Prof. Jacqueline Close

Professor Jacqueline Close is a consultant Geriatrician at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney and Clinical Director of the Falls, Balance and Injury Research Centre at Neuroscience Research Australia. Her primary research area is falls in people with cognitive impairment and dementia and particularly the relationship of cognitive function to postural stability, falls and fractures. She has an interest in the impact of falls and injury to health service use and the way in which health services are designed to prevent and manage falls and injury in older people. She is Co-Chair of the ANZ Hip Fracture Registry, and Past-President of the Australian and New Zealand Society for Geriatric Medicine.

Prof. Jacqueline Close's Session

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ellen Freiberger

Ellen Freiberger is working as an associate professor at the Institute of Biomedicine for Ageing (IBA) at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) leading the research in the area of physical activity and aging. From 1999 – 2013 she worked as a research assistant, and senior lecturer at the Institute of Sport Science and Sport [ISS]. Since 2013 she is a member of the Steering Group of the European Network on Action, Aging and Physical Activity [EUNAAPA]. She is also a member of the German National Initiative on Fall Prevention.

Her main research interest is to design, and evaluate exercise interventions for fall prevention in community-dwelling older persons. She is following a  holistic approach, including physical and psychological aspects. She has developed in Germany different curricula for the education of fall prevention instructors. Next to fall prevention, her interest is sarcopenia and frailty in community-dwelling older persons with focus of assessment and exercise intervention

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ellen Freiberger's Session

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Dr. Celia Gregson

Celia Gregson is a Consultant Senior Lecturer in Musculoskeletal Medicine at the Musculoskeletal Research Unit (MRU), University of Bristol and is an Honorary Consultant Orthogeriatrician at the Royal United Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Bath. Her research interests include the epidemiology and genetics of osteoporosis and fractures, high bone mass disorders, the role bone plays in the pathogenesis of osteoarthritis, the impact of social deprivation on fracture incidence and outcomes, the impact of neurological diseases and HIV infection on musculoskeletal health, and the cross-talk between muscle, fat and bone. With Global Challenges funding, she recently launched the Sub-Saharan African MuSculOskeletal Network SAMSON (https://thesamson.org/).

Celia chairs the Royal College of Physicians Falls and Fragility Fracture Audit Programme Scientific and Publications Committee and is a member of their Fracture Liaison Service Database Advisory Group. She is a member of the National Osteoporosis Guideline Group Advisory Committee and the National Joint Registry Research Committee. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. In 2018 she became co-chair of the British Geriatric Society Falls and Bone Health Section.

Dr. Celia Gregson's Session

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Prof. Rose Anne Kenny

Professor Rose Anne Kenny holds the Chair of Medical Gerontology at Trinity College and is the founder and Principal Investigator of The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), Ireland’s flagship research project in ageing.

Professor Kenny’s research focuses on the causes and consequences of neurocardiovascular ageing. In 2016, Professor Kenny launched a new 120 bedded clinical research institute on the site of Ireland’s largest teaching hospital (St James). Prior to her present appointments, Professor Kenny held the Chair of Cardiovascular Research at the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK, where she was Head of the Academic Department of Medical Gerontology for 12 years.

Professor Kenny has held a number of senior positions including Chair of the American Geriatric Society: Falls Prevention Guidelines (2001 & 2011), Chair of the European Cardiac Society/ European Heart Rhythm Association Guidelines for Syncope units (2015) and Member of the European Cardiac Society Syncope Guidelines Taskforce 2018.

Prof. Rose Anne Kenny's Session

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Prof. Stephen Lord

Professor Stephen Lord is a Senior Principal Research Fellow at Neuroscience Research Australia, Sydney, Australia. He has published over 400 papers in the areas of applied physiology, instability, falls and fractures in older people and is acknowledged as a leading international researched in his field.

His research follows two main themes: the identification of physiological risk factors for falls and the development and evaluation of falls prevention strategies.

A key aspect of this research has been the design, implementation and evaluation of exercise programs for the general population of older people as well as for those identified as being at increased risk of falls, i.e. people with Parkinson’s disease, stroke, dementia and frailty. His methodology and approach to fall-risk assessment has been adopted by many researchers and clinicians across the world and he is actively engaged in initiatives aimed at implementing falls prevention evidence into policy and practice.

Prof. Tahir Masud

Professor Masud trained at University of Oxford and St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. After postgraduate training in London and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and a Research Fellow post in St Thomas’ Hospital, London he took up a position of Consultant Physician in General and Geriatric Medicine at Nottingham in 1994. He has a research and clinical interest in osteoporosis, falls and syncope and has published widely in these areas. He heads the Clinical Gerontology Research Unit at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. He has previously been a scientific advisor to the National Osteoporosis Society and is the main organiser of the annual International Conference on Falls and Postural Stability. He has also served as the Clinical SubDean  at the University of Nottingham Medical School. He also has Honorary/Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Nottingham, Derby and Southern Denmark. He is the former President of the European Union of  Medical Specialists-Geriatric Medicine Section and is the current President-Elect of the British Geriatrics society. 

Prof. Tahir Masud's Session

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Mr Paul Mitchell

Paul Mitchell spent 18 years working on programs to improve fragility fracture care and prevention throughout the world. He published extensively on implementation of Fracture Liaison Services (FLS) and was an author of the 2012 International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) World Osteoporosis.

Prior to emigrating from the UK to New Zealand in 2011, Paul served as an advisor to the Department of Health in England to develop policy and financial incentives to improve care and reduce costs. He worked with the Ministry of Health and Accident Compensation Corporation to facilitate implementation of FLS in all New Zealand District Health Boards, and establishment of the Australian Hip Fracture Registry.

Paul is a member of the Board of Trustees of Osteoporosis New Zealand, having served as Chair from 2014 to 2018, a member of the Board of the Fragility Fracture Network (FFN) and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Medicine at the University of Notre Dame.

Mr Paul Mitchell's Session

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Prof. Dr. Manuel Montero-Odasso

Dr. Manuel Montero-Odasso (MD, PhD, FRCPC, AGSF, FGSA) is a Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Western Ontario and Director of the “Gait & Brain Lab” at Parkwood Institute, London, Ontario. He is a geriatrician and clinician-scientist at the Lawson Health Research Institute and serves as team leader at the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) and team co-leader at the Ontario Neurodegenerative Research Initiative (ONDRI).

He leads the Gait and Brain Health Program with the goal of understanding mechanisms and potential treatments of mobility and cognitive decline in older individuals. He focuses on gait performance and has established the use of “motor biomarkers” like slowing gait and dual-task gait to predict frailty, falls, and dementia in older people. He has pioneered clinical trials applying the novel approach of “improving cognition to improve mobility” using pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches such as physical exercise, cognitive training and non-invasive brain stimulation. 

Prof. Dr. Manuel Montero-Odasso's Session

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Prof. Dawn Skelton

Dawn Skelton is an exercise physiologist and Professor in Ageing and Health at Glasgow Caledonian University. She recently chaired the UKs National Osteoporosis Society exercise guidelines and the Older People panel for the UK’s update of the Physical Activity for Health Guidelines. She works part time in academia and the rest of the time is a Director of Later Life Training Ltd, a not-for profit company, to train health and fitness professionals to work with effective physical activity and exercise with older people and stroke survivors. Later Life Training ran Cascade Training in the Otago programme within the Prevention of Falls Network for Dissemination (ProFouND) project. Her recent research focuses on interventions to reduce sedentary behaviour in older people and implementation/translational research. She recently received the British Geriatrics Society Marjory Warren Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in translating falls prevention research into practice.

Prof. Dawn Skelton's Session

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Prof. Dr. Nathalie Van Der Velde

Nathalie van der Velde is a consultant geriatrician since 2010 and director of the geriatric medicine since 2014. She also is the principal investigator and leader of the research line ‘person-centred falls & fracture prevention’ at the AMC. Furthermore, she is co-chairing the Amsterdam Public Health Institutions’ research programme “Aging and Later Life”.

She chairs the European Geriatric Medicine Society Task and Finish Group on fall-risk-increasing drugs and is a member of the European Geriatric special interest group in Falls and Fracture prevention. On a national level, she chairs the Dutch Network of Fall clinics and the Dutch Falls prevention guideline (recent update). Research goal is to minimize the number and consequences of falls and fall-related injury in older persons.

Momentarily, she focusses on the role of drug use and cardiovascular abnormalities. Overall objectives are to optimize recognition and treatment of individual fall-risk factors by carrying out clinical and epidemiological research and disperse knowledge on falls research.

Prof. Dr. Nathalie Van Der Velde's Session

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Prof. Joe Verghese

Dr. Joe Verghese graduated from St. Johns Medical College, Bangalore, India. He did his postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Neurology in United Kingdom. He completed his Neurology residency at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY.  He did fellowship training in Neurophysiology as well as Aging & Dementia in 1999 at the same institution. He received a Master of Science degree in Clinical Research Methods with Distinction from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2001. Dr. Verghese is board-Certified in Neurology.

Dr. Verghese is Professor of Neurology and Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is the Chief of the integrated divisions of Cognitive & Motor Aging in the Department of Neurology and Geriatrics in the Department of Medicine. He is the founding Director of the Montefiore-Einstein Center for the Aging Brain, an interdisciplinary cognitive assessment center.

Dr. Verghese’s research interest is the effects of disease and aging on mobility and cognition in older adults, and he has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and several federally funded research grants in these areas. His current projects include studying the influence of cognitively stimulating activities on reducing risk of dementia and mobility loss, cognitive control of gait and mobility, and global health studies in dementia.

Prof. Joe Verghese's Session

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Prof. Jean Woo

Prof. Woo joined the Department of Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1985. Her past roles include Head of Department of Medicine, Chief of Service of the Medicine and Geriatric Unit at Shatin Hospital, Head of the Department of Community and Family Medicine, and Founding Director of the School of Public Health.

Currently she is Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Director of the Jockey Club Instititute of Aging, Director of the Centre for Nutritional Studies, School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Honorary Consultant of the Prince of Wales and Shatin Hospitals, Hospital Authority.

Prof. Jean Woo's Session

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Prof. Jae-Young Lim

Jae-Young Lim is a professor at the Seoul National University College of Medicine, Korea and serving as the Board of Trustees of the Korean Association of Rehabilitation Medicine (KARM) and the Korean Geriatric Society (KGS). He is also a director of Aging & Mobility Biophysics Lab, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. As a specialist in musculoskeletal and geriatric rehabilitation, his major research interest is to investigate the key mechanisms of functional restoration and adaptation after injury, chronic diseases, or aging in humans. He has contributed seminal research findings on the muscle quality to assess frailty and sarcopenia as well as conducted modality-specific intervention studies for old population. He is particularly interested in the development of integrated rehabilitation methods for fall prevention and fragility fracture care in older adults. Currently, he is an Editor-in-Chief of “Annals of Geriatric Medicine and Research” and an Associate Editor of “PM & R”. He has published over 150 peer reviewed papers in reputed international journals and written 15 book chapters.

Prof. Jae-Young Lim's Session

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Prof. Bilkish Cassim

Bilkish Cassim is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Geriatric Medicine at the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal and the Inkosi Albert Luthuli Central Hospital in Durban, South Africa. She is on the executive committees of the South Africa Geriatrics Society and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of South Africa and is the current President of the College of Physicians of South Africa.

She is the lead investigator in the multicentre study on the incidence of hip fractures in South Africa and is the country lead for the multinational study FRACTURE E3, funded by the Welcome Trust Grant.

Prof. Bilkish Cassim's Session

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