Professor Marianne Benn, MD, PhD and DMSc is currently senior consultant at Department of Clinical Biochemistry, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen; professor in
Clinical Biochemistry with special focus on Translational Medicine; and co-chair of the BRIDGE – Translational Excellence Programme at University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Her main research interest is genetic epidemiology using Mendelian randomization designs to examine the unconfounded effects of environmental factors and biological markers on risk of cardiovascular disease in the general population, for prediction of unintended effects of drugs, and examining the contributions and mechanisms of risk factors such as obesity, LDL cholesterol, diabetes to micro- and macrovascular disease.
Marianne Benn has been a member and treasurer of the Danish Society of Clinical Biochemistry, 2002-2006 and has been head of the society’s working group on quality assessment in clinical biochemistry since 2013; Council member and Scientific Programme Committee member of the Scandinavian Society of Atherosclerosis Research, SSAR, 2012-2016; has served on abstract evaluation committees for the SSAR, ISA, ESC, and EAS; and is part of the EAS Scientific Programme Committee, Helsinki 2021.

Marianne Benn has contributed to educational programmes both by planning and running these. She is co-founder, co-chair and Executive Educational Committee chair for the postdoctoral BRIDGE-Programme at University of Copenhagen; course director for a 480 hours course in Diagnostic Modalities since 2016; and has been a member of the Study Board for Medical School, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences since 2019, University of Copenhagen.

Jan Borén received his MD at the University of Gothenburg, and was awarded his PhD at the Department of Medical Biochemistry, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Between 1994-1998, he was Research Fellow and Staff Research Investigator at Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, USA.

Currently, he is Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine at the Institute of Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Director of the Sahlgrenska Center for Molecular and Clinical Medicine, and physician at the Department of Clinical Chemistry at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital.

His main long-term interest has been to understand the underlying mechanisms that lead to, and consequences of, lipid accumulation in the liver, arterial wall and heart, with the goal of translating this knowledge into effective treatment.

Prof. Borén has published more than 180 original papers. He has also authored 40 review articles and contributed several book chapters.

Dr Peter Würtz is Scientific Director and co-founder of Nightingale Health Plc, the Finnish innovator of an internationally recognized biomarker platform widely used for biobanks and clinical trials.
Dr Würtz is principal investigator of the Nightingale initiative on NMR-based biomarker profiling of the entire UK Biobank of 500.000 plasma samples.
The Nightingale platform has been approved for clinical use and is available direct-to-consumers and via healthcare partners in Scandinavia. Dr Würtz’ research focuses on translation of results from population studies into preventative health solutions for individuals.

GERALD F WATTS, DSc MD PhD FRCP FRACP FCSANZ.

Gerald Watts trained at Imperial & King’s College, London University, and was a scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford University. He is senior consultant physician, specializing in the rapidly developing field of cardio-metabolic medicine, and the current chair of the Familial Hypercholesterolemia Australasia Network.

He leads the Cardio-metabolic Service in the Departments of Cardiology and Internal Medicine at Royal Perth Hospital and is Winthrop Professor of Cardio-metabolic Medicine in the University of Western Australia. Research interests include fundamental and applied aspects of lipid disorders and cardiovascular prevention, and improving healthcare delivery for patients with higher impact dyslipidemias, such as familial hypercholesterolemia and chylomicronaemia syndromes.

He has supervised several Masters and PhD students and post-doctoral research fellows, and holds several research grants, with multiple international collaborations. Professor Watts has published over 700 articles and other works and is a highly cited author. He is on the editorial board of several journals, including Atherosclerosis, Metabolism, Annals of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Lipidology, American Journal of Preventative Cardiology, Current Opinion in Lipidology, and Current Opinion in Endocrinology and Diabetes.