Medical University of Graz, Graz , Austria

Boston Children's Hospital, Boston , United States

University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven , Belgium

Folkhalsan Research Center, Helsinki , Finland

I work as a senior scientist in the Myofin research group, Folkhälsan Research Center, Helsinki, Finland. A biologist by training, I majored in genetics at the University of Helsinki and did my PhD on molecular pathomechanisms of muscular dystrophies in the Bjarne Udd group. After a postdoc period in the autophagy world, I returned to the Udd lab where I continue to study the molecular and cell biological mechanisms of muscle diseases, mostly using cell models. While my main interest is titin, I'm most of the time busy with other things such as chaperones and stress granules.

University of Pisa, Pisa , Italy

FULL PROFESSOR OF NEUROLOGY and DIRECTOR of the RESIDENCY PROGRAM in NEUROLOGY at the UNIVERSITY of PISA Medical School, CHAIR OF NEUROLOGY at the AZIENDA OSPEDALIERO UNIVERSITARIA PISANA, Pisa (Italy)

Newcastle University , Newcastle upon Tyne , United Kingdom

Volker was trained as a paediatric neurologist at the universities of Düsseldorf and Essen. He wrote his PhD thesis on Duchenne muscular dystrophy and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Iowa/USA. He has a long-standing interest in mechanisms of genetic muscle diseases, with research using cell and animal models. His current research also involves the application of muscle imaging and next generation sequencing. He is a principal investigator for a number of natural history and interventional trials, the director of the John Walton Muscular Dystrophy Research Centre and deputy dean of Newcastle University’s Translational and Clinical Research Institute. He is an author on >450 peer-reviewed publications.

Leibniz Institute DSMZ, Braunschweig , Germany

I am a scientist working in the neuromuscular research field for over 10 years. I obtained my bachelor’s degree in China and my master’s degree in France and then undertook my PhD studies in cell biology in Heidelberg and Marburg, Germany. From 2014 to 2019, I worked at University Hospital, Cologne on genetic diagnosis, disease mechanism study and therapy development for neuromuscular disorders. Afterwards I worked at MDC and Charité Berlin, to develop a new therapy for muscular dystrophy patients with gene editing tools and muscle stem cells. Since 2023 I have been leading a research group on Rare Disease Models at the Leibniz Institute DSMZ in Braunschweig, Germany. My team is developing 3D human muscle models, offering an alternative path towards more sustainable biological research and drug development by potentially reducing reliance on animal testing and improving the accuracy of in vitro studies.