Director, Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Born in Australia, Dame Valerie studied medicine at Sydney University, graduating in 1969. As the top graduate that year she was awarded the University Gold Medal, the first woman ever to receive this award in medicine.
She worked for one of the first clinical epidemiologists in the UK, Charles Fletcher, who propelled her towards the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she worked for almost 20 years.

In 1988 she became Director of the University Of Oxford Cancer Epidemiology Unit, previously directed by Sir Richard Doll. Her major research interests include the role of reproductive, hormonal and infectious agents in cancer and other conditions.
 
She is principal investigator of the Million Women Study, investigating the effects of a range of women’s lifestyle factors on health, with focus initially on the effects of hormone replacement therapy. Since 1991, she has led international collaborative studies of breast, ovarian and endometrial cancers.
 
She has served on many international committees, including the World Health Organization, the US National Academy of Sciences, and various Australian cancer councils.  Until recently, she chaired the UK Department of Health's Advisory Committee on Breast Cancer Screening and is currently a member of the Board of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

In 2006 she was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) for scientific contributions to epidemiology. Other honours include being invested as Dame of the British Empire (DBE) and Companion of Australia (AC) for her contributions to science.
 
She was elected President of the International Epidemiological Association in 2014.

Morris Herzstein Professor in Biology and Physiology, Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco, USA

Professor Elizabeth H. Blackburn is a leader in the area of telomere and telomerase research. She discovered the molecular nature of telomeres – the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes that serve as protective caps essential for preserving the genetic information – and co-discovered the ribonucleoprotein enzyme telomerase. Born in Australia, she earned her B.Sc. (1970) and M.Sc. (1972) degrees from the University of Melbourne, received her Ph.D. (1975) from the University of Cambridge, and did postdoctoral work in molecular and cellular biology at Yale University (1975–1977). She was a faculty member at the University of California Berkeley from 1978 until 1990, when she joined the faculty at the University of California San Francisco, where she is currently Morris Herzstein Professor of Biology and Physiology in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow of the Salk Institute.
She has won many prestigious awards throughout her career. She was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991) and the Royal Society of London (1992). She was elected Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (1993) and Member of the Institute of Medicine (2000). She served on the President’s Council on Bioethics (2002–2004) and has been awarded honorary degrees by 11 universities. She received the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award in 2006, and in 2007 was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. In 2008 she was the North American laureate for the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards. In 2009, Professor Blackburn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
   

Head, Section of Cancer Surveillance, International Agency for Research on Cancer, France

Dr Bray is Head of the Cancer Surveillance Section at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), in Lyon, France. He has worked previously at IARC 1998-2005 and at the Cancer Registry of Norway and University of Oslo 2005-2010. He has a PhD in Epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and degrees in Statistics from the University of Aberdeen and Medical Statistics from the University of Leicester, U.K. His areas of research revolve around the descriptive epidemiology of cancer, including the estimation of the global cancer burden and the analysis of time trends including global predictions of the future scale and profile of cancer linked to human development transitions. He has close to 200 book chapters and articles in journals including The Lancet, Lancet Oncology, JNCI and Nature Reviews Cancer.
 
In support of the overwhelming need for high quality cancer surveillance systems given their current paucity and an ever-increasing cancer problem, Dr Bray leads the Global Initiative for Cancer Registration (http://gicr.iarc.fr), an international multi-partner program designed to ensure a sustainable expansion of the coverage and quality of population-based cancer registries in LMIC through tailored, localized support and advocacy to individual countries.  

Director of the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute, USA

Dr. Stephen Chanock is a leading expert in the discovery and characterization of cancer susceptibility regions in the human genome. He has received numerous awards for his scientific contributions to our understanding of common inherited genetic variants associated with cancer risk and outcomes.
Dr. Chanock received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1983 and completed clinical training in pediatrics, pediatric infectious diseases, and pediatric hematology/oncology and research training in molecular genetics at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston. Since 1995, Dr. Chanock has served as the Medical Director for Camp Fantastic Exit Disclaimer, a week-long recreational camp for pediatric cancer patients, which is a joint venture of the NCI and Special Love, Inc.
From 2001-2007, he was a tenured investigator in the Genomic Variation Section of the Pediatric Oncology Branch in the NCI Center for Cancer Research. He also served as co-chair of NCI's Genetics, Genomics and Proteomics Faculty for five years. In 2001, he was appointed as Chief of the Cancer Genomics Research Laboratory (formerly Core Genotyping Facility), and in 2007 as Chief of the Laboratory of Translational Genomics, both within the NCI Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG). Dr. Chanock co-led the Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility project. From 2012 to 2013, he also served as Acting Co-Director of the NCI Center for Cancer Genomics. Dr. Chanock was appointed Director of DCEG in August 2013.

Deputy Director, Institute for Public Health; Chief, Division of Public Health Sciences; Niess-Gain Professor of Surgery, School of Medicine; and Associate Director, Prevention & Control, Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University in St. Louis, USA

Dr. Colditz is an internationally recognized leader in cancer prevention. As an epidemiologist and public health expert, he has a longstanding interest in the preventable causes of chronic disease, particularly among women. He focuses his research on early life and adolescent lifestyle, growth, and breast cancer risk. He is also interested in strategies to speed translation of research findings into prevention strategies that work. . Dr. Colditz developed the award-winning Your Disease Risk website (www.yourdiseaserisk.wustl.edu) which communicates tailored prevention messages to the public. He has published over 975 peer-reviewed publications, six books and six reports for the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences.
 
In October 2006, on the basis of professional achievement and commitment to public health, Dr. Colditz was elected to membership of the Institute of Medicine, an independent body that advises the U.S. government on issues affecting public health. In 2011, he was awarded the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor for cancer control research. In 2012 he received the AACR-American Cancer Society Award for Research Excellence in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention. He also received awards  in 2014 for cancer prevnetion research from ASCO and from AACR.
 
http://publichealthsciences.wustl.edu/en/About-Us/Division-Chief

Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, University of Bristol, UNited Kingdom. Honorary Professor Of Public Health, University of Glasgow. Visiting professor, The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

George Davey Smith is professor of clinical epidemiology at the University of Bristol, honorary professor of public health at the University of Glasgow and visiting professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is Scientific Director of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) and Director of the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU). His major research interest relate to the use of genetic epidemiology for informing understanding of the causal influence of environmentally modifiable risk factors and how social inequalities in health are generated by exposures acting over the entire lifecourse. George has also worked on HIVAIDS prevention in Nicaragua and India and on issues around the history of epidemiology, meta-analysis, lay epidemiology and epidemiological methodology. He is coeditor of the International Journal of Epidemiology. 

Chair and Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology and registered sub-specialist in Gynaecological Oncology at Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Town, South Africa

Lynette Denny is the Chair and Professor of Obstetrics & Gynaecology and registered sub-specialist in Gynaecological Oncology at Groote Schuur Hospital and University of Cape Town. Her research interest for the past 15 years has been in preventing cervical cancer in low resource settings and she has published over 100 peer reviewed papers on the subject. She has been a keynote speaker at numerous international conferences. She was awarded the Distinguished Scientist for Improving the Quality of Life of Women by the South African Department of Science and Technology in 2006 and is a B2 rated scientist by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. She was the first recipient of the Shoprite Checkers SABC 2 Women of the Year award for Science and Technology in 2004. She was awarded the South African Medical Association award for Extraordinary Service to Medicine (2012) and given a fellowship ad eudeum to the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, United Kingdom (2012).

Professor Denny was presented with the BSCCP Founders’ Medal at the 15th World Congress for Cervical Pathology and Colposcopy in London, UK in May 2014. This award is in recognition of the outstanding work she has made to women’s health and the prevention of cervical cancer in Africa.

In October 2015 Professor Denny will be presented with the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) Award in Vancouver, Canada. This Award is in Recognition of Women Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), Heidelberg, Germany

Roland Eils received his Ph.D. degree in Mathematics from Heidelberg University, Germany, in 1995.
He is currently a Professor at Heidelberg University and holds a joint appointment as division head at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) in Heidelberg. He is founding and managing director of BioQuant, the Center for Quantitative Analysis of Molecular and Cellular Biosystems at Heidelberg University.
His research focuses on the integration of tools from mathematical modeling, image analysis and informatics into life science research and he is a leading figure in systems biology and bioinformatics. In his research, he is applying various methods on issues related to human health such as viral infection, cellular death pathways and cancer genomics. He has published more than 280 papers in peer reviewed journals over the past ten years and received a total of more than 10.000 citations from them. He is editor of the book Computational Systems Biology (Elsevier) and is editor-in-chief of systembiologie.de, the magazine for systems biology research in Germany.
Prof. Eils is coordinating the several systems biology and systems medicine consortia and is the coordinator of HD-HuB, the Heidelberg Center for Human Bioinformatics. He is a member of the International Society for Systems Biology (ISSB). In 1999 he was awarded the BioFuture Prize, the most prestigious prize for young researchers in Germany, in 2014 he received the HMLS (Heidelberg Molecular Life Sciences) Investigator Award.

Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

JF Etter has over 20 years of conducting research on smoking etiology, prevention and cessation. He has published widely on smoking cessation trials and various psychological questions related to tobacco dependence and smoking cessation (h index=33). He is an internationally known expert on e-cigarettes. He has published a comprehensive book on e-cigarettes and is credited with publishing some of the first scientific papers on the reasons and patterns of e-cigarette use. JFE’s basing training was in political science and public health. He is professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Senior Scientist at QIMR Berghofer Institute of Medical Research, Australia
Senior Research Scientist at Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, United Kingdom

Adèle Green is a Senior Scientist at QIMR Berghofer Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia  (www.qimrberghofer.edu.au) and in Manchester, UK, she is a Senior Research Scientist at Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute (www.cruk.manchester.ac.uk) and Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Manchester (www.manchester.ac.uk). She trained in medicine and her research career has focused on the causes, management and prevention of cancer, especially melanoma and other skin cancers, ovarian cancer and cancer in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people for which she has received various awards. Her current research program includes studies of prevention of skin cancers in organ transplant recipients and survival and quality of life of patients with high-risk primary melanoma, as well as collaborative studies of gynaecological cancer, cancer risk prediction and clinico-pathologic studies of melanoma. She has served on many IARC committees including the Scientific Council, and is currently a member of the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection; Chair of Cancer Australia’s Research and Data Advisory Group, and a Member of the Australian Paediatric Cancer Registry Advisory Committee and the Australian Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council.

Acting Dean
Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, USA

David Hunter’s principal research interests are the etiology of cancer, particularly breast, prostate, pancreas and skin cancers. He analyzes inherited susceptibility to cancer and other chronic diseases using molecular techniques and gene-environment interactions. This work is largely based in subcohorts of the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Dr. Hunter supervised laboratories at the Harvard School of Public Health in which gene sequence information from these samples is obtained.

Dr. Hunter has also studied HIV transmission for over twenty years, initially in Kenya and then in Tanzania. He has collaborated with investigators in Dar-es-Salaam to understand the relationship of nutritional status to progression of HIV disease and perinatal transmission.

Professor Hunter was the Director of the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention from 1997-2003. In June of 2009, he was appointed Dean for Academic Affairs at the School. He is also the Vincent L. Gregory Professor of Cancer Prevention. He is the founding Director of HSPH’s Program in Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology and is Principal Investigator of a number of ongoing breast and prostate cancer studies. He co-chaired the Steering Committee of the NCI Breast and Prostate Cancer Cohort Consortium, was co-Director of the NCI Cancer Genetic Markers of Susceptibility (CGEMS) Special Initiative, and was a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute. He is contact Principal Investigator of the DRIVE (Discovery, Biology and Risk of Inherited Variants in Breast Cancer) Consortium.

Director of Research, Roy Castle Lung Cancer Research Programme, The University of Liverpool Cancer Research Centre, United Kingdom

Professor John Field has a Personal Clinical Chair in Molecular Oncology at the University of Liverpool. He is a Visiting Professor at University College London, holds the post of Director of Research of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Research Programme. He is the Chief Investigator for the UK Lung Cancer Screening Trial (UKLS), Chair of the EU-US Spiral CT collaborative group, Chair (2011- ). Previous Chair of the IASLC Screening Prevention & Early Detection Committee and he formed IASLC Strategic Screening Advisory Group. He was presented with the IASLC Joseph Cullen Award at the WCLC 2011, in recognition of lifetime scientific achievements in lung cancer prevention research. He is Chair of the IASLC Strategic Screening Advisory Committee.

He is the principle investigator of the Liverpool Lung Project, a molecular- epidemiological study into the early detection of lung cancer, funded by the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. He is also PI on the large EU Early Lung Cancer study funded by the Commission. Both of these trials form part of the NCRI Lung Cancer clinical studies group’s portfolio. A Partner in the FP7 CURELUNG and LCAOS projects. He is also heavily involved in the identification of molecular diagnostic markers in lung and head & neck cancers. His research funding has been provided mainly by the RCF, NWCRF, MRC, CRUK, EU, NIH and HTA.

Web page: https://www.liv.ac.uk/translational-medicine/staff/john-field/

Cancer epidemiologist, Department of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Research, Cancer Control Alberta, Alberta Health Services. Adjunct Professor, Faculties of Medicine and Kinesiology, University of Calgary (U of C), Alberta, Canada.

Dr. Friedenreich is a cancer epidemiologist with the Department of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention Research of CancerControl Alberta, Alberta Health Services and an Adjunct Professor in the Faculties of Medicine and Kinesiology of the University of Calgary (U of C). She holds a Health Senior Scholar career award from Alberta Innovates-Health Solutions and in 2012 was named the Alberta Cancer Foundation’s Weekend to End Women’s Cancers Breast Cancer Chair at the University of Calgary. Dr Friedenreich is the Scientific Director for CEPR and the Division Head for the Division of Preventive Oncology, Department of Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary. Dr. Friedenreich completed her doctorate in Epidemiology at the University of Toronto in 1990 and postdoctoral work at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France and at the U of C between 1990 and 1994. In 2004-5, Dr. Friedenreich was the Visiting Scientist at the IARC. In 2013, Dr Friedenreich was a co-recipient of the Canadian Cancer Society’s O. Harold Warwick Prize. Dr Friedenreich’s research is focused on understanding the role of physical activity in reducing the risk of developing cancer and in improving quality of life and survival after cancer diagnosis. She has conducted over 35 observational epidemiologic and randomized controlled intervention trials in this area.

Director, UCL Institute of Health Equity (Marmot Institute), United Kingdom

Sir Michael Marmot has led research groups on health inequalities for more than 35 years. He chaired the Commission on Social Determinants of Health, set up by WHO in 2005, and produced the report Closing the Gap in a Generation in 2008. He conducted a Strategic Review of Health Inequalities in England Post-2010, which published the report Fair Society, Healthy Lives in 2010. He chaired the European Review of Social Determinants of Health and the Health Divide, for WHO Euro, and the Breast Screening Review for the NHS National Cancer Action Team, and was a member of The Lancet-University of Oslo Commission on Global Governance for Health. He is a principal investigator of the Whitehall II studies of health inequalities among British civil servants, and leads the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. He is a former president of the British Medical Association and the current president of the British Lung Foundation. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution for six years, and in 2000 was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen, for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities. He won the Balzan Prize for Epidemiology in 2004, gave the Harveian Oration in 2006, and won the William B. Graham Prize for Health Services Research in 2008. He was awarded a Harvard Lown Professorship for 2014–2017. He is president-elect of the World Medical Association and will become its president in 2015. He has been awarded honorary doctorates from 14 universities.
 
http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/

Dr. Mauricio Maza is the Chief Medical Officer for Basic Health International, an organization dedicated to the eradication of cervical cancer.

Mauricio received his Doctor of Medicine from the Universidad Dr. Jose Matías Delgado in El Salvador, and his Master of Public Health from Harvard University with a concentration in Health Care Management and Policy.
As a medical doctor, public health practitioner and researcher, Dr. Maza’s focus is cervical cancer prevention in low resource settings, specifically with the use of novel technologies and treatment paradigms.  He is a co-investigator in NIH funded studies that include development of technologies for screening, triaging and treatment of pre-cancerous lesions.
Dr. Maza is currently leading a 3-phase demonstration project in El Salvador that will screen 30,000 women by 2016 with an HPV-test developed specifically for use in low resource areas. Dr. Maza has presented program results and implementation strategies at international conferences and meetings held in India, China, Guatemala, Panama, Brazil, Peru and the United States. He believes in the need to advocate for more clinical and implementation research, in order to support more evidence based policies in limited resource settings.

Director General, King Hussein Cancer Foundation, Jordan
Honorary Chairperson of the Jordan Breast Cancer Program

HRH Princess Dina Mired has led the King Hussein Cancer Foundation (KHCF) in Jordan as Director General since 2002. In her capacity as Director, she founded, developed and institutionalized the fundraising and development function and programs at the Foundation, and is now the largest source of nonprofit funds dedicated to fighting cancer in Jordan.
 
Under her direct leadership, KHCF has succeeded in enlisting all segments of society in the fight against cancer with the sole purpose of supporting cancer patients in Jordan and the Arab World. HRH Princess Dina is also the Honorary Chairperson of the Jordan Breast Cancer Program (JBCP).
 
As a global advocate, HRH in September 2011, delivered the keynote speech on behalf of all civil society (social, civic and voluntary organizations) on opening of the United Nations General Assembly High Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD’s); HRH is also an Honorary Co-President of Harvard University Global Task Force for Expanded Access to Cancer Control and Care in the Developing World. She is also a member of the Presidential Advisory Panel of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC).

Hitoshi Nakagama graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1982 and received the doctoral degree in Medicine from the University of Tokyo in 1991. Then, he moved to the United State and joined the Center for Cancer Research, MIT, and worked on functional analysis of the tumor suppressor gene, WT1, with Professor David Housman as a postdoctoral fellow. After returning Japan in 1995, he took up a position as Section Head, Carcinogenesis Division, National Cancer Center Research Institute (NCCRI), and then became Chief, Biochemistry Division (1997), Deputy Director (2007), and Director of NCCRI in 2011. From April 1, 2016, he now serves as President of National Cancer Center.

He has long been working on animal cancer models of colon carcinogenesis induced by various environmental carcinogens and on DNA adductome to elucidate genetic and epigenetic modifications which play pivotal roles in driving cancer development. He also identified several tumor suppressive microRNAs regulating cell cycle arrest and/or apoptosis after exposure to environmental insults, and proved that these tumor suppressive microRNAs are inactivated during colon carcinogenesis, including the phase of liver metastasis. Application of exosomal microRNA in early detection of various cancers in currently ongoing.

Dr Armando Peruga is from Spain. He is currently the Programme manager of Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI) at the World Health Organization (WHO) Headquarters Geneva.

He began to work with the Pan American Health Organization, in 1990. He was the leader of the tobacco control team of this organization until the beginning of 2006 when he moved to Geneva as the Coordinator for the capacity building unit of the Tobacco Free Initiative of the World Health Organization. 
In Spain, he was the Director of the Research Institute on Health and Welfare in Madrid.  He later became the Dean of the National School of Public Health. When he came to the US in the early 80’s he worked for the DC Commission of Public Health as a behavioral change epidemiologist. 
Dr Peruga graduated in Medicine in Spain. He later graduated from Masters and Doctoral programs of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Professor of medical statistics and epidemiology and co-director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit, University of Oxford.

Richard Peto is a professor of medical statistics and epidemiology and a co-director of the Clinical Trial Service Unit at the University of Oxford. He studied natural sciences at Cambridge University and obtained his M.Sc. in statistics at the University of London. Dr Peto’s work has included studies of the causes of cancer in general, and of the effects of smoking in particular, and the establishment of large-scale randomized trials of the treatment of cancer and various other diseases. He has been instrumental in introducing combined “meta-analyses” of results from diverse studies. Dr Peto is one of the world’s most cited medical researchers and was knighted in 1999 for his services to epidemiology and cancer prevention. He devotes much of his energy to advising and providing information on “avoidable death”. His work continues to have a direct influence on public policy and adult mortality in many countries.

Professor and Director, Department of Cancer Epidemiology, National Cancer Center, Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College Beijing, China

You-lin Qiao, MD, PhD, professor and Director for Department of Cancer Epidemiology, National Cancer Center, Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College Beijing, China. Before returning back to China in 1997, he was training for 11 years at Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health and Cancer Prevention Studies Branch, NCI/NIH, USA. He is also director of International Collaboration Department, Cancer Foundation of China, and Deputy Director of the MOH National Expert Committee for Cancer Screening and Prevention in China. He is an author on over 480 peer reviewed publications in both English and Chinese. As an expert in cancer prevention and control, he served as WHO Director-General’s Cancer Control Advisory Committee and WHO’s Cancer Technical Advisory Groups for helping to promote cancer prevention and control programs in developing countries. He is involved in many national and international projects to study etiology, primary intervention, and early detection of a variety of cancers through multidisciplinary and global collaborations. He received 2011 WHO/IARC Medal of Honor.

Director, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Professor Elio Riboli’s career started at the Department of Epidemiology of the National Institute of Cancer, Milan (1978-1983). In 1983 Elio was appointed Medical Officer in Epidemiology at the International Agency for Research.  While at IARC he engaged a novel area of research focusing on the role of diet, nutrition and endogenous hormones in cancer aetiology. In 1990 this materialised into the initiation of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC), and its subsequent funding by the “Europe Against Cancer” programme of the EC, from 1992 onward. Over the past decade, Elio has led research contributing to the discovery of the role in cancer causation of metabolic factors (obesity, insulin resistance and other components of the so called “metabolic syndrome”). These results have translated into worldwide public health guidance by international bodies such as the World Health Organisation and the World Cancer Research Fund. While working at IARC, during the period 1990-2005, Elio received joint appointments as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at New York University and as Senior Visiting Scientist at the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, in the USA.
In 2006 Elio was appointed Professor and Chair in Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention and in 2008 the Director of the School of Public Health. Elio is also Chair of the Interventional Public Health of the Imperial College AHSC and Director of Research in Public Health of the Imperial College NHS Healthcare Trust, providing a direct link between academic research, public health and clinical translation.

Special Advisor in Cancer Control, Head of the Section of Early Detection & Prevention (EDP) and Head of the Screening Group (SCR) at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), Lyon, France

Dr Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan has a MD degree in Radiation oncology followed by post doctoral training in the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Cambridge. After several years of experience in clinical oncology and cancer control in India, Dr Sankaranarayanan joined the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1993.

Through the Screening Group and Early Detection and Prevention Section of the IARC, and through innovative partnerships with other international organizations, national institutions and investigators, Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan is involved in conducting several studies world-wide with the aim of providing scientific evidence to support the development of appropriate public health policies of screening for common cancers in a range of health care settings, particularly low- and medium-resourced countries. These studies provide valuable data on the accuracy, reproducibility, efficacy, benefits, harmful effects and cost-effectiveness of different screening interventions for cervical, oral, colorectal and breast cancers leading to rational utilization of health care resources in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of screening programmes.

Dr Rengaswamy Sankaranarayanan has a strong commitment to research, training, program development and technical assistance in the early detection and control of cancer, particularly breast, cervix, colorectal and oral cancers in low- and medium-resourced countries. He has taught as a faculty member in over 40 international courses on cervical cancer screening, colposcopy, diagnosis and treatment of cervical neoplasia, cancer registry epidemiology and cancer control. He is also an author in more than 240 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and his manuals on early detection of cervical cancer have been translated into several languages.

Director, National Cancer Centre Singapore, Senior Vice Dean (Clinical, Academic and Faculty Affairs), Duke-Nus Graduate Medical School and Deputy Group CEO (Research and Education), Singapore Health Services, Singapore

Dr Soo is a surgical oncologist.  He is still in active practice.  He is the foundation Director of the National Cancer Centre Singapore.  This centre treats about half of all cancer patients in the country.  Additional administrative responsibilities include being the Senior Vice Dean of Clinical, Academic and Faculty Affairs of the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School and Deputy Group Chief Executive Officer of Research and Education for the largest health cluster in Singapore - the Singapore Health Services.
The National Cancer Centre Singapore: www.nccs.com.sg

Co-Director, Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL), Barcelona, Spain

Professor Manolis Kogevinas is co-Director of the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL). He graduated at the Medical School of Athens, Greece and did his PhD in Epidemiology at the University of London (1989). He worked at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO), Lyon, at the Municipal Institute of Medical Research (IMIM) Barcelona and was Professor of Epidemiology at the Medical School in Heraklion, Crete and at the National School of Public Health in Athens, Greece. His major research interest relate to the evaluation of environmental and occupational exposures in relation to cancer, respiratory diseases and child health. He served in several WHO and other expert committees evaluating the toxicity of chemicals such as dioxins and drinking water contaminants.  He is the Director of the European Educational Programme in Epidemiology (EEPE-Florence course). He is President-Elect (2015) of the International Society of Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE).

Professor of Public Health & Screening Evaluation in the Department of Public Health of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Born in the Netherlands, Professor Henricus (Harry) J de Koning worked as a Researcher and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Health of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam from 1987 to 1999. He became an Associate professor in 1999 and in 2008 he was appointed Professor of Public Health & Screening Evaluation in the same department in Rotterdam. He was also Senior Associate Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health from 2011 to 2012. Since 2011 he has been a Member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

His major scientific contributions are in the areas of
- Designing, running and evaluating large-scale multidisciplinary population-based randomized controlled screening trials to establish the efficacy of screening;
- Evaluating active international screening programs and tests to establish effectiveness;
- Guiding public health policies using predictions of favorable and unfavorable effects and the cost of screening, based on micro-simulation modelling of the natural history of disease, and cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses.

See also:
http://www.erasmusmc.nl/mgz/organisation/people/h-de-koning/
http://survey.erasmusmc.nl/pwp/hdekoning

University of Regensburg, Germany

Michael Leitzmann received an MD from the University of Berlin and completed an MPH and a DrPH at the Harvard School of Public Health. He subsequently joined the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics of the US National Cancer Institute as investigator. In 2008, he was appointed Professor and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine at the University of Regensburg, Germany. He leads an interdisciplinary team of scientists on research related to epidemiology, biostatistics, bioinformatics, nutritional health, and sociology. A major focus is the relationship between energy balance and cancer. This includes investigations of the independent and joint relations of body mass, physical activity, sedentary behavior, and diet in relation to cancer incidence and survival. The energy balance research is characterized by the development and application of methods to validly measure body composition and energy expenditure in large population-based cohorts. Leitzmann has published more than 200 research articles, serves as editorial board member and reviewer to numerous biomedical journals, and acts as scientific consultant to several national and international advisory boards and research institutions. He is member of the International Epidemiological Association, the American College of Epidemiology, and the Society for Epidemiologic Research.

Professor of epidemiology, Université de Montréal, Canada

Jack Siemiatycki has a PhD in epidemiology and is currently Professor of epidemiology at l’Université de Montréal. He has held a Canada Research Chair and is currently the Guzzo-SRC Chair in Environment and Cancer, and is a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. He has served on over 100 national and international boards and expert advisory bodies for academic and government agencies in Canada, the US and Europe, such as the National Cancer Institute of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, National Cancer Institute (U.S.), Institut de recherche en santé publique (France), INSERM (France), American College of Epidemiology, IARC and WHO. He has served on the editorial board of Amer J Epidemiology, and other journals, and he has chaired many grant review panels. Most of his research has been in the area of environmental and occupational etiology of cancer. He is known for having developed novel and influential design and exposure assessment methods in occupational etiology of cancer, and for results from a variety of case-control studies concerning a wide variety of possible environmental carcinogens. Prof Siemiatycki has been an invited speaker at over 150 meetings or seminars throughout the world, including for President Clinton’s Cancer Panel, and as a Distinguished Lecturer at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. He has authored or co-authored over 200 peer-reviewed articles, 50 scientific reports, and 150 accepted presentations or posters. He was the principal expert witness in the largest ever successful class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

Professor of Toxicology, School of Public Health, University of California Berkeley.

Martyn Smith is a Professor of Toxicology in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences in the School of Public Health at the University of California Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London and did Post-Doctoral training in toxicology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. Dr. Smith has expertise in molecular epidemiology, toxicology and genomics, and his research is aimed at finding the causes of chronic diseases, including cancer and diabetes. He currently teaches Advanced Toxicology and mentors graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in the Molecular Toxicology, Epidemiology and Environmental Health programs. Since 1987, he has been the Director of the NIEHS-funded UC Berkeley Superfund Research Program. The goals of this program are to improve understanding of the relationship between exposure and disease; improve risk assessments; and, develop prevention and remediation strategies to improve and protect public health and the environment. Dr. Smith’s current research is in the emerging field of exposomics, but he is perhaps best known for his research on benzene and blood cancers. He also works with international collaborators on using mechanistic data in the identification of human carcinogens. Dr. Smith is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the 2010 Children’s Environmental Health Network Award, became an Elected Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini in 2012, and received the Alexander Hollaender Award from the Environmental Mutagenesis and Genomics Society in 2014.

Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, United Kingdom

Mike Stratton is Director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. His primary research interests have been in the genetics of cancer. His early research focused on inherited susceptibility. He mapped and identified the major high risk breast cancer susceptibility gene BRCA2 and subsequently a series of moderate risk breast cancer and other cancer susceptibility genes.

In 2000 he initiated the Cancer Genome Project at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute which conducts systematic genome-wide searches for somatic mutations in human cancer. Through these studies he discovered somatic mutations of the BRAF gene in malignant melanoma and several other mutated cancer genes in lung, renal, breast and other cancers. He has described the basic patterns of somatic mutation in cancer genomes revealing underlying DNA mutational and repair processes.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) and was Knighted by the Queen in 2013.

Chair in Environmental Epidemiology, Centre for Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Professor Paolo Vineis is a leading researcher in the fields of molecular epidemiology and  exposomics. His latest research activities mainly focus on examining biomarkers of disease risk, complex exposures and intermediate biomarkers from omic platforms (including metabolomics and epigenetics) in large epidemiological studies as well as studying the effects of climate change on non-communicable diseases.
He has more than 700 publications (many as leading author) in journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, Lancet, Lancet Oncology. He is a member of various international scientific and ethics committees (including the Committee of the US National Academy of Sciences on 21st Century Risk Assessment) and vice-chair of the Ethics Committee at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC,WHO). He has been a member of the Scientific Council of IARC. Professor Vineis has extensive experience in leading International projects.
He is currently coordinating the European Commission funded Exposomics project (valued  at €8.7m, started in 2012) and the Horizon 2020-funded project Lifepath (valued at €6 million, started in 2015). He is a Principal Investigator/Co-investigator of numerous international research projects, such as the European Commission funded GENAIR, ECNIS2, Envirogenomarkers, Hypergenes, ESCAPE and Transphorm networks, in which he has led WorkPackages.
In addition he has attracted grants from the Leverhulme Trust, MRC, Cancer ResearchUK, HuGeF Foundation and the US National Cancer Institute. He is the director of the Unit of Molecular and Genetic Epidemiology, HuGeF Foundation, Torino, Italy and leads the Exposome and Health theme of the MRC-PHE Centre for Environmentand Health at Imperial College. http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/people/p.vineis

Director, International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France

Christopher Paul Wild obtained his PhD in 1984 from the University of Manchester, UK, whilst working on DNA damage and repair. He was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to work in Lyon, France, and subsequently a UK Royal Society European Exchange Fellowship to spend a year at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. In 1987 Dr Wild re-joined IARC as a staff scientist and later became Chief of the Unit of Environmental Carcinogenesis. In 1996 he was appointed to the Chair of Molecular Epidemiology at the University of Leeds, was Head of the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics and later became Director of the Leeds Institute of Genetics, Health and Therapeutics in December 2005.

Dr Wild was elected Director of IARC from 1st January 2009. His main research interest is to understand the interplay between environmental and genetic risk factors in the causation of human cancer. He has particularly sought to apply biomarkers in population-based studies to this end. His specific areas of research have been focused on liver and oesophageal cancers.

Head of the Division of Psychosocial Research and Epidemiology, Netherlands Cancer Institute, The Netherlands

Flora E. van Leeuwen graduated from the Wageningen Agricultural University (MSc in Human Nutrition) in 1981 (cum laude). In the same year she became head of the Department of Tumor Documentation, Clinical Trials and Epidemiology of the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam, with the specific task to start an Epidemiology Group in this institute. In 1982-1983 she was awarded a research training fellowship by the International Agency for Research on Cancer and obtained a MSc degree in Epidemiology at the Department of Epidemiology of the School of Public Health of the University of Alabama in Birmingham, USA.
From 1986-2010 she was Head of the Epidemiology Group of the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
From 2010 onwards, she is head of the Division of Psychosocial Research and Epidemiology in the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
Her research group currently focuses on two principal research lines:
(1) the assessment of the long term risks of second malignancy, cardiovascular disease and other comorbidities following treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma, breast cancer, testicular cancer and childhood malignancy; the development and evaluation of cancer survivorship care programs.
(2) the assessment of the roles of and hormone-related and genetic risk factors in the etiology of breast and ovarian cancer; special interest is in late effects of ovarian stimulation for in Vitro Fertilization and cancer etiology in BRCA1/2 families.
In 1998 Flora van Leeuwen obtained a Chair in Cancer Epidemiology at The Faculty of Medicine from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam.

University of Bristol, United Kingdom

I obtained a BSc in Genetics at the University of Sheffield in 1995 and then went on to complete a PhD in Genetic Epidemiology at the University of Manchester in 1999. I then had a series of short postdoctoral positions including a post at the International Agency for Research on Cancer. I joined the School of Social and Community Medicine in January 2004 as a lecturer in Genetic Epidemiology and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2009.  My research interests are in using Mendelian Randomization to understand risk factors for cancer and also to identify key nutrients required for in utero development. I am involved in a large UK wide cohort study of cleft lip and palate, and a large birth cohort in which I am looking at the role of nutrition during pregnancy on childhood IQ and behaviour. I co-lead a work package on Mendelian Randomisation for the Intergrative Cancer Epidemiology Programme which is funded by Cancer Research UK. l am a principal investigator on a project to develop a framework for systematic reviews of mechanistic studies of diet and cancer in collaboration with the World Cancer Research Fund. I also hold a grant from the WCRF to apply the above framework and Mendelian randomization to understanding the role of diet in prostate cancer.

Acting director of the National Cancer Institute and Chief of the intramural Laboratory of Cellular Oncology in the Center for Cancer Research at the NCI, Bethesda, USA

Douglas Lowy is acting director of the National Cancer Institute and Chief of the intramural Laboratory of Cellular Oncology in the Center for Cancer Research at the NCI. He received his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, and trained in internal medicine at Stanford University and dermatology at Yale University. His research includes papillomaviruses and the regulation of normal and neoplastic growth. The papillomavirus research is carried out in close collaboration with John Schiller, with whom he has co-authored more than 100 papers over the past 25 years. In the 1980s, he studied the genetic organization of papillomaviruses and identified the oncogenes encoded by the virus. More recently, he has worked on papillomavirus vaccines and the papillomavirus life cycle. Their laboratory was involved in the initial development, characterization, and clinical testing of the preventive virus-like particle-based HPV vaccines that have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and many other countries. It is for this body of work that Drs. Lowy and Schiller received the 2007 Federal Employee of the Year Award from the Partnership for Public Service, the 2007 Dorothy P. Landon-American Association for Cancer Research Prize for Translational Cancer Research, the Sabin Gold Medal in 2011, and the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2014. Dr. Lowy also received the 2007 Medal of Honor for basic research from the American Cancer Society. He is listed by the Institute for Scientific Information as one of the most highly cited authors in microbiology, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the NAS.

Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, United Kingdom

Dr. Walter Willett is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition and Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Willett studied food science at Michigan State University, and graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School before obtaining a Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard School of Public Health.  Dr. Willett has focused much of his work over the last 35 years on the development of methods, using both questionnaire and biochemical approaches, to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. He has applied these methods starting in 1980 in the Nurses’ Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study.  Together, these cohorts that include nearly 300,000 men and women with repeated dietary assessments are providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of food choices.
      
Dr. Willett has published over 1,500 articles, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for heart disease and cancer. Dr. Willett is the most cited nutritionist internationally, and is among the five most cited persons in all fields of clinical science. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research.

Trustee and Vice President, Nagasaki University
Part-time Vice President, Fukushima Medical University, Japan

Shunichi Yamashita graduated from Nagasaki University School of Medicine in March 1978 and spent almost three years from July 1984 to March 1987 as the first endocrine research fellow at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles. In October 1990, Dr. Yamashita became Professor of Molecular Medicine and International Radiation Health at the Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki University School of Medicine. He has been deeply involved in Chernobyl and Semipalatinsk medical aid and research projects for 25 years. Professor Yamashita is the Adviser to the Governor of Fukushima Prefecture on Health Risk Managemen immediately after the Fukusihma Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) accident. He was dispatched from Nagasaki University to Fukushima for two years after the Fukushima NPP accident. Since April 2013, he has been mainly in Nagasaki University but partly in Fukushima Medical University. He is still in charge of the Fukushima Health Management Survey, especially for the thyroid examination as a part-time Vice-President of Fukushima Medical University. Professor Yamashita is the Director of the WHO collaborating center for research on Radiation Emergency Medical Preparedness and Response Network, the council member of Science Council of Japan and the member of the Nuclear Diaster Expert Group of the Prime Minister Office of Japan. He is the former President of the Japan Thyroid Association.
Website of Department of Medical Radiation Sciences, Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki University (http://www-sdc.med.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/drms/index-e.html)
Website of Radiation Medical Science Center for the Fukushima Health Management Survey, Fukushima Medical University (http://www.fmu.ac.jp/radiationhealth/)