Allergist and Pulmonologist
Giorgio Walter is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Humanitas University & Director Personalized Medicine Asthma & Allergy Center at Humanitas Research Hospital-Milano Italy Professor Canonica first specialised in pulmonary diseases after receiving his medical degree from the University of Genoa, Italy. He then specialised in allergy and clinical immunology at Florence University, Italy. He subsequently conducted clinical immunology and allergology research at several European Universities and Institutes, in addition to two years at the Medical University of South Carolina, USA. Since returning to the University of Genoa in 1995, Professor Canonica has held a number of academic positions, including Director of the Speciality School of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Director of the Specialty School of Pulmonary Diseases and Chairman of the Department of Medical Specialties (University Hospital San Martino Genoa, Italy). He is a Board Member of ARIA-Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma and helped to develop their guidelines.
He has been President of WAO-World Allergy Organization, Interasma-Global Asthma Association, currently VicePresident of REG-Respiratory Effectiveness Group.
He is Steering Committee Member of SANI-Severe Asthma Network Italy.

Nicolas Roche is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at Cochin Hospital, University of Paris Descartes, France. His major areas of interest are COPD and asthma with particular focus on inhaled therapy, disease phenotypes, assessment tools, treatment strategies and real-life research. Professor Roche is a member of the GOLD science committee, President of Société de Pneumologie de Langue Française, co-chair of the 2018 ERS Congress and member of the American Thoracic Society. He is guidelines director of the ERS and member of the ERS Clinical Research Collaboration (CRC) working group and ERS Science Council, vice-president of the Respiratory Effectiveness Group and member of the Asthma Drug Management Improvement Team. He coordinates French guidelines on COPD and is a consultant for French institutions for the development of national projects on COPD.
Professor Roche has authored more than 250 research articles in international peer-reviewed journals and edited or co-edited several books on COPD. He is Associate Editor of the European Respiratory Review and the Clinical Respiratory Journal.

Antonio Anzueto is Professor of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center and Chief of the Pulmonary Section for the South Texas Veterans Health Care System, San Antonio, Texas, USA. In addition, he is a faculty member of the Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine Division, the Medical Director for the Pulmonary Function Laboratory at the University Hospital in San Antonio, and an adjunct scientist at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research, San Antonio, Texas.
His areas of interest include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic bronchitis, community-acquired pneumonia, sepsis, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and lung transplantation.
He is a member of a number of medical committees, a reviewer for various scientific journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, and has published over 250 manuscripts in highly rated medical journals. He has extensive research experience as has been the principal investigator of numerous large multicenter clinical trials. He is member of several international committees such as the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD); ATS/IDSA Community Acquired Pneumonia Guidelines Committee; International committee – consensus conference on ALI/ARDS. He is also a practicing physician that has been nominated over the last 8 years as a “Best Pulmonary Doctor” in San Antonio, Texas.

MD CCFP(EM) FCFP
Family Physician practicing in York Region, Ontario, Canada.

Chairperson of the Family Physician Airways Group of Canada (www.fpagc.com)
Past- Chairperson of the Respiratory Section of the College of Family Physicians of Canada
Senate member of the International Primary Care Respiratory Group
President of the IPCRG 5th biennual world scientific meeting, “Making Every Breath Count” Toronto June 2-5, 2010
Chair of the Council of Organizing Members of the Canadian Network for Respiratory Care.
Member of Past Canadian Consensus Guidelines for H pylori, Asthma, COPD and Sinusitis
Representative of the College of Family Physicians of Canada to the SARS clinical working group.
Member of Chronic Respiratory Disease Surveillance Advisory Committee (Public Health Agency of Canada)
Member of the Health Canada Section on Allergy and Respiratory Therapies
Member of the Canadian Metropolitan Tuberculosis Subcommittee
Co-Chair, Health Quality Ontario COPD Community Management standards committee
Board member, Thrombosis Canada
Vice President, Respiratory Effectiveness Group

International editor for Nature’s Primary Care Respiratory Journal
International editor for the Italian Journal of Primary Care

Non-respiratory medical interests:
Community Pain consultant
Palliative Care community physician
Hospitalist, Brampton Civic Hospital

Social:
Married with four children and four dogs
Ardent baseball player

Omar Usmani is a Reader and Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College London and Royal Brompton Hospital. He qualified in Medicine at King’s College London and completed his PhD at Imperial College London for which he received the 2005 NHLI Imperial College PhD Prize for the best thesis.

His clinical research themes are Inhaled Drug Delivery, Airways Physiology, Lung Imaging, Respiratory Pharmacology and Tele-monitoring / E-health. He is Secretary of Assembly 5 (Asthma and COPD) at the ERS, Chair of UKIG (UK Inhaler Group), Vice-Chair of Drug Delivery to the Lungs, and Europe Liaison of International Society of Aerosols in Research (ISAM).

In 2012, he was awarded a UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Career Development Fellowship, the first time this award category was given to Respiratory Science research in the UK. In 2015, received one of the highest accolades in aerosol science, the Thomas T Mercer Award from the American Association of Aerosol Research (AAAR) and ISAM, recognizing his international research excellence in pharmaceutical aerosols and inhalable materials.

He is currently clinical lead on an EU Horizon 2020 consortium project ‘myaircoach’ focusing on the tele-monitoring of patients with asthma and is PI of an FDA awarded project on understanding patient perceptions in breathing from a DPI.

Associate Professor of Medicine, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, and Senior Investigator at the Instituto de Investigación Hospital Universitario de la Princesa-IISP, Madrid, Spain
Bariton at the Opera Choir of Teatre Principal de Palma, Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Joan B Soriano graduated in Medicine in 1993 and received his Ph.D. in Epidemiology and Methodology of Biomedical Research in 1996, both from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He completed his education in Epidemiology with a Master of Science at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and a post-doctoral stay at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, in Baltimore, USA. He worked in the pharmaceutical industry in the UK from 1998, and later in the USA from 2003. In 2005 moved back to CIMERA in Mallorca, Spain, up to its closing. From 2015, he is Associate Professor of Medicine at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Senior Investigator at the Instituto de Investigación Hospital Universitario de la Princesa-IISP, both in Madrid.

He serves in the GesEPOC COPD guidelines, has been Methodologic and Scientific Consultant of SEPAR and Director of its Foreign Affairs, participates in several committees of the Ministry of Health of Spain, and collaborates extensively with both the ERS and CHEST. He spends most of his time dedicated to research on COPD and other respiratory conditions, aging and tobacco, the design of new clinical trials and translational Medicine. Since 2007 he is Associate Editor of the European Respiratory Journal and since 2012 of the Lancet Respiratory Medicine, and peer reviews extensively for others. He has 300+ publications in PubMed in the fields of clinical epidemiology and treatment of respiratory diseases, and a Hirsh index of 80+. In May 2011 he received the Josep Trueta Award for scientific and medical achievements, and in 2014 he was appointed FCCP from Chest and Foundational Fellow of the ERS (FERS).

He has authored several REG papers and participated actively in many of its past conferences. He is in the REG Board since 2019.

Marc Miravitlles is a Pulmonologist at the Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona, Spain. He obtained his MD at the Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain and then specialised in Respiratory Medicine at Hospital Vall d'Hebron. His primary research interests include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency (AAT), lung defence mechanisms and respiratory infections. He serves on various medical committees and is a member of numerous professional societies, including the Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR), where he served as Secretary from 1999 until 2003 and responsible for International Relationships from 2006 until 2012. Dr Miravitlles was Chair of the Respiratory Infections Group of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) from 2008 to 2011 and was the Guidelines Director of the ERS from 2015 to 2018. He has acted as a consultant for the development of different international guidelines of COPD, including the American Thoracic Society (ATS)/ERS task force on outcomes in COPD, the ERS/ATS guidelines on exacerbations of COPD and the ERS statement on management of alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. He is also a consultant of the Spanish Ministry of Health for the development of the National Strategy Against COPD (2009 to present). He is the coordinator of the Spanish National Guidelines for COPD (GesEPOC from 2012).