STEFAN BITTNER is senior physician at the Department of Neurology (head: Prof. Zipp) of the University Hospital in Mainz, Germany. He is the head of the clinical section for Neuroimmunology and supervises the outpatient clinic and study centre for patients with multiple sclerosis and other chronic-inflammatory CNS disorders. In 2015, he was appointed on a professorship for neuroimmunology at Mainz before getting his prior training at the University of Wuerburg and University of Muenster (heads: Prof. Wiendl and Prof. Meuth). In Mainz, he is head of a basic research group for experimental neuroimmunology. His main research interests are ion channel-mediated regulation of immune cell and CNS functions and live-imaging of neuroinflammatory processes in the CNS tissue.

STEFAN BITTNER

TIM HAGENACKER is senior physician at the Department of Neurology (head: Prof. C. Kleinschnitz) at the University Hospital in Essen, Germany. He is the head of the neuromuscular section and supervises the outpatient clinic for patients with neuromuscular disorders. He is the head of a basic research group for diseases of the peripheral nervous system and neuropathic pain. His main research interests are ion channel regulation in the sensory system especially in neuropathic pain condition, mechanisms of restauration and neuroprotection of the PNS in chemotherapy-induced neuropathy, motor neuron disease and the role of calcium homeostasis in the pathogenesis of neurologic disorders. His clinical focus is on neuromuscular junction disorders, ALS, myositis, spinal muscular atrophy and clinical neurophysiology.

TIM HAGENACKER

TOBIAS RUCK, born in 1985, studied medicine at the universities of Würzburg (Germany), Bern (Switzerland) and Rochester (USA). He worked as graduate student and postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Prof. Heinz Wiendl and Prof. Sven Meuth (Würzburg and Münster, Germany) and received his MD title in 2014. He started his residency in clinical neurology in 2012 at the University Hospital of Münster and obtained board approval in neurology (Facharzt) in 2018. He is currently working as attending physician at the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital of Münster and group leader in the Institute of Translational Neurology of the University of Münster. His research focuses on regulatory mechanisms of endothelial barriers in the central and peripheral nervous system with a special focus on the blood-brain- and blood-muscle-barrier. For his scientific work he was awarded with the Felix-Jerusalem-Preis 2016.

TOBIAS RUCK

MATHIAS GELDERBLOM obtained his M.D. from the Universitaet Kiel, School of Medicine, Kiel, Germany. As a graduate student he was trained in the laboratory of Professor Steven Waxman, Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA. Dr. Gelderblom then started his residency in Neurology at the University Hospital Hamburg Eppendorf, Department of Neurology, Hamburg, Germany. Mathias Gelderblom is currently employed as Clinician Scientist and Clinical Attending at the Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf. Dr. Gelderblom´s major research interest is to understand the role of the immune system in short- and long-term post-stroke brain damage. His main focus it the role of the innate immune system for the development of the sterile neuroinflammatory reaction following stroke. He is responsible for the botulinum toxin outpatient clinic for dystonia and spasticity and the laboratory for clinical neurophysiology.

MATHIAS GELDERBLOM

AIDEN HAGHIKIA studied medicine at the Ruhr-University Bochum. He worked on his doctoral thesis – functional characterization of the astrocytic gap junctional network - at the Department of Neuroanatomy (Director Professor Rolf Dermietzel) as a DFG fellow within the Neuroscience Graduate School. After completing his clinical training at the Department of Neurology of the Ruhr-University Bochum (Director Professor Ralf Gold) he worked as a postdoc (DFG fellow) at the Department of Neuroimmunology at the University of Oxford (Chair Professor Lars Fugger). He currently works as Deputy Director (Leitender Oberarzt) and Professor of Translational Neuroimmunology at the Department of Neurology of the Ruhr-University Bochum (St. Josef-Hospital Bochum; Chair Prof. Gold).

AIDEN HAGHIKIA