Professor Jan De Waele

President, ESICM

President of ESICM, Full Professor at Universiteit Gent, Intensivist at Ghent University Hospital, Senior Clinical Investigator at the Research Foundation Flanders.

: @@criticcaredoc

Professor Paul Dark

Vice Dean for Health and Care Partnerships, University of Manchester

Paul studied undergraduate physics and medicine. Graduating from The Manchester Medical School, he went on to study clinical academic surgery, emergency medicine and critical care at the Universities of Glasgow and Manchester in the UK, and at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.

As MRC PhD Clinical Training Fellow, supervised by Professor Rod Little, he developed methods to transduce and study dynamic cardio-respiratory responses to tissue injury and haemorrhage. This work produced key evidence for the validation and refinement of minimally-invasive patient monitoring technologies including Doppler ultrasound and arterial pulse wave analysis systems.

He was appointed to his current clinical academic post at the University of Manchester in 2003, developing clinical services and academic practice in Critical Care Medicine at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (Salford Care Organisation). He developed and provides leadership for a programme of work, funded mainly by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), investigating the clinical and cost effectiveness of emerging molecular diagnostic technologies in the setting of sterile tissue injury and severe infections (sepsis) within both high and low resource healthcare settings internationally. Funded by NIHR Manchester BRC, NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Emergency and Acute Care and Innovate UK in partnership with industry, he also co-leads an ongoing programme of work developing novel technologies aimed at rapid point-of-care infection/sepsis theragnosis with the objective of optimising patient exposure to antimicrobial drugs.

Paul was NIHR Clinical Research Network's National Deputy Medical Director (2022 - 24). He provided strategic leadership for the development, delivery and accessibility of a large portfolio of national clinical research in NHS acute hospital settings and he represented NIHR internationally. As a former NIHR National Specialty Lead for Critical Care (2015-22), he served on NIHR's Urgent Public Health Research Advisory Group, providing expert advice on research priority for the Department of Health and Social Care and UK's Chief Medical Officers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He is also Research Professor at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, providing strategic interdisciplinary leadership in global health and social justice.

: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-dark-33002722?lip
: @https://x.com/darknatter

Professor Louise Rose

Professor of Critical Care Nursing, UK

Professor Louise Rose, RN, PhD is a Professor of Critical Care Nursing at King’s College London, UK and an honorary Professor in Critical Care and the Lane Fox Respiratory Unit at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. Prior to joining King’s she was an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. Her research program focuses on improving outcomes and the healthcare experience of mechanically ventilated patients across the care continuum from the emergency department, intensive care unit, specialised weaning centre and in the home. She also has extensive clinical experience in critical care in four countries. Since commencing her research career she has been awarded 90 peer reviewed research grants and has over 180 peer reviewed publications.

Reena Mehta

Consultant Pharmacist, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust & Chair of ICS Learning Division

Reena is a Consultant Pharmacist in Critical Care at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, London and Chair of the Intensive Care Society’s Learning Division.

Her specialist areas of interest are anti-microbial stewardship, medicines use in extra-corporeal circuits and health inequalities. 

She has worked in Critical Care for over 15 years, and has co-authored and provided specialist input nationally into areas such as pharmacy critical care workforce, clinical guidelines, and advanced critical care training.  Reena is an Associate Editor for the Journal of the Intensive Care Society and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at King’s College London.   Within her organisation, she is a Principal Investigator on a number of CRN Portfolio studies

Reena is also the Pharmacy Lead for the South East London ICS - Critical Care/ODN and a member of the United Kingdom Adult Critical Care Pharmacy Leadership Forum.  She has recently completed an MSc in Health Economics, Policy & Management at the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

: @ReenaM2703

Professor Stephen Brett

Professor of Critical Care and Intensive Care Consultant, Imperial College London

Professor Stephen Brett is Professor of Critical Care at Imperial College London and a consultant in intensive care medicine at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, looking after patients at Hammersmith Hospital. He is also a previous president of the Intensive Care Society; he chaired the original NICE guideline development group for "Rehabilitation after Critical Illness", and was a member of SPI-M-O during the COVID pandemic. His research interests are wide, ranging from clinical trials and outcomes research through organisational and decision-making to the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for event prediction. 

Professor Ronan McMullan

Professor of Medical Microbiology, Queens University Belfast & Belfast HSC Trust

Ronan McMullan is a Consultant Microbiologist at Belfast Trust and Professor of Medical Microbiology at Queen’s University Belfast. His MD was focused on the development and assessment of the diagnostic accuracy of a Candida PCR test in ICU patients and he continues to pursue research on diagnostic tests for infection.

Ronan has been a member of NIHR prioritisation and funding committees (with the HTA and EME programmes) for hospital-based research. He is also Clinical Director of training & Assessment with the Royal College of Pathologists and has previously been an Education Associate with the GMC Curriculum Advisory Group.

His main research interests are in antimicrobial stewardship and diagnostic accuracy studies. Ronan’s current research is focused on use of rapid tests as an antifungal stewardship tool in critical care. He has a leadership role in several national trials, most of which are funded by the NIHR HTA programme.