the LungAnalysis group in Erasmus, focusing on the development of novel structure and function outcome measures and computational model systems to study chronic lung diseases. In 1997 he co-founded the European CF Society Clinical Trial Network (ECFS-CTN) that currently includes participation of over 17.500 CF patients and 43 CF centers.
Jochen Mainz
Jochen is the head of the CF Centre and a Professor for Paediatric Pulmonology at Brandenburg Medical School (MHB), University, Germany. His research interests concern abdominal and sinonasal involvement in CF. With his team, he developed the CFAbd-Score, a validated CF-specific PROM for quantification of the multi-organic gastrointestinal symptoms.
Marion Rowland
Marion is a clinical epidemiologist in the School of Medicine University College Dublin. Marion has had a long involvement with Cystic Fibrosis research. Since 2006, she has been the lead investigator for the Irish Longitudinal Study of Cystic Fibrosis Liver Disease, a unique national cohort study which aims to understand the risk factors and outcome for liver disease in CF.
Hartmut Grasemann
Hartmut is a Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto and staff respirologist at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Canada. Hartmut’s main research interest is in the L-arginine/nitric oxide (NO) metabolism and its role in CF lung disease.
Alexandra Quittner
Dr. Quittner is a Professor and behavioral scientist. She received the Richard C. Talamo Clinical Research Award from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in 2008 in recognition of her development of the first health-related quality of life measures for cystic fibrosis (CFQ-R), which are now used worldwide. In 2016, she was awarded the CF Foundation Richard Mattingly Award in Mental Health Care for her international epidemiological study of depression and anxiety in patients and caregivers. She has focused her research on cystic fibrosis and other rare lung diseases and has developed the first disease-specific quality of life measures for: CF, non-CF bronchiectasis, NTM, and primary ciliary dyskinesia.
Cliff Taggart
Cliff is Chair of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology at Queen’s University Belfast. His research focuses on CF innate immune response in the lung and how these become dysregulated during excessive inflammation as a result of elevated protease activity.
Paul Cotter
Paul is the Head of Food Biosciences at Teagasc and a Principal Investigator with the APC Microbiome Ireland and Vistamilk SFI Centres as well as Food for Health Ireland. He also co-ordinates the EU H2020 Innovation Action relating to microbiomes and the food chain, MASTER (€10.9 mi budget). Paul also heads the Teagasc DNA high throughput sequencing facility. He is a molecular microbiologist, with a particular focus on the microbiology/microbiome of humans, animals, foods and the food chain. Paul is also the author of >300 peer-reviewed publications and was included in the Clarivate list of highly cited researchers for 2018 and 2019.
Billy Bourke
Billy is a consultant paediatric gastroenterologist in CHI -Crumlin and Associate Professor of Gastroenterology in University College Dublin. He has a long-term interest in CF liver disease and together with Marion Rowland has published extensively on the epidemiology and outcome for Irish children with this condition.
Aiden McCormick
Aiden is a consultant hepatologist in St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin. He is also a Newman Clinical Research Professor in University College Dublin and Clinical Lead for the National Hepatitis C Treatment Program in the HSE. Aiden’s main research interests are in chronic liver disease and portal hypertension.
Sinéad Weldon
Sinéad is a Senior Lecturer and Principal Investigator in the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, QUB. Sinéad has a long-standing interest in CF and her research programme is centred on the status, integrity and mechanisms of action of host defence proteins (antimicrobial peptides, antiproteases, proteases), how this activity may be compromised during disease and exploited for biomarker and therapeutic potential. As part of the RECOVER project, Sinéad’s group will analyse markers of airway inflammation, which will provide important information in terms of monitoring disease activity and burden in individuals with CF and will contribute to the profile of personalised responses to CFTR modulators.
Anke-Hilse Maitland – van der Zee
Anke-Hilse is an enthousiastic researcher in the field of Precision Medicine in Respiratory disease. She is leading a team of more than 40 researchers (Assistant Professor, post-docs, MDs, PhD students and junior researchers) at the Department of Respiratory Disease in the Amsterdam UMC, location AMC. Her current research focuses on precision medicine in respiratory disease and includes exhaled breath research within the RECOVER study.
Daan Caudri
Dr. Caudri’s LungAnalysis group has specific expertise in lung imaging in CF. The LungAnalysis core at Erasmus will support all sites in the RECOVER study in relation to standardization of CT protocol optimisation and image output. The LungAnalysis core will organize for image upload from all sites, collate the transferred images, process them, and carry out PRAGMA scoring. The Erasmus team collaborate with the Thriona team to optimise the CT scans results.
Anna M. Georgiopoulos
Anna is a child & adolescent, adult, and consultation-liaison psychiatrist affiliated with the Massachusetts General Hospital CF Center in Boston and is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Anna leads studies in CF mental health and palliative care. She is inaugural chair of Prioritizing Research In Mental Health (PRIME) for the CF Foundation.
Sarah Carroll
Dr Carroll is a Senior Clinical Psychologist supporting children and families with CF at CHI. She has a particular interest in understanding the psychological needs of people with CF and will lead on the mental health outcomes study of the RECOVER extension.
