Prof. Xenofon Baraliakos MD, PhD is the Head of Rheumatology at the Rheumazentrum Ruhrgebiet Herne and Professor for Internal Medicine and Rheumatology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. His research interests include clinical and academic research in the field of Spondyloarthritis, with emphasis on imaging outcomes and therapy. He is the recipient of multiple awards including the EWRR Award, in 2005, the EULAR Young Investigator Award, in 2006 and 2008, the German patient’s AS Society Award in 2010 and the 2014 Award for Excellence in Clinical Research from the European Society for Clinical Investigations.
Dr Baraliakos is the current President of ASAS (Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society) and President-Elect of EULAR (European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology).

Dirk Elewaut is a Full Professor of Rheumatology and Immunology and Chair of the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology at Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium, a European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) and Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) centre of excellence. He received his medical degree at Ghent University in 1991 and his PhD in 1997 at the same institution. Following his postdoctoral research at the University of California San Diego and the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, CA, USA, he joined the faculty of the Department of Rheumatology at Ghent University Hospital in 2001. He has published more than 250 scientific publications and is heading a team of 20 researchers at the Laboratory of Molecular Immunology and Inflammation within this department. The team joined the VIB Inflammation Research Centre in 2015, where Dirk Elewaut has been appointed as Principal Investigator. His research interests are centered around translational aspects of immune regulation to combat inflammatory arthritis and associated joint damage, with a special focus on the link between gut and joint disease in spondyloarthritis.

Prof. Dr. Kay-Geert Hermann is a Professor of radiology specialising in musculoskeletal imaging with a focus on arthritides. His main area of research is within the Spondyloarthritis, where he has wide expertise in the imaging of both axial and peripheral skeleton. World known for his expertise in applying innovative technology within medical education, he is the leader of the successful BerlinCaseViewer app.
Prof Hermann is an active member of ASAS, ISS, ESSR, DGMSR, and DRG and the recipient of the Conrad Wilhelm Roentgen award (2011), Felix Wachsmann award (2014), and DVMB research prize in 2015.

Clementina López-Medina is a Rheumatologist and Head of the Spondyloarthritis Unit at the Department of Rheumatology of the University Hospital Reina Sofía in Córdoba (Spain). She is also a post-doctoral researcher at the Maimonides Biomedical Research Institute of Cordoba (IMIBIC) and Associate Professor at the University of Cordoba. In 2018, she completed her PhD on comorbidities in Spondyloarthritis, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship (2018-2021) at the Rheumatology Department of the Cochin Hospital in Paris (France). Clementina is a member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee and a full member of the Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS). She is an active Young ASAS member leading the Website team.

Pedro Machado MD, PhD, is a Professor of Rheumatology and Neuromuscular Diseases, and Consultant Rheumatologist at University College London (UCL), University College London Hospitals (UCH) and Northwick Park Hospital, United Kingdom. His research interests include the assessment and prediction of outcomes in rheumatic diseases, with a focus on axial spondyloarthritis. He has published >235 peer-reviewed articles. In 2023, he was awarded the prestigious Michael Mason Award by the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR), for excellence in clinical and scientific research.
Dr Machado is a member of the Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS) and British Society of Spondyloarthritis (BRITSpA) Executive Committees, and past chair of the European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) Standing Committee on Epidemiology and Health Services Research (SCEHSR).

Dr Anna Moltó is a rheumatologist and consultant at Cochin Hospital in Paris, France. As a researcher in clinical epidemiology, Dr Moltó’s research focuses on the natural history of early axial Spondyloarthritis, the evaluation of effectiveness in observational trials and on pregnancy outcomes in patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases.
Dr Moltó is a past leader of Young ASAS (Assessment of SpondyloArthritis International Society) and is currently the Chair of the Public Health and Epidemiology subcommittee within the research Committee of EULAR.
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Victoria Navarro MD, PhD, MsC is a rheumatologist working at the University Hospital La Paz and IdiPaz in Madrid, Spain since 2015. During her training, she spent two periods in international centres of excellence: the Charité-Universitätsmedizin in Berlin and Leiden University Medical Center, where she obtained her doctoral degree.
Currently, Victoria’s main focus in clinical research is in the field of Spondyloarthritis where she has participated in and led many national and international research projects in the area including the Update of the ASAS-OMERACT core domain for axSpA and the ASAS-SPEAR (Towards a Definition of Early Axial and Peripheral Spondyloarthritis). Victoria is currently a member of the ASAS executive committee, also acting as executive secretary. She is the associate editor of Seminars in the Arthritis and Rheumatism journal and a member of the international advisory board of the Lancet Rheumatology.

Denis Poddubnyy, MD, PhD is a Professor of rheumatology at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Germany. In 2008, he completed his PhD thesis related to cardiovascular pathology in ankylosing spondylitis, and in 2013, he finished his lecturer qualification thesis dedicated to the topic of ‘Prediction and prevention of disease progression in early axial spondyloarthritis.’ Since 2003, his research activities have focused on early diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes in patients with axial spondyloarthritis.
Dr. Poddubnyy is member of the executive committee of the Assessment of SpondyloArthritis International Society (ASAS) and the steering committee of the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA). He is also the author of more than 200 publications on the topic of Spondyloarthritis in peer-reviewed journals and book chapters.

Mikhail Protopopov, MD, PhD, is a rheumatologist and a researcher in the Medical Clinic for Gastroenterology, Infectious Diseases and Rheumatology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. He graduated from Kazan State Medical University, Russia in 2008 and completed his PhD there in 2014. His research focuses on the prediction of radiographic progression, early recognition, outcomes and imaging in spondyloarthritis.

Mikhail has been an ASAS member since 2017, and he is currently one of the Young ASAS Leaders (2023-2025).

Sofia Ramiro, MD, PhD, is a rheumatologist and a senior researcher at Leiden University Medical Center and Zuyderland Medical Center, the Netherlands. She graduated from Medical School at Nova Medical School, Lisbon, Portugal. She completed a Master’s in Epidemiology at Maastricht University and obtained her PhD on long-term outcomes in ankylosing spondylitis at the University of Amsterdam. She is a clinical epidemiologist focusing on outcomes research. Her main interests are axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), imaging and methodological and analytical aspects. 

Sofia Ramiro served as a Chair for EMEUNET, the Emerging EULAR Network, and also of Young Assessment of Spondyloarthritis international Society (ASAS). She was a member of the EULAR Scientific Committee for 2016-2020 and is currently a member of the ASAS Executive Committee. Sofia Ramiro has authored more than 230 peer-reviewed manuscripts.

Martin Rudwaleit, MD, is Director of the Department of Internal Medicine and Rheumatology at Klinikum Bielefeld and Professor of Rheumatology at Bielefeld University, both in Bielefeld, Germany.
Professor Rudwaleit has an extensive research interest in all areas of Spondyloarthritis, particularly axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), focusing on outcome assessments, clinical trials, predictive parameters, imaging, diagnosis and classification of axSpA. He was an EULAR scientific member, an EC member and secretary of the Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS) executive committee and is currently a member of the ASAS advisory committee. Currently, he is a principal investigator of an international study, CLASSIC, re-evaluating the ASAS 2009 classification criteria.

Prof Georg Schett is Head of the Department of Medicine 3, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, in Germany. His interests include basic, translational and clinical research on molecular and cellular pathogenesis of rheumatic and autoimmune diseases. In 2008, he initiated in collaboration with colleagues the program IMMUNOBONE, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), which aims to elucidate the interactions between the skeletal and the immune systems and has led the DFG CRC1181 “Checkpoints for Resolution of Inflammation” since 2015. Prof Schett is a spokesperson of the project METARTHROS, which investigates the impact of the metabolism on arthritis. In 2019, he received funding for the ERC-Synergy grant “4D+ nanoSCOPE Advancing osteoporosis medicine by observing bone microstructure and remodelling using a four-dimensional nanoscope”, for which he is a spokesperson.
In 2021, Prof. Schett was appointed Vice President for Research at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Prof Schett is a Leopoldina member of the National Academy of Sciences of Germany and a recipient of multiple awards including the Carol- Nachman Prize from Wiesbaden and the 2023 “Funding Prize in the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Programme” awarded by the DFG. He has published over 970 peer-reviewed papers.

Filip van den Bosch is Head-of-Clinic and Associate Professor of Rheumatology in the Department of Rheumatology at the University Hospital of Ghent University. Dr Van den Bosch was awarded his PhD degree in 2003, with his doctoral thesis focusing on the exploration of the therapeutic potential of TNF-alpha blockade in spondyloarthritis patients and more specifically in patients with bowel-related arthritis.

Dr Van den Bosch is an executive committee member of the ‘Assessments in SpondyloArthritis International Society’ (ASAS); and a member of the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA). He has been an investigator in several international or investigator-initiated clinical trials and mechanism-of-action studies in the areas of rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and especially the diseases belonging to the spondyloarthritis concept. He is the author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed international publications and chapters in textbooks.

Floris van Gaalen graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam in 2000. In June 2005 he obtained his doctorate at the University of Leiden. For his thesis he received the 2004 Young Investigator Award from the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR). He completed his specialist training in internal medicine in 2009 and in rheumatology in 2010. 

Since January 2011 he has been a medical specialist at the Department of Rheumatology of the LUMC in Leiden, the Netherlands, where he is responsible for the Leiden SPondyloArthritis Caught Early (SPACE) clinic. He is the head of the Department of Rheumatology in the Alrijne hospitals and chairman of the scientific committee of the LUMC Department of Rheumatology, a EULAR Centre of Excellence. He is a member of ASAS EC and the current ASAS treasurer.

Dr Sizheng Steven Zhao is an Academic Clinical Lecturer in rheumatology at the University of Manchester, UK. His PhD was on comorbidities in axial Spondyloarthritis, upon which he has built research interests in spondylarthritis using both traditional and genetic epidemiologic approaches. Steven has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications and is an associate editor of the journals Rheumatology and Clinical Therapeutics. He is also an executive committee member of the British Society for Spondyloarthritis and a member of ASAS.