Professor Richard van Zyl-Smit is a consultant pulmonologist at Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa, and Deputy Head of the Division of Pulmonology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is a principal researcher at the University of Cape Town Lung Institute and is President Elect of the South African Thoracic Society. His major clinical and research interests are airway diseases, specifically: asthma and COPD with a focus on tobacco, household air pollution, electronic cigarettes, and their impact on pulmonary immune responses (to pneumococcal and mycobacterial infection) and the development of COPD. He has over 80 peer reviewed publications and he has additionally been involved in industry sponsored research for over 13 years across a spectrum of pulmonary disorders. He serves on the American Thoracic Society International Health Committee and is passionate about teaching, training, sustainability and mental health in health care. He is the South African representative on the GOLD assembly and a GINA global ambassador. After qualifying as a pulmonologist, he completed a basic science PhD investigating the effects of tobacco smoke and nicotine on human pulmonary defence mechanisms to tuberculosis infection.

Dr Harly Greenberg is Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine at North Shore University Hospital and Long  Island Jewish Medical Center, Northwell Health in New York and Associate Director of the Northwell Health Lung Institute, Medical Director of the Northwell Sleep Disorders Center and  Professor of Medicine Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra-Northwell.  

Dr Harly Greenberg is a recognized expert in sleep medicine and has helped to advance the field of sleep medicine as an investigator or co-investigator in multiple clinical research trials. His research has contributed to our understanding of the cardiovascular consequences of obstructive sleep apnea. In addition, Dr. Greenberg was a co-investigator in a major international clinical trial that established the efficacy of continuous positive airway pressure therapy as an important treatment for patients with milder forms of obstructive sleep apnea. His work has also contributed to the development of new therapies for sleep apnea and other sleep disorders. He is also a co-investigator on a research protocol on central neural correlates of respiratory sensation and dyspnea, funded by NHLBI.

Mario Cazzola is Honorary Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’, Rome, Italy. He founded Therapeutic Advances in Respiratory Diseases and served as the Editor-in-Chief for Pulmonary Pharmacology & Therapeutics, and for COPD – Research and Practice. He is Deputy Editor for Respiratory Medicine, Section Editor for Frontiers in Drug Safety and Regulation, and an Associate Editor for Respiratory Research, Current Research in Pharmacology and Drug Discovery, Clinical Investigation, and The Open Respiratory Medicine Journal, and an Editor for British Journal of Pharmacology. He is the author or co-author of almost 754 scientific papers. His H-index is 74. According to Expertscape (November 2022), he is the top-rated expert in COPD, obstructive lung diseases and bronchodilator agents worldwide. He was the Chairman of the Airway Pharmacology and Treatment Group and Co-chairman of the ERS/ATS Task Force “Outcomes for COPD pharmacological trials: from lung function to biomarkers”. He has received the 2015 Lifetime Achievement Award from the same scientific society. He was a member of the steering committee of the Airway Disorders Network and served as Governor of the Italian Chapter at the American College Chest Physicians.

He is the Chairman of the Southern Europe Chapter at Interasma, and the Chair of the Med COPD Forum. His research has mainly been focused on the pharmacology of airway diseases, particularly the use of bronchodilators and obstructive lung diseases.

Professor Sir Peter Barnes FMedSci, FRS is Professor of Thoracic Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute and was Head of Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College London 1987-2017. He qualified at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and trained in London. He has published >1500 peer-review papers on asthma, COPD (h-index 230) and has written/edited >50 books. He has been the most highly cited respiratory researcher in the world over the last 20 years. He was President of the ERS in 2013/2014 and was knighted for services to respiratory science in 2023.