Aspasia Angelakopoulou joined Swiss Re as a Research Statistician in Life & Health R&D in May 2011. She is responsible for all data related issues varying from data management to statistical analysis methods and data interpretation. She is involved in a number of projects with the R&D team as well as in other teams. Her main research area includes morbidity and mortality trend investigations across a number of diseases as well as the analysis of insurance data in order to gain a better understanding of consumer behaviour.

Aspasia Angelakopoulou is a graduate of University College London where she completed her first degree in Economics and Statistics. She then received her postgraduate qualifications in Epidemiology and Statistics from Imperial College London and London School of Economics and Political Science. Following the end of her studies she worked as a data analyst in Neurology in GlaxoSmithKline London before joining London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where she worked as an analyst in cardiovascular disease. During her time there she was involved in a number of  projects aiming at understanding the biological basis and consequence for disease risk of common genetic variants on coronary heart disease and type II diabetes. She was also responsible for co-ordinating data collection and statistical analysis in a project looking at the relationship between inflammation and cardiovascular disease. Teaching practical sessions in various courses was another strong component of her role there.

Somnath Chatterji currently leads the Multi-country Studies programme in the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems at the World Health Organization (WHO). He coordinates WHO’s Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) supported by the National Institute on Aging, USA.

SAGE is being carried out in China, Ghana, India, Mexico, Russia and South Africa. SAGE also is being implemented at eight health and demographic surveillance sites as part of the International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health in developing countries (INDEPTH). Studies, building on SAGE, are additionally being carried out in three European countries: Finland, Poland and Spain. The measurement of health, well-being and other health-related outcomes, together with trends and determinants, with an emphasis on older adults, is the main focus of the international studies of the team.

Somnath Chatterji leads WHO’s World Mental Health surveys on the epidemiology of mental disorders in 30 countries. He also coordinates the work on WHO’s Quality of Life (WHOQOL) assessment instrument that is used internationally in clinical and population studies. He was closely involved with the development of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. Somnath Chatterji trained as a psychiatrist in Bangalore, India.

André Chuffart studied mathematics at the University of Lausanne. He joined Swiss Re in 1972 and has worked in various markets over the years. Until the end of August 2002, he was head of the Life & Health Business Support unit in Zurich, which comprised underwriters, actuaries, physicians, and claims managers.

From 2003 until his retirement in 2007, André Chuffart was responsible for the life and health markets of Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Scandinavia, Finland, and the Baltic countries.

Through his work in the field of life and health assurance, he has amassed in-depth expertise and know-how in the areas of organ transplantation, HIV infection, and genetics. For several years, he has headed the "Risk Management" working group of Insurance Europe, the European insurance and reinsurance federation in Brussels, and has been a member of that body’s Life and Health Committees.

André Chuffart now works as an independent consultant and is a board member of KPT, a Swiss health insurer.

Helen Chung leads research and development initiatives in the fields of medicine and health care, both in-house and through collaboration with academic research units. Her current focus areas include the impact of developments in the prevention, detection and treatment of cancer on longevity. She has a multi-disciplinary background connecting medical and actuarial fields with health policy. She worked in the UK National Health Service for 7 years, most recently in the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), and formerly as hospital clinician. At NICE she applied research to the development of evidence-based guidance on the clinical and cost effective use of medical technologies (predominantly biologics and pharmaceuticals, but also including devices, diagnostics and surgical procedures). She has also 4 years of experience in actuarial work, in the development of health insurance products at Munich Re and in employee benefits consulting at Aon.

Ms Chung qualified in medicine from the University of London. Her undergraduate studies included an intercalated year focused on medical research methodology, particularly in molecular oncology. Her post-graduate studies were in Health Policy Planning and Finance at the London School of Economics and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She is qualified as an Associate of the Institute of Actuaries.

For more information, please click here.

Hernán Fatone holds an Insurance Organisation and Technique degree from the University Argentina de la Empresa where upon graduating he became a part time professor. From 1988 to 1995, Mr Fatone worked in a local/ direct property & casualty broker role. At the end of 1995, he started working for Swiss Re as a L&H underwriter. Mr Fatone occupied different roles in Switzerland, South Africa and Spain and since 2003 he has been based in Zurich, being responsible for several markets in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

Martin Friede is the Programme Leader for the Technology Transfer Initiative at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. In this position, he provides leadership to WHO’s activities on promoting access to health-related products through technology transfer and local production, and provides expert authoritative advice to Member States in the evaluation, acquisition, development and implementation of health-related technologies.

Martin Friede joined WHO in 2003, originally in the Initiative for Vaccine Research where he was responsible for New Vaccine Technologies. In that position he established a number of technology-transfer hubs, where essential vaccine-related technologies and intellectual property were assembled with appropriate know-how in a single site and subsequently transferred to multiple developing countries to permit accelerated availability of locally produced vaccines.

Prior to joining WHO, Martin Friede was Vice President of Development at Apovia Inc. (a Californian based biotech company) where he was responsible for all vaccine development activities including identification and optimization of formulations, toxicology, and CMC section of INDs, and pilot-plant production of vaccine candidates. Prior to this he had worked for numerous years as a senior scientist at GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Belgium, where he lead a team on vaccine formulation research.

Martin Friede earned his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cape Town in 1990. Directly following this he undertook post-doctoral research on immunochemistry at the University of Strasbourg, France.

Ernst Hafen obtained his PhD from the Biocenter at the University of Basel in 1983. From 1984 to 1986 he worked at the University of California in Berkeley as a postdoctoral fellow before joining the University of Zurich as an assistant professor in 1987. He was promoted to full professor in 1997. From 2005 to 2006 he served as president of ETH Zurich. Since 2005 he holds a professorship at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zurich.

Ernst Hafen has made several seminal contributions to the field of developmental genetics and cell biology including the characterization of genes and the corresponding signaling pathways involved in cell fate specification and in the control of cell and body size. He has received several prizes and has served on the editorial boards of various journals and scientific committees. He is a co-founder of evalueSCIENCE, a privately held consulting company that offers reviews and second opinions on R&D projects by a standardized peer review process to life science companies, academic institutions and investors. As a trained geneticist he has a strong interest in human genetics and personalized medicine.

In 2008 he initiated the multidisciplinary systems biology project WingX - The Systems Biology of the Drosophila Wing. This project is funded by the Systems Biology Initiative SystemsX.ch. Researcher from biology, physics, engineering and computer science from ETH, EPFL, and the Universities of Zurich, Basel and Lausanne collaborate towards a predictive computer model of the development of the Drosophila wing, a simple and well-understood structure.

Paul Hately has been one of the leading proponents of the use of data to improve the customer journey when applying for life insurance. Since 2009, he has headed Swiss Re’s team responsible for its automated underwriting tool, Magnum and its offer in predictive underwriting, and since June 2012 he has added Swiss Re's global underwriting tools including Life Guide to his responsibilities.

Mr Hately joined Swiss Re in 1999 in a UK marketing and strategy role. From 2004 to 2006 he was seconded to the head office in Zurich where he worked in the Group Strategy Team. Since 2006 he has been in a variety of roles focused on strategy and product development in Life & Health, based in London. From 1986 to 1999 he held several positions in the UK life arm of Zurich Financial Services prior to its merger with the financial services arm of British American Tobacco.

Mr Hately is a graduate of the University of London in mathematics and statistics and a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries in the UK.

An MIT engineer, Jamie Heywood entered the field of translational research and medicine when his brother Stephen was diagnosed with ALS in 1998 at the age of 29. Since that time, Mr Heywood's scientific and business innovations have been transforming the intersection of biotechnology and pharmaceutical development, personalized medicine, and patient care.

As chairman of PatientsLikeMe, Mr Heywood provides the scientific vision and architecture for its patient-centered medical platform. He co-founded the company in 2005 with his youngest brother, Benjamin, and friend, Jeff Cole. Named one of “15 companies that will change the world” by CNNMoney, PatientsLikeMe is a personalized research and peer care platform that allows patients to share in-depth information on treatments, symptoms and outcomes.

In 1999, Mr Heywood founded the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI), the world’s first non-profit biotechnology company, where he served as CEO until 2007. Pioneering an open research model and an industrialized therapeutic validation process, he led ALS TDI to become the largest and most comprehensive ALS research program.

A published author, frequent speaker, media pundit and active investment advisor, Mr Heywood speaks at conferences around the world, including TEDMED, Milken Global Conference, Gov 2.0, Personal Democracy Forum, Institute of Medicine, NIH Directors’ Lecture, and MGH Grand Rounds. His work has been profiled in the New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, BusinessWeek, 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News, NPR, Science, and Nature, and he was named to WIRED’s 2009 “Smart List” and Fast Company’s “10 Most Creative People in Healthcare.” Jamie and his brother Stephen were the subjects of Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Wiener’s biography, His Brothers Keeper and the Sundance award- winning documentary, “So Much So Fast.”

Brian Ivanovic provides leadership and support to Swiss Re's North American Longevity Research & Development area and to Swiss Re's Global Life Applied Research team. He is a board certified family physician and epidemiologist, with 14 years of reinsurance industry experience. His team conducts insured lives research that assists Swiss Re in the establishment of pricing assumptions and in understanding emerging risk trends affecting health. His research has been published in the Journal of Insurance Medicine and North American Actuarial Journal and a number of Swiss Re’s client publications.

Prior to his insurance industry experiences Mr Ivanovic completed a Fellowship in Academic Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and spent six years teaching medical students in Des Moines and Milwaukee. He began his medical career as a Flight Surgeon in the US Air Force.

Marisa Jaconi, PhD, holds since 2005 a faculty position as ”Maître d’Enseignement et Recherche” (MER, Principal Investigator) in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva  (Switzerland). Within the Department of Pathology and Immunology, she directs a research laboratory focusing on mouse and human embryonic stem cell (ESC)-based cardiogenic and tissue engineering strategies for the regeneration of the heart. Her research focuses on the mechanisms of cardiac cell differentiation (genetic control of cardiac differentiation and plasticity potential) from human ESC as models of development and diseases. She has devoted much attention to the study of ESC and new possible therapies of degenerative diseases that may be gained from scientific findings in this area. Being the first scientist to work with hESC in Switzerland, she has been highly involved publically in the science/ethics/politics and societal debates on embryonic stem cells that were at the origin of the Swiss Stem Cell Act, accepted by public vote in 2005.

She is also currently Vice-Director of the Swiss Institute of Cell Therapies (www.swiss-ict.org), a foundation launched in 2010 by the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG) and the Faculty of Medicine, which is devoted to the development and clinical application of innovative cell therapies through public-private partnerships. She is in addition member of the Administration Council of the HUG.

Stephen Kramer is Head of Epidemiological Research in the Life & Health R&D department of Swiss Re, based in the firm's London office. He has worked extensively on projects dealing with the effects of infectious diseases and chronic diseases on demographic outcomes.

In South Africa he worked for Metropolitan Life and did extensive private consulting to companies and governments. He developed AIDS and demographic models for a number of African countries, was a member of a number of industry and professional organisations dealing with HIV, underwriting and insurability.

In the last few years, his work involved developing an epidemiological model to understand the range of mortality outcomes in the event of a new pandemic of influenza in a modern context. His most recent work in Swiss Re's R&D team is concerned with the understanding of the key disease-based drivers of longevity, both from the perspective of social epidemiology, and in terms of disease diagnosis, treatment and management.

Alison Martin, Division Head Life & Health Reinsurance, was appointed to the Group Management Board with effect from January 2011.

Alison Martin led the Global Life & Health Risk Transformation Team from 2006 to 2010. In this capacity, she managed all of Swiss Re's life retrocession and ILS activities. In 2005 she had become Chief Financial Officer for Life & Health UK. She started at Swiss Re in the Life & Health Business Group in 2003.

Before joining Swiss Re, she was at PWC working with a range of insurance clients in audit, advisory and transaction related capacities. She is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Alison Martin was born in 1974 and is a British citizen. She earned an LLB Honours degree in Law at the University of Birmingham and is a Chartered Financial Analyst IMC.

Alison McLean is a Claims Medical Manager for Swiss Re Life and Health Claims, UK and Ireland. She manages a team of clinical specialists who are responsible for providing clinical input into claims management solutions, product design, training and the implementation of research strategies to better understand and improve claims outcomes. Her role also involves a part-time secondment to the Global Life and Health Research team, working specifically on the impact of long term care needs.

Ms McLean was one of the authors of the 2011 Swiss Re Insurance Report; preparing this involved strategic meetings with UK government bodies including the Dilnot Commission team and the Sickness Absence review team. She is also active in the UK rehabilitation industry and is a Member of the UK Vocational Rehabilitation Association Professional Development Committee.

Prior to joining Swiss Re, Ms McLean worked in clinical roles as Occupational Therapist in both the public and private sectors; these involved providing therapeutic intervention to optimise people’s functional ability after sustaining injury or illness.

Ms McLean completed a Bachelor of Health Science Occupational Therapy (University of Newcastle, Australia), Master of Health Science in Health, Safety and Environment (Queensland University of Technology) and is currently undertaking a Master of Science in Health Economics, Policy and Management (London School of Economics).

For more information, please click here.

Since joining Swiss Re nearly 15 years ago, David Muiry has worked primarily in global Life & Health functions and for the Asian markets.

Since 2012, he has taken on the leadership of a newly-established Global Health unit, which will provide the global product management lead for Swiss Re's health business and execution of its health strategy.  

From 2006 to 2011, David Muiry was based in the L&H Chief Pricing Office in London, for most of this period with responsibilities for the global technical lead on Swiss Re's medical re/insurance business.

From 2003 to 2005, he was based in Zürich as the Senior Pricing Actuary for the Asian Life & Health business. From 2000 to 2003, he was based in Mumbai, as the L&H marketing actuary during the initial phase of Swiss Re’s L&H operations in India. From 1997 to 2000, he worked in a global health product management role in London.

Before Swiss Re, David Muiry worked in the UK primary market with Legal & General and NatWest Life, and as a medical practitioner in the UK National Health Service and in the Royal Navy.

David Muiry is a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries (UK) and a Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries of India.

Christoph Nabholz is Head of Business Development at the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue and additionally serves as Research & Development Manager to Swiss Re’s Life & Health Division.

As Head of Business Development he is responsible for the content of high-profile industry events held at the Centre for Global Dialogue, Swiss Re’s premiere conference facility. With his background in genetics he actively supports Swiss Re’s research on and development activities in medical trends and longevity.

Before joining the Centre, Mr Nabolz was Strategic Research Manager in Global Life & Health Underwriting and served as Swiss Re’s Global Genetics Consultant.

Prior to joining Swiss Re, he was a postdoctoral fellow in genomics and functional genetics with Prof. Tom Maniatis at Harvard University. He received a diploma in biochemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland, and a Ph.D. with honours in molecular genetics from the University of Freiburg, Switzerland.

Armin Nassehi has been professor of sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich since 1998. His research focuses on social theory, cultural sociology, political sociology, and sociology of organizations. In addition to academia, he works as a keynote speaker, consultant and publicist in several fields. Since 2012 he edits the “Kursbuch” which enjoys a long tradition in cultural, political and economic debates in Germany.

Mr Nassehi was born 1960 in Tuebingen. His studies included philosophy, sociology and pedagogy, earning him a PhD in 1992 and his habilitation in Muenster in 1994.

Nicola Oliver is a research consultant within the Life and Health R & D team at Swiss Re and has supported the team since October 2010 with a variety of projects.

Nicola Oliver was previously a nurse in the UK National Health Service and has transferred her knowledge from this background, both hospital-based and in public health, to investigating, understanding and reporting upon the main drivers behind changes in life expectancy.

Tomáš Paus is the Tanenbaum Chair in Population Neuroscience, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Senior Scientist at the Rotman Research Institute and the Executive Director of the Toronto Trans-generational Brain & Body Study. He is an expert in mapping the human brain in health and disease using a variety of tools, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), electroencephalography (EEG) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Over the past 10 years, Mr Paus has initiated or joined several large-scale studies of brain maturation and cognitive development during adolescence, thus pioneering a new discipline of population neuroscience that operates at an intersection of epidemiology, genetics and neuroscience. In this work, he and his colleagues explore the interplay between genes and environment in shaping the human brain and, in turn, trajectories of the brain health.

Over the past 20 years, Mr Paus has published over 150 peer-reviewed articles, 13 book chapters and co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Transcranial Stimulation. He received the Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award, Gold Medal of the Masaryk University, is an elected member of the International Neuropsychology Symposium, serves as Associate Editor of the Human Brain Mapping and Social Neuroscience, and as a member of several Scientific Advisory Boards in Europe and North America.

Florian Rechfeld is a medical biochemist in the Life & Health R&D department of Swiss Re and is located at the Zurich office. His main research within the R&D team is focussed on the assessment of new developments and advances in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industry and the evaluation of their impact on longevity.

Before joining Swiss, Re Mr Rechfeld worked as a scientist at the Institute of Infectious Diseases and Oncology at the University Children Hospital in Zurich. His research aimed at improving the diagnosis of children with oncological diseases and the identification and validation of  novel molecular targets for drug development. He studied biochemistry and molecular biology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland and received a PhD from the Institute of Medical Biochemistry at the Innsbruck Medical University in Austria.

Séverine Rion is a trained pharmacist, working for Swiss Re's Life & Health R&D department in the Zurich headquarter of the company. Her actual research is focused on advances in the pharma and biotech industries, innovative health and information-communications technologies and consumer behaviour.

Before joining the L&H Research Office, Ms Rion worked as a Senior Casualty Risk Engineer for SwissRe in the field of life sciences and hospital risk management. In this position, she developed methods and tools to conduct risk assessments and bench marking for the life sciences industries. She further modeled risk scenarios and landscapes for different industry sectors including hospitals.

Prior to joining Swiss Re, Ms Rion was a chemist in public and hospital pharmacies. She studied pharmacy at the Swiss Federal institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and the Ecole de Pharmacie in Lausanne to obtain her Federal Degree in Pharmacy. Her research at the ETH and at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego was on Virtual Screening of 3-Dimensional Databases for Ligand Design and molecular biology.

Brian Rosenfeld is an internationally recognized Intensive Care Specialist, and healthcare entrepreneur who pioneered and developed the concept of remote intensive care unit management. He co-founded VISICU Inc. in 1998 and after being acquired by Royal Philips Electronics, presently serves as a Vice-President & Chief Medical Officer.

Prior to founding VISICU, Mr Rosenfeld was an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Medicine and Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. While at Hopkins, he was Director of two critical care units and received the Shannon Award from the National Institutes of Health. He founded and directed the Perioperative Research Center - a government and industry funded research group and he implemented the first-ever smart monitoring system for hospital-wide management of patients with myocardial ischemia.

Mr Rosenfeld was Principal Investigator on numerous research trials and has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. He has been an invited lecturer at international and national meetings and is a Fellow in both the American College of Critical Care Medicine and the College of Chest Physicians. Mr Rosenfeld has over 20 U.S. and international patents around remote patient management and has a strategic role in Philips Healthcare’s telehealth direction.

He graduated magna cum laude, special honors-biology from the University of Pittsburgh in 1975. He graduated from Temple University School of Medicine in 1980 followed by post-graduate training in internal medicine, pulmonary medicine, anesthesiology, and critical care. He currently serves on the Board of The New England Healthcare Institute and Visual Telehealth Systems.

Daniel Ryan is Head Life & Health R&D at Swiss Re, having joined in August 2010. He was previously Head of Mortality Consulting and Research at Towers Watson, and was the principal investigator for 8 years and founder of an innovative research group that addressed a wide range of key issues on mortality and morbidity.

Swiss Re has invested significantly in understanding future drivers to mortality and longevity, and Daniel leads a multi-disciplinary group that is focused on the development and evaluation of forward-looking scenarios based on prior history of disease or good health.

Daniel Ryan is a keen advocate of closer links between the actuarial and medical profession, and is a member of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council for Ageing. He is also the Chair of the Technical Committee for the Life and Longevity Market Association, a non-profit venture to promote a liquid traded market in longevity and mortality risk that would assist pension funds that are interested in transferring risk to the wider capital markets.

Ruprecht Schmidt-Ott is a board certified medical microbiologist. He completed his habilitation in the field of bacteriology and holds the Venia Legendi for medical microbiology.

He joined GlaxoSmithKline Vaccines in 2005 after more than 10 years infectious disease research in several academic institutions, including the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen, Germany, and the International Albert Schweitzer Research Laboratory in Lambaréné, Gabon.

At GlaxoSmithKline he has been closely involved in the clinical development of the company´s seasonal and pandemic influenza vaccines. As Scientific Affairs Director he now focuses on vaccines for adults and the elderly, partnering with various academic institutions in Europe involved in vaccine-related research.

Ruprecht Schmidt-Ott published extensively on vaccine-related topics. As external member of the faculty staff (Privatdozent), he continues teaching at the medical school of the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Germany.

Mr John Schoonbee graduated from the University of Cape Town in 1995. He performed his internship at Groote Schuur Hospital. After some years in private medical practice he joined the corporate world which included working at a company that specialized in corporate sick leave management in its own right, as well as the link to future short and long term disability. Pension and insurance related disability assessments were also a key part of the work there, including redesigning state disability practices and assessment formats in some of the key government departments in South Africa.

Mr Schoonbee then started his own consulting company focusing on sick leave and disability consulting, and while there he began to work for  RGA in South Africa in 2005. He eventually became Chief Medical Officer and Head of Research for RGA South Africa, involved in many functions across the organization, including claims, underwriting, marketing, training and presentations to both clients and across the industry. He did product development and marketing work for RGA in Europe as well as South East Asia and Australia. Mr Schoonbee initiated and successfully completed the 2010 RGA Claims Survey, a first of its kind in the South African market, and in his research role he also spearheaded the beginning of an industry wide accidental experience analysis at RGA.

Mr Schoonbee was secretary of the Medical Underwriting Standing Committee of the South African industry body ASISA (Association of Saving and Investment of South Africa), and a key part of the team that organized the 2010 ICLAM meeting in Cape Town, where he also presented. Mr Schoonbee began working at Swiss Re in July 2011 as Chief Medical Officer for Continental Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

Bern Shen is Chief Medical Officer of HealthCrowd, a Silicon Valley mobile health startup. Trained in both internal medicine and emergency medicine, Bern practiced clinically for 15 years at Yale, the University of Pittsburgh, UCSF and international sites. He then transitioned to a tech career, doing medical software and business development for HP and Oracle, serving as Intel’s chief healthcare strategist and then working with health/ tech startups as a co-founder, advisor or investor with the Band of Angels.

In the nonprofit arena, he led the health practice at the Institute for the Future, served as Chairman of The Health Trust and as a Board member of several nonprofits, including Harvard Business Prof. Clay Christensen's Innosight Institute, and has adjunct faculty appointments in schools of medicine, pharmacy and business at UCSF and the University of Iowa. Bern holds an A.B. (biochemistry) from Harvard and an MD, MPhil. (molecular biophysics and biochemistry) from Yale.

Alexandre Sidorenko is the Senior Advisor at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in Vienna, Austria. His other assignments and duties include the following: Coordinator, Research Forum, European Ministerial Conference on Ageing, 2012; International tutor, International Institute on Ageing (UN-Malta); Member, Board of Trustees, World Demographic Association Forum Foundation, (St. Gallen, Switzerland); and Global Ambassador for HelpAge International (London, United Kingdom).

Previously, Alexandre Sidorenko was the Chief of the Population Unit, UN Economic Commission for Europe (2010); and Head of the United Nations Programme on Ageing (1988-2009). He joined the United Nations Secretariat in 1988, first in Vienna, Austria, and since 1993 he had worked at the UN Headquarters in New York. Alexandre Sidorenko served as the UN Coordinator of the International Year of Older Persons in 1999. His other major responsibilities during his 21 years of work for the UN had involved the coordination of the United Nations activities in the area of ageing, including promoting and monitoring the international policy and programmes on ageing. Mr Sidorenko was involved in coordinating substantive preparations for the Second World Assembly on Ageing in Madrid, Spain in 2002 and its follow up activities.

Mr Sidorenko was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He received his early education in Ukraine. He pursued graduate studies in medicine, obtaining a Ph.D. in cellular immunology. He was a lecturer at the Kyiv Medical University from 1975 to 1978. Mr Sidorenko has ten years of experience in experimental gerontology at the Kyiv Institute of Gerontology, spanning from 1978 to 1988.

Richard Thomson’s research is in shared decision making (SDM), quality of care, stroke epidemiology and prevention. He leads the Decision Making and Organisation of Care research programme at the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, and is a member of the Yorkshire Quality and Safety Research Group. In 2007 he completed a secondment as Director of Epidemiology and Research at the National Patient Safety Agency in London.

Richard Thomson has been Principal Investigator on many studies, most recently in development and evaluation of decision support, and is co-lead on two NIHR programme grants, one including SDM and hyperacute stroke, the other on involvement of patients in patient safety. He co-leads a large programme on implementation of SDM (MAGIC – Making Good Decisions in Collaboration) with Glyn Elwyn in Cardiff, supported by the Health Foundation. Richard Thomson is Associate Dean for Patient and Public Engagement within the Faculty of Medical Sciences in Newcastle.

For more information, please click here.