Prof. Passier is a co-founder of River BioMedics and is Professor and Head of the Applied Stem Cell Technologies group as well as the Chair of the Department of Bioengineering Technologies at the University of Twente. He is also affiliated as Professor at the Department of Anatomy and Embryology of the Leiden University Medical Center. His research group focuses on cardiac disease modelling and cardiac regeneration, based on human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC). He has extensive experience in cardiotoxicity and cardiac disease using hPSC-derived cardiomyocytes. In his research group human stem cell technologies and micro-engineering technologies are combined, in order to build highly advanced heart-on-chip systems for modelling cardiac disease, drug screening and regenerative medicine. He is an inventor on 10 patent applications and author of over 120 publications in leading scientific journals. Prof. Passier is leading the research theme “heart-on-a-chip” of the Institute for Human Organ and Disease Model Technologies (hDMT) and he is a co-founder of Pluriomics, a privately-owned biotech start-up company, currently known as Ncardia following the merger with Axiogenesis in 2017.
Prof. van der Velden has a PhD in physiology from the VUmc University. She is chair of the Department of Physiology at the Amsterdam University Medical Center (https://physiologyamsterdam.org/) and chair of Amsterdam 4R (https://vu.nl/nl/nieuws/2023/kennisinstellingen-versterken-samenwerking-proefdier-en-proefdiervrij-onderzoek). At a international level, Prof. van der Velden is secretary general of the International Society for Heart Research. Her main research interest is the role of sarcomeric proteins in cardiac performance, both in health and disease, with a focus on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. She is veni, vidi, vici laureate, coordinator of the Dutch Cardiomyopathy consortium Double Dose, and is author of multiple high impact publications.
Prof. van den Berghas a background in applied physics and PhD in chemistry from the University of Twente. He is a full professor and head of the department of BIOS at the University of Twente. He has published over 500 peer reviewed publications (H=63 WoS, H=85 Google Scholar (2020)) a.o. in Science, Nature, PNAS, NanoLetters etc, and from his group > 10 spin-off companies have been started. He received several honors and awards such as Simon Stevin (2002), two ERC Advanced (2008, 2015) and three ERC Proof of Concept (2011, 2013, 2016) grants, the Simon Stevin award (engineering sciences) and the Spinoza prize (2009).
Prof McMurray’s primary research interests are in heart failure and the cardiovascular consequences of diabetes and chronic kidney disease, with a focus on clinical trials. He is, or was, the principal investigator, member of the executive committee or steering committee member for several large trials in his areas of interest including the completed CHARM-Added, CORONA, I-Preserve, EMPHASIS-HF, PARADIGM-HF, ATMOSPHERE, Harmony-Outcomes, PARAGON-HF, GALACTIC-HF, DAPA-HF, DAPA-CKD, ASCEND-D and -ND trials, DELIVER, the ongoing FINEARTS-HF trial and the recently announced FINALITY trial.
He is a Past-President of the Heart Failure Association of the ESC and a Highly Cited Researcher with a H-index of >200.He was awarded an (honorary) OBE in 2019 by Her Majesty the Queen, in recognition of his services to cardiovascular research and in 2020 was awarded the Gold Medal of the European Society of Cardiology, which the society describes as “the highest honour it can bestow on exceptional scientists for their contribution to cardiovascular medicine”.
