Dr. Robert Chen received his MA and medical degrees (MBBChir) with distinction from the University of Cambridge, and M.Sc. degree from the University of Toronto.  He undertook Neurology residency at the Western University, and fellowship at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. He is currently Professor of Medicine (Neurology) at the University of Toronto and Senior Scientist at the Krembil Brain Institute. His was the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences from 2013-2023 and is currently Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Neurophysiology and Associate Editor for Movement Disorders. His clinical and research interests include the neuromodulation techniques such as transcranial magnetic and ultrasound stimulation, neurophysiology of movement disorders, mapping of brain connectivity using functional magnetic imaging and electroencephalography, electromyography and neurophysiological assessment of the respiratory system.  He has published over 400 research papers with a Google Scholar H-index of 109. In 2022, he published a book on transcranial magnetic stimulation and edited two volumes of Handbook of Clinical Neurology on Respiratory Neurobiology.

Claudia Sommer is a Professor of Neurology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. She received training in neurology, psychiatry, neuropathology, and experimental pain research. At the University Hospital of Würzburg, she serves as a consultant in neurology, organizes outpatient clinics for patients with neuromuscular disorders, pain and headache, and she leads the Peripheral Nerve Laboratory with a service for nerve-, muscle- and skin biopsies. Research interests are the role of inflammation in neuropathy and pain, and how autoantibodies are related to diseases. A major focus of the lab are the antibody-mediated diseases, in particular the autoimmune neuropathies and disorders of the stiff-person spectrum disorder. Prof. Sommer has written more than 350 original research papers and more than 100 reviews and book-chapters and edited several books. She has served as President of the German Pain Society in 2019 to 2020 and as President of the International Society for the Study of Pain (IASP) from 2020 to 2022). She is a Fellow of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN), and has been involved in their educational activities for many years. She is presently a Board member of the Peripheral Nerve Society (PNS) and has received the PNS 2023 Gebhart Prize for her work on inflammatory neuropathies. She is active in the German competence network for peripheral neuropathies (KKPNS), and is Deputy Editor of the European Journal of Neurology.

Kevin Talbot is a clinician scientist with 25 years of experience of diagnosing and managing MND and related diseases. He is Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, and also leads the Neurodegeneration and Cerebrovascular Theme of the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. The main focus of his laboratory research is to improve pre-clinical models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, focussing on early stage disease. His laboratory has identified disease-specific phenotypes in motor neurons which provide the tools for screening drugs of potential therapeutic benefit in ALS. This is closely linked to work with Oxford colleagues on biomarkers with application to experimental medicine studies to accelerate translation of promising drugs.

Sanjeev received his B.E. degree in Electronics engineering in India, and later the Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. He continued his research at Duke University with Prof Sanders where he used computer models to understand the EMG signals in healthy muscle and disease. This led to development of new quantitative measurements of the motor unit potentials and the interference pattern. He continued his research when he joined the TECA Corporation, currently under Natus Medical Inc. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Neurology at Medical College of Wisconsin. He has collaborated extensively with Prof Barkhaus and Prof Stalberg in developing new methods for motor unit number estimation, generation of reference values and automated EMG analysis. Sanjeev and his wife Anjali developed a teaching website that was used by several thousand physicians and technologists from 50+ countries during the COVID pandemic. At Natus he develops EMG systems and promotes education. He has taught and conducted workshops in over 30 countries around the world. Earlier this year he was given the Schwab Award for his research by the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society.