B. Todd Heniford, MD, FACS (USA)

Key lecture: Giant hernia

Speaker bio: Dr. Heniford completed his undergraduate degree and played football at Clemson University. He performed his surgical residency and research fellowship at the University of Louisville and a fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. He has been on the faculty of the Cleveland Clinic and Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, N.C., where he serves as Professor of Surgery and directs Gastrointestinal and Minimally Invasive Surgery and the Carolinas Hernia Center. 

Dr. Heniford is the author of over 450 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters and editor of three books.  He and his research fellows have won more than 65 prominent research awards, including 5 SAGES Research Project of the Year Awards, 14 Americas Hernia Society Research Awards, multiple awards from the American College of Surgeons,, the Association for Academic Surgery, among others.  He has developed successful surgical apps that have been downloaded in more than 140 countries world-wide and has multiple international patents.  He developed the first and most commonly utilized hernia quality of life scoring system (Carolinas Comfort Score), which has been translated into 28 languages.  Google Scholar reports that Dr. Heniford’s peer-reviewed papers have been cited more than 22,500 times in other peer-reviewed manuscripts with an average of 77 citations per paper he has published.

Dr. Heniford is a past-President of the Americas Hernia Society. Five of Dr. Heniford’s trainees have become President of the Americas Hernia Society and 2 additional past-fellows will become President of the AHS in the next 4 years. Dr. Heniford was the 2014 recipient of the MedStar Georgetown University Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Hernia Society Nyhus-Wantz Career Achievement Award, an Honorary Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Hernia Society, and “Medical Innovator of the Year” award from the Business Journal. 

Thomas Pinkney, MBChB, MMedEd, MD, FRCS (UK)

Key lecture: Prevention of hernia in colorectal surgery

Speaker bio: Professor Pinkney is George Drexler and Royal College of Surgeons of England Chair of Surgical Trials at the University of Birmingham, and a Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at University Hospitals Birmingham, specialising in Inflammatory Bowel Disease surgery.

He is Director of the Birmingham Surgical Trials Consortium (BiSTC) and the Birmingham Centre for Observational and Prospective Studies (BiCOPS).  Other appointments include being the National Institute for Health research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network National Specialty Lead for Surgery, Chair of the IBD sub-committee of Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland (ACPGBI) and Chair of the Cohort Studies Committee of the European Society of Coloproctology (ESCP).

Tom's research interests are predominantly in clinical and translational research in inflammatory bowel disease and surgical site infection. Over recent years he has been awarded £4.49M as chief investigator of 5 major surgical projects to benefit patients through improved surgical care; 4 are multicentre RCTs and one funds the development of a surgical device. We his also co-applicant on multiple other grants and projects totalling a further £20.45M.

As a founding member of the West Midlands Research Collaborative, he maintains a strong interest in development of trainee-led clinical trials in surgery. He sits on a variety of funding panels including the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) CET Board and is deputy chiar of the regional NIHR Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) Panel.

Anders Persson, M.D., Ph.D. Professor, Senior Physician (S)

Key lecture: Picturing the future of abdominal wall imaging

Speaker bio: Professor Anders Persson, PhD and MD, received his medical degree at Karolinska Institute, Faculty of Medicine, Stockholm Sweden in 1985 and completed his specialty radiology training in 1992.
Since 2003 Director and cofounder of Center for Medical Science and Visualization (CMIV) and professor Department of Health Medicine and Care, University of Linköping Sweden. Guest Professor, Clinical Science Intervention and Technology Karolinska Institute Sweden. Senior physician Radiology Linköping university Hospital. CMIV conducts focused front-line research within multidisciplinary projects providing solutions to tomorrow’s clinical issues. The mission is to develop future methods and tools for image analysis and visualization for applications within health care and medical research. Prof. Persson has been working in the field of medical image applications for over 30 years. Currently his research is focusing on algorithms for specific clinical investigations (Dual Energy, Photon Counting CT, Flow simulations and AI) mainly in the cardiovascular field. He has been a Visiting professor Mayo clinic’s USA, May 2009 – lecturing forensic science. During 2014 -2020 member of the advisory board for the Photon-Counting CT at MAYO clinics. He has >200 Refereed journal and conference publications 2003-2020, >900 Invited talks and 10 book chapters. Large number of ongoing leaderships, appointments and commissions of trust. European Institute of Bio Medical Imaging EIBIR (in Advisory board). Board member European ESR Research Committee. European Imaging Biomarkers Alliance, EIBAL. Board member Radiological Society of North America, Research & Education. Several international and national awards such as H.M. The Kings Gold Medal H.M. for special merit in Medical Image Science Research, 2017, RSNA Cum Lade and Lennart Nilsson Award. The Royal Photographic Society Award U.K. 2011, Athena award for best medical research in Sweden. The Royal College Society Combined Scientific Gold Medal in UK. 2013. Prof. Erna Ebeling's prize that promotes research and development in medical physics and medical technology, appointed by the Swedish Medical Association's section for medical technology and physics, 2021.