Speakers & Moderators
Aaron Waxman
António Vaz Carneiro
Betsy Keller
Carmen Scheibenbogen
Chris Ponting
Danilo Buonsenso
David Putrino
David Systrom
Eliana Lacerda
Filipe Froes
Germano de Sousa
Gustavo Couto
Jaime Branco
João Malato
João Carlos Winck
Joan Serra Hoffman
Johanna Squires
Leticia Soares
Linda Tannenbaum
Luis Graça
Luis Nacul
Malena Locci Marafanti
Mário Santos
Massimo Nunes
Michael VanElzakker
Nancy Klimas
Nuno Sepúlveda
Resia Pretorius
Rob Wüst
Rudolf Oliveira
Sean Leary
Susan Levine
Aaron Waxman
Waxman is a physician, researcher, and educator specializing in pulmonary vascular diseases and critical care medicine. He serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Pulmonary Heart Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and holds an appointment as an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Waxman has a dual faculty role in the Divisions of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, as well as Cardiovascular Medicine.
Waxman holds a Ph.D. in Anatomy and Neuroscience and an MD from Yale School of Medicine, where he also completed his residency in Internal Medicine and fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine. His academic career includes previous faculty appointments at Yale School of Medicine, and Tufts University School of Medicine.
A leader in pulmonary vascular disease research, Dr. Waxman focuses on understanding inflammatory mechanisms driving pulmonary vascular remodeling and right heart failure. His work has pioneered the use of invasive cardiopulmonary exercise testing to examine the interplay between the right heart and diseased pulmonary vasculature. He has authored over 150 peer-reviewed publications and served as principal investigator for numerous clinical trials evaluating treatments for pulmonary hypertension, including novel therapeutics like Sotatercept and Treprostinil.
Waxman’s contributions extend to translational research through the establishment of the Dyspnea and Performance Evaluation Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. This center integrates clinical care with basic research to improve understanding of pulmonary vascular diseases’ pathophysiology. His research has been funded by prominent institutions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).
Recognized with multiple awards, Waxman continues to make significant advancements in his field, shaping both clinical practice and therapeutic development for pulmonary vascular diseases.
António Vaz Carneiro
With 40 years of professional experience in Portugal and the United States of America, António Vaz Carneiro is a Physician specializing in Internal Medicine, Nephrology and Clinical Pharmacology, and is also a Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon, where he chairs the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare.
He is a Clinical Researcher with special interest in the areas of secondary research (systematic reviews and meta-analyses), as well as methodologies for translating knowledge into practice, overuse of health resources, applications of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and research in Precision Medicine/Big Data. He is also the Director of Cochrane Portugal.
Betsy Keller
Professor (retired), Department of Exercise Science and Athletic Training at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. Since 2003, she has used a 2-day cardiopulmonary exercise test protocol to provide objective assessment of functional capacity and recovery following exertion in persons with fatiguing illnesses. She served on the Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine) committee to identify clinical criteria for the diagnosis of ME/CFS and has given numerous scientific and invited presentations on fatiguing illnesses nationally and internationally.
She was the Co-Coordinator of the Clinical Core for the 2017 5-year NIH-funded Collaborative Research Center to Study ME/CFS at Cornell University. She is a Fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine, Past-President of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Chapter of American College of Sports Medicine, past member of the Board of Trustees of the American College of Sports Medicine, and former department chair.
Foi Co-Coordenadora do Núcleo Clínico do Centro de Investigação Colaborativa para o Estudo da EM/SFC na Universidade de Cornell, financiado pelo NIH, com a duração de 5 anos. É membro do American College of Sports Medicine, ex-presidente do Mid-Atlantic Regional Chapter of American College of Sports Medicine, membro do Board of Trustees of the American College of Sports Medicine e antiga presidente de departamento.
Carmen Scheibenbogen
A specialist in Internal Medicine and Haemato-oncology, she provides ME/CFS and LC consultations. She is a Professor of Immunology and interim/deputy director of the Institute of Medical Immunology at the Charité University of Medicine in Berlin, Germany, and co-founded the European Network for ME/CFS, EUROMENE, funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST), the Charité Fatigue Centre and the Charité Post-COVID Network.
In 2022, she received the Federal Cross of Merit for her projects in the field of ME/CFS. Her research focuses on ME/CFS, Post-COVID Syndrome, and immunodeficiencies, and she has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles. Since 2020, she has received funding from the German Government for, among others: the joint research project on immune mechanisms of ME/CFS (IMMME) which aims to create a German “ME/CFS patient registry and biobank”; for the study of interdisciplinary and intersectoral care CFS CARE; and the National Clinical Trials Group, a clinical trials platform for ME/CFS and Long COVID.
Chris Ponting
Ponting’s interest in myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) grew from participation in the UK’s ME Research Collaborative (MERC), formerly known as the CFS/M.E. Research Collaborative or CMRC. The DecodeME project evolved in 2018-2019, in a process during which PPI was embedded in every discussion and workshop, resulting in a full PPI/researcher co-production. I was Chief Investigator of DecodeME, and one of three individuals on its Management Group. The £3.2m project (www.decodeme.org.uk/) was the world’s largest ME/CFS study, with 27,000 UK-based participants, of whom approximately 18,000 contributed a saliva DNA sample. We planned DecodeME to be sufficiently statistically powered to deliver 5-10 statistically associated loci. The vast majority of DecodeME data is already available to be shared with bona fide researchers.www.decodeme.org.uk/) foi o maior estudo de ME/CFS do mundo, com 27.000 participantes baseados no Reino Unido, dos quais aproximadamente 18.000 contribuíram com uma amostra de DNA de saliva. Planejamos o DecodeME para ter poder estatístico suficiente para fornecer de 5 a 10 loci estatisticamente associados. A grande maioria dos dados do DecodeME já está disponível para partilha com pesquisadores de boa-fé.
Danilo Buonsenso
Pediatrician at Gemelli University Hospital in Rome and member of the research committee of the Global Health Research Institute of Catholic University of Rome, Italy. He has a PhD in Public Health and Molecular Sciences, and a post-graduate diploma and Msc in pediatric infectious diseases at Oxford University.
He is actively involved in several national and international studies and societies in the field of pediatric infectious diseases, specifically in the field of long covid in children, where he has significantly contributed to advance current knowledge.
David Putrino
David Putrino trained and worked as a physiotherapist in Australia before completing a PhD in Neuroscience and moving to the US to work as a researcher. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City and is the Nash Family Director of the Cohen Center for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illness. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, David Putrino has been recognized globally as a leading expert in the assessment, treatment, and underlying pathophysiology of Long COVID. His team has managed the care of over 3000 people with Long COVID, ME/CFS and chronic tick- and vector borne illness and have published multiple peer-reviewed scientific papers regarding these diagnoses. In 2019, he was named "Global Australian of the Year" for his contributions to healthcare.
David Systrom
O Dr. David Systrom é membro do corpo docente do Brigham and Women’s Hospital Pulmonary and Critical Care e Professor Assistente de Medicina na Harvard Medical School, onde dirige a Dyspnea Clinic e o Advanced Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing Program. É codiretor da Ronald G. Tompkins Harvard ME/CFS Collaboration com a Open Medicine Foundation, é Presidente do NIH ME/CFS Research Roadmap Working Group e é Co-Presidente do NIH RECOVER study’s commonalities task force.
He has been on the Harvard faculty for over 35 years during which time he has received NIH, AHA, Department of Defense, Dysautonomia International, and OMF funding to study various forms of exercise intolerance. Over the past five years, he has used invasive cardiopulmonary exercise testing to investigate mechanisms underlying fatigue, shortness of breath, and orthostatic intolerance in ME/CFS and long COVID. His recent work suggests a commonality between the two and suggests neurovascular dysregulation and related hyperventilation underlie symptoms during exercise. He served as Principal Investigator of an $8 million study of limb skeletal muscle mitochondrial dysfunction and completed the first-ever randomized clinical trial of pyridostigmine, both in ME/CFS.
Eliana Lacerda
Assistant Professor (Clinical) at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), specialising in Public Health, an MSc in Occupational Health, and a PhD in Environmental Health. She is one of the co-founders of the CureME research team dedicated to research in ME/CFS at LSHTM and co-author of the project to create a UK ME/CFS biobank (UKMEB), being the clinical director of this venture, which is the first European research institution dedicated to improving clinical research in ME/CFS.
Previously Vice-President-elect of EUROMENE (European Network for ME/CFS), a network founded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) that brought together twenty-two European countries to stimulate research and healthcare provision for people with ME/CFS. She was co-author of three of the four publications of recommendations resulting from the work of this network.
Filipe Froes
Specialist in Pulmonology and Intensive Care Medicine, with a PhD in Public Health.
Member of the National Council of Public Health and the Advisory Committee on Public Health Emergencies of the European Commission.
Germano de Sousa
A specialist in Clinical Pathology, Professor and Director of the College of Postgraduate Studies at the Atlantic University, Director of the Clinical Pathology Service at the Fernando Fonseca Hospital, Advisor to the National Council of Ethics for Life Sciences, President of the Portuguese Society of Clinical Chemistry and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.
He was an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Medical Sciences for 20 years, where he founded the Master's Degree in Chemical Pathology and was responsible for graduate studies. He is Director of the Clinical Pathology Services and has been President of the Portuguese Society of Clinical Pathology, the Portuguese Society of Osteoporosis and Metabolic Diseases and the National Association of Clinical Laboratories. He was also President of the Portuguese Medical Association from January 1999 to February 2005, elected for three terms.
Gustavo Couto
Gustavo Couto is an early-career medical doctor and investigator that obtained his Master’s Degree in Medicine on June, 2025, by the Faculty of Medicine of University of Porto (FMUP). Throughout is college years, he was part of the organizing committee for the WhatElse congress, focused on alternative medical careers and professional paths, and also collaborated with the faculty’s Student’s Association, being one of the founding members of the “Zero Um” magazine, aimed at the academic community.
In 2023, Gustavo Couto spent a semester studying at the Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen, Czech Republic, under the ERASMUS+ programme and, upon returning to Portugal, he joined the Myocare group, an investigation team of the Department of Surgery and Physiology at FMUP dedicated to the understanding of the cardiovascular system, particularly the myocardial functioning in health and disease. Under the supervision of Professor Inês Falcão Pires, he developed his Master’s thesis under the topic of SARS-CoV-2 infection, investigating its potential long-term sequelae on the myocardium of people with valvular disease.
Jaime Branco
Specialist in Rheumatology and Director of the Rheumatology Service at Hospital Egas Moniz since 2006. He is a full professor at NOVA Medical School (NMS) and was rector from 2013 to 2021. He is a full professor at the Faculty of Medical Sciences (FCM) of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa (UNL) and served as director of the FCM from 2013 to 2021.
He is the author and co-author of hundreds of scientific publications and is a Principal Investigator in Rheumatology at CEDOC of FCM. He has received 92 scientific awards, including the BIAL Prize for Clinical Medicine 2008, the BIAL Grand Prize for Medicine 2016 and the Reuméritus Prize of the Portuguese Society of Rheumatology in 2010.
João Malato
João Malato Postdoctoral researcher at the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine, in biostatistics, computational biology, and the analysis of large-scale epidemiological datasets. His research interests encompass the study of the most vulnerable communities to viruses, and the characterisation of diseases with complex diagnoses, such as ME/CFS and Long Covid, two overlapping multifactorial illnesses without biomarkers and featuring heterogeneous affected populations.
João is part of the EU-funded consortium END-VOC (https://endvoc.eu/) focusing on supporting the global response to COVID-19 and future pandemics. João is a member of the Portuguese Statistical Society (SPE) and a PhD member of the Centre of Statistics and its Applications, University of Lisbon (CEAUL). He holds a PhD in Biomedicine and Computational Biology.
João Carlos Winck
Full Professor of Pulmonology, Cardiovascular R& D Centre at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto. Coordinator of Pulmonology Unit, Long COVID/Chronic Fatigue Clinic, Sleep and Ventilation Unit/Coordenador da Unidade de Pneumologia, Consulta de Fadiga Crónica/COVID Longa, Unidade de Sono e Ventilação, Instituto CUF Porto, Portugal.
Joan Serra Hoffman
Co-founder of Aliança Millions Missing with over 30 years of experience bridging the gap between research, policy, and practice, and promoting evidence-informed approaches to address complex health and social challenges. She served as a special assistant at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), directing a national program of 10 academic centers of excellence in youth violence prevention. Founding co-director of the Inter-American Coalition for Violence Prevention, which promoted a public health approach and coordination between WHO/PAHO, USAID, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, CDC and UNESCO. Elected a Next Generation Fellow by the Rockefeller Foundation for her work in public hospitals, Level 1 trauma centers, and public health departments with victims of violence. Retired from the World Bank due to ME/CFS.
Johanna Squires
Coordenadora sénior de investigação do Dr. David Systrom no Brigham and Women’s Hospital em Boston. Obteve o seu mestrado em fisiologia do exercício na Universidade de Loughborough, no Reino Unido, em 2021, e rapidamente se juntou à equipa do Dr. Systrom e ao seu estudo de 8 milhões de dólares sobre a disfunção mitocondrial nos músculos dos membros. Desde então, ela apresentou pesquisas focadas em ME / CFS e Long COVID em conferências locais e internacionais organizadas pela American Thoracic Society, a European Respiratory Society, o Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute e os National Institutes of Health (NIH) nos Estados Unidos. A partir de 2024, será a coordenadora principal do ensaio clínico LIFT da Open Medicine Foundation, um estudo em dupla ocultação, controlado por placebo, que investiga os efeitos de doses baixas de piridostigmina e naltrexona na EM/SFC.
Leticia Soares
Dr. Letícia Soares is a broadly trained biologist with a background in infectious disease ecology, evolution, and epidemiology. She co-leads Patient-Led Research Collaborative where she leads research projects and provides patient-centered expertise on studies conducted by external partners in academia, industry, and governmental agencies. She has been living with Long COVID since April 2020.
Linda Tannenbaum
Founder and CEO/President of the Open Medicine Foundation (OMF). As president and CEO of OMF, her efforts are dedicated to funding and promoting research into ME/CFS and related chronic complex diseases.
The beginnings of the Open Medicine Foundation (OMF) are intertwined with the personal journey of its founder, Linda Tannenbaum. As President and CEO of OMF, her motivations were deeply personal, given that her daughter was diagnosed with ME/CFS at age 16 without the aid of diagnostic tests or viable treatments. Faced with the harsh reality of her daughter’s diminished quality of life, Linda took action. Linda created OMF in 2012 with the vision of catalyzing large-scale research efforts to develop diagnostic tools, effective treatments and, ultimately, prevention methods for these diseases.
Her professional background as a clinical laboratory scientist, with a degree in bacteriology from UCLA, as well as her experience managing a clinical laboratory for over 20 years, have converged to support her current mission. With unwavering dedication, she now brings her experience and passion to leadership in the quest to find cures for complex chronic diseases, improve patient care, and restore the lives of millions of people affected by these diseases.
Luis Graça
Full Professor of Immunology, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lisbon, Director of the Immunology Research Group at the GIMM - Gulbenkian Institute of Molecular Medicine. He is the Coordinator of the Technical Committee for COVID-19 and Influenza Vaccination, former President of the Portuguese Society of Immunology, and former President of the Sociedade das Ciências Médicas de Lisboa, the oldest medical society in Europe (founded in 1822).
Luis Nacul
He is a researcher and clinician specialising in General and Family Medicine and Public Health in the UK, Canada and Brazil. He has conducted international research in ME/CFS and has practiced as a family physician in ME/CFS and other complex chronic diseases. He is the former Director of the Complex Chronic Diseases Programme (CCDP) Research Group in Canada and co-founder and Director of the CureME research programme in the Department of Clinical Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). He is an Assistant Professor (Clinical) at the University of British Columbia (BCU) and LSHTM. He is also an advisory member of the International Association of ME/CFS (IACFSME), and has contributed to several committees in the field of ME/CFS, such as EUROMENE, ICanCME (as network manager), the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) ME/CFS Recommendations/Standards Development Committee and the UK ME/CFS Biobank Steering Committee.
Malena Locci Marafanti
Aliança Millions Missing. Former dental surgeon, specialist in orthodontics, facial orthopedics, orofacial pain and temporomandibular disorders, and former employee of the São Paulo State Health Department, as a health surveillance inspector and inspector at INSS hospitals. Malena taught orthodontics and functional jaw orthopedics in the 3rd and 4th years of dentistry, as well as teaching on the specialization course in orthodontics and facial orthopedics. She has been the administrator of WhatsApp groups to support patients with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis in Brazil since 2018, the administrator of the Facebook group Portugal/Brazil since 2022 and the Post-COVID patient group since 2024. Malena also co-founded and runs the ME/CFS and LC support group in Portugal. She has had ME/CFS since January 2000.
Mário Santos
Mário Santos is a clinician specializing in heart failure and pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). He earned his MD (2007) and PhD (2016) from the University of Porto, and an Executive MSc from the London School of Economics (2020). He is a Cardiology Consultant at ULSSA and Invited Associate Professor at ICBAS.
Dr. Santos integrates physiology and evidence-based medicine to improve cardiovascular care. He directs the Centro Académico Clínico ICBAS–Santo António and the Pulmonary Vascular Disease Unit, and leads the Cardiovascular Research Group at UMIB, focusing on translational and clinical research in PAH and heart failure.
Massimo Nunes
Postdoctoral Research Fellow studying under Professor Resia Pretorius at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Specialized in coagulation and vascular biology, with a specific focus on the role of the endothelium in post-viral disease.
Michael Vanelzakker
Michael VanElzakker is a neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, an instructor at Tufts University, and co-founder of the PolyBio Research Foundation.
His lab's research program is focused on the neuroimaging of infection-associated chronic illness, and he has a particular interest in advancing methods for pathogen detection.
Nancy Klimas
Director, Institute for Neuro-lmmune Medicine Professor and Chair, Department of Clinical Immunology, Assistant Dean of Research, Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine, Nova Southeastern University Director, Environmental Medicine Research and Clinical Program Miami VA Medical Center, Professor Emerita, University of Miami, School of Medicine.
Nuno Sepúlveda
Nuno is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics and Clinical Trials of the Faculty of Mathematics and Information Science of the Warsaw University of Technology. He is a long-standing colaborator of the CEAUL – Centre for Statistics and its Applications of the University of Lisbon. He currently leads the Biometrical Section of the Portuguese Statistical Society. In recent years he received funding from the British charity ME Research UK and Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) to study the role of antiviral antibodies on the pathogenesis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He also represented Portugal in the European network EUROMENE, where he integrated its executive board and the working group dedicated to the study of ME/CFS epidemiology in Europe.
Resia Pretorius
Resia Pretorius is a Distinguished Research Professor in the Physiological Sciences Department, Faculty of Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. She is Director of BioCODE Technologies www.biocode.co.za
Her overarching research theme is: Blood coagulation, circulating inflammatory markers and how these play a role in inflammatory conditions like Type 2 diabetes, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Psoriases and neuro-inflammatory conditions like Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. I am also studying coagulation in both acute COVID-19 and Long COVID/PASC. Follow the links on the images below to download my papers. Etheresia Pretorius
Rob Wüst
Assistant-professor at the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research group investigates skeletal and cardiac muscle metabolism and function. His recent interest include skeletal muscle adaptations after bed rest, in collaboration with astronauts from ESA and NASA and after acute and chronic inflammation. Recent work focuses on skeletal muscle abnormalities and exercise responses in patients with diabetes and Long COVID, which has led to a lot of international media attention. To better understand how muscle metabolism changes under different conditions, muscle biopsies from humans, mouse models, immunofluorescence and electron microscopy, and various cellular and molecular techniques are used. The research is funded by ZonMw, and various European and American (patient) organisations for diabetes, Long COVID and ME/CFS.
Rudolf Oliveira
Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP) in São Paulo, Brazil. He leads the Pulmonary Hemodynamic Assessment Program of the Pulmonary Vascular Diseases Service and the Pulmonary Function and Exercise Physiology Unit of the Respiratory Diseases Division of the Department of Medicine at UNIFESP.
Sian Leary
Leary brings both professional expertise and lived experience to her roles in ME advocacy and research. As a member of the DecodeME Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Steering Group, Leary has helped shape the world’s largest biomedical study into ME, ensuring that people with lived experience are central to the research. In her role at the World ME Alliance, Leary works to elevate the voices of people with ME globally and push for systemic change.
At this conference, Leary will reflect on the unique challenges and opportunities of embedding meaningful PPI in ME research. Leary will share insights from the DecodeME study, including how its structured and transparent approach to PPI has supported inclusion, built trust, and strengthened the quality and relevance of the research. Leary will also highlight what can be learned from this model to inform wider research practice.
Susan Levine
An internal medicine and infectious disease physician, she has been treating patients with ME/CFS for nearly 20 years. She is a physician at the Center for Enervating Neuroimmune Disease at Cornell University in New York, and is a member of a working group that provides expertise and resources to the Stanford University Center for Collaborative Research in ME/CFS. She was a reviewer of the 2015 report produced by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Committee on Diagnostic Criteria for ME/CFS, and has served on the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee (CFSAC) as a member and chair, advising the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). She is a member of the Sleep Working Group of the Common Data Project (CDE) for ME/CFS sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).