Prof. Dr. h.c. Xenofon Baraliakos is the Head of Rheumatology at the Rheumazentrum Ruhrgebiet Herne and Professor for Internal Medicine and Rheumatology at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. He studied Human Medicine at the universities of Magdeburg and Berlin, Germany and received his official Board Degrees in orthopaedic surgery in 2007 and Internal Medicine and Rheumatology in 2014. He was awarded his PhD degree in 2005. His research interests include clinical and academic research in the field of spondyloarthritides, with special emphasis on imaging outcomes and treatment of the disease.

Among others, Dr Baraliakos is the recipient of the EWRR Award (2005); EULAR Young Investigator Award (2006 and 2008); the German patient’s AS Society Award (2010) and the 2014 Award for Excellence in Clinical Research from the European Society for Clinical Investigations. Dr. Baraliakos has also received a honorary doctorate degree from the University of Athens, Greece.

Dr Baraliakos is the elected President of EULAR (European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology) 2025 – 2027. He has served as President of ASAS (Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society) and Chair of the EULAR standing committee for musculoskeletal imaging.

Dr. Baraliakos is member of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) and the German Society of Rheumatology. He also acts as a reviewer and is an Associate Editor in a number of major rheumatological journals.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Torsten Diekhoff is the Director of Radiology at the University Hospital Ruedersdorf in Germany, specializing in musculoskeletal diagnostics and spectral CT. His research focuses on imaging of rheumatic diseases of the axial and peripheral skeleton, applying modern imaging techniques such as Dual-Energy-CT.

He was a BIH Clinical Fellow and serves as an instructor for the German Society for Musculoskeletal Radiology. Dr. Diekhoff has received several awards for his work and is involved in various professional committees, with numerous publications in his field.

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 >280 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”, and in 2024, the EULAR Honorary Award in Rheumatology for “outstanding service in accomplishing the objectives of EULAR”. 

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).

Professor Helena Marzo-Ortega, is a Consultant Rheumatologist and Lead of the multi-award-winning Leeds Specialist Spondyloarthropathy service at Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust, where she has developed a successful multi-disciplinary, multi-specialty clinical and research service. She is   Honorary Professor of Clinical Translational Rheumatology at the University of Leeds. Helena is committed towards excellence in service delivery and translational 

Pr. Anna Moltó is a rheumatologist and consultant at Bichat Hospital in Paris, France. As a researcher in clinical epidemiology, Pr 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 Research Committee of EULAR.

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Victoria Navarro Compán MD, PhD, MsC is a rheumatologist working at the University Hospital La Paz and IdiPaz in Madrid, Spain since 2015. She did her training as rheumatologist at University Hospital Virgen Macarena in Sevilla, Spain, and obtained her doctoral degree at the Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands.

Currently, she combines clinical practice and research at La Paz University Hospital. Her main focus is in clinical research in the field of spondyloarthritis. She has participated in and led national and international research projects in the area of spondyloarthritis, including the Update of the ASAS-OMERACT core domain for axial spondyloarthritis.

She is currently a member the ASAS Executive Committee, also acting as executive secretary and President-Elect. She is associate editor of Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism journal and member of the international advisory board of the Lancet Rheumatology.

Dr. 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 three year (2018-2021) post-doctoral fellowship  at the Rheumatology Department of the Cochin Hospital in Paris (France).

Clementina is a member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee, full member of the Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS) and co-leader of Young ASAS (2025-2027).

Dirk Elewaut is Professor of Rheumatology and Immunology and Chair of the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology at Ghent University Hospital, Belgium, a European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (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.

Professor Elewaut’s research interests are centred 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. He is Principal Investigator of the Unit of Molecular Immunology and Inflammation of the VIB Center for Inflammation Research at Ghent University.

Currently, he serves as past chair of the EULAR Research Center and as a member of the editorial boards of several leading rheumatology journals. He is a member of the Royal Academy for Medical Sciences in Belgium and is the recipient of several awards including the 2020 Carol Nachman Award. He has published more than 350 scientific publications in leading scientific journals.

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 axial spondyloarthritis at the University of Amsterdam. She is a clinical epidemiologist focusing on outcomes research. Her main interests are axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), imaging, outcomes research, and methodological and analytical aspects.

Sofia 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 (2016-2020) and is currently a member of the ASAS Executive Committee and the EULAR Quality of Care committee. Sofia has authored more than 290 peer-reviewed manuscripts.

Murat Torgutalp MD, MSc (Epi) is an internist, rheumatologist, and senior clinical researcher at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. He completed his MSc in Epidemiology at the Berlin School of Public Health in 2024. He currently serves as the international study coordinator of the AXIS Study. His research focuses on axial spondyloarthritis, with a special interest in clinical outcomes, imaging, and real-world data. Murat has been an ASAS member since 2021 and Y-ASAS co-leader since 2025.

Professor Raj Sengupta is a Consultant Rheumatologist and Lead for Rheumatology and axial Spondyloarthritis (axSpA) at The Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, Bath (RNRHD), UK.

He is a member of the British Society for Rheumatology (BSR) axSpA Biologics Guidelines Committee and an Executive Committee member of Assessment of Spondyloarthritis International Society (ASAS). Prof Sengupta is a medical advisor for the National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society (NASS) and is one of the founder members, current treasurer, Chair of Trustees of the British Society for SpondyloArthritis (BRITSpA). Prof Sengupta was the recipient of the 2016 NASS Patients Choice award for the Best Care provided by a Rheumatologist.

 Professor Sengupta is the principal investigator in several national and international clinical trials in axSpA. He has a number of peer reviewed publications on axSpA and has been an invited speaker on axSpA at several national and international meetings.

Floris van Gaalen graduaded 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.  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.

In the LUMC, he is the rheumatologist of the Leiden SPondyloArthritis Caught Early (SPACE) clinic.

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.

Wilson Bautista-Molano is a Physician from the National University of Colombia, where he completed his training in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology. He earned a PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands. Currently, he leads the Rheumatology Department at the University Hospital Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá and holds faculty positions as Professor at the School of Medicine in Universidad El Bosque in Bogota, Colombia.

He holds full ASAS membership and serves as ASAS-EC member. Additionally, he coordinates the Axial Spondyloarthritis Study Group of PANLAR. His research interests focus on clinical outcomes assessment, disease burden, and imaging diagnostics for rheumatic and autoimmune diseases, with a particular emphasis on axial spondyloarthritis in an environment of collaborative research.