INAUGURAL CONFERENCE

Prof. Peter STENVINKEL, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Peter STENVINKEL is a Professor and senior lecturer at the Dept. of Renal Medicine, Karolinska University Hospital, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Peter has published 710 original publications and reviews and >40 book chapters on various aspects of inflammation, wasting and metabolism in chronic kidney disease patients. Peter’s Hirsch index is 136. He has been cited more than 75.000 times and has presented >600 invited lectures at various international meetings and congresses in about 30 different countries and has received a prize for the best Swedish thesis in diabetology in 1994 and was a Baxter Extramural Grant awardee in 1996. Peter was a Karolina Prize awardee in 2005, a Vizenca Prize awardee in 2009 and received the Addis Gold Medal by the International Society of Renal Nutrition and Metabolism (ISRNM) for nutritional research in 2010. Peter was a member of the council of International Society of Nephrology (2007) and the European Renal Association (ERA-EDTA) (2007-2010), is an Editor of J Internal Medicine and was editor-in-chief of NDT-E 2010-2013. Peter received an honorary membership of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Nephrology in 2010 and of the Polish Society of Nephrology in 2012. Peter was an international National Kidney Foundation (NKF) awardee in 2012, is a fellow of ERA-EDTA and American Society of Nephrology (ASN) and since 2022 guest Professor at Maastricht University. Peter was the local President of ERA in Stockholm in 2024. Peter hosted the 19 Key Symposium on Planetary Health at Royal Academy of Sciences in May 2025 and in 2025 was elected member of Academia Europaea.

Prof. Patrick STOVER, Institute for Connecting Nutrition & Health, Florida State University, USA

Patrick J. STOVER, Ph.D., is a founding Director of the Institute for Connecting Nutrition and Health at Florida State University. As an international leader in biochemistry, agriculture and nutrition, Patrick’s research focuses on the biochemical, genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that underlie the relationships between nutrition, food fortification and human pathologies such as developmental anomalies, neuropathies and cancer. Patrick is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also former president of the American Society for Nutrition and has served two terms on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board.

Patrick received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Clinton, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.

Prof. Paul SHIELS, Glasgow Geroscience Group, University of Glasgow, UK

Paul SHIELS is Professor of Geroscience at the University of Glasgow and founder and Director of the Glasgow Geroscience Group. Paul has over 200 publications and generated 10 patents in this field. Paul was a pioneer of telomere cloning and worked at PPL Therapeutics Roslin, including on Dolly the sheep. Paul has also pioneered the concept of the exposome of ageing and was subsequently the first to describe links between socioeconomic position, epigenetics, the microbiome and ageing. Paul’s ideas have been successfully tested in clinical trials. Paul’s current research portfolio comprises a broad investigation of the exposome of ageing, including nutritional senotherapies and development of biomarkers of ageing, including epigenetic clocks for normative ageing. Paul is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the British Society for Research on Ageing, the world’s oldest charitable society for research on ageing and has acted as an expert on the Biology of Ageing on a number of national policy advising consortia, including providing evidence to the UK Government All Party Parliamentary Group on Longevity. Paul acts as Chair and as a panel member for a range of National and International Research Council panels. Paul has acted as CSO for Pathfinder Cell Therapy PLC and sits on the Scientific Advisory Boards and acts as a consultant for a range of pharmaceutical companies. Paul has a proven track record in public dissemination of his research, including the provision of expert commentary for the BBC and ABC TV networks and as a panellist at the Edinburgh International Science Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival.