John Radcliffe Hospital
Oxford, United Kingdom
Dear Member of the World Muscle Society
I have joined our Society 15 years ago as I felt at that time it was the right place to exchange with peers about our passion for Myology. Three years ago, I was elected as an Executive Board Member. At that time, I proposed to work and to advocate as a board member to make our Society more sustainable and more inclusive to younger colleagues, and to colleagues from all over the World. I stepped in as Secretary and was lucky to work over the three last years with Volker Straub as president and Gisele Bonne as treasurer. Together, and with the support of the board, we could not only face the challenge of the Covid pandemic on our congress, but also initiated a serie of changes that I hope you have noticed. We introduced a new membership system that offers dramatically reduced cost to students and colleagues from low and medium income countries, we proposed a new and transparent system for the election to allow new colleagues to step in for executive functions, we introduced a new system of committees to allow colleagues, including the youngest, to actively participate to the life of our Society without- or before- being elected as board members, we revamped entirely the website with the help of a broad diversity of members, we introduced several sustainability-driven change in our way of working. In the program of the WMS, we paid specific attention to promote young colleagues, and to encourage them to participate in program or prize committees.
I propose to continue the work that has been initiated for 3 years. I wish to continue to promote a Society that will be more sustainable, more inclusive and more participative in each of its aspect.
Biography
I am basically a paediatrician, with an interest for innovative therapies, newborn screening and innovative outcome measures. My vision is to make clinical trials shorter, more efficient, using less patients, and to be able to move as fast as possible to younger and ideally pre-symptomatic patients. I have the chance to practice medicine and clinical research in two countries- Belgium and UK- with two great teams.
Current role
Professor of Paediatric Neuromuscular Diseases, University of Oxford, UK
Invited Professor of Paediatric Neurology, University of Liege, Belgium
Previous relevant role
Director of the Insitute I-Motion, Paris, France
