Keynote speakers:

Leslie Leinwand (University of Colorado Boulder, USA)

Dr. Leinwand is a Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB) and the Chief Scientific Officer of the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research laboratory focuses on the genetics and molecular physiology of inherited diseases of the heart and particularly how biological sex affects the heart in health and disease. She co-founded Myogen, Inc. (acquired by Gilead Pharmaceuticals), Hiberna, Inc., and MyoKardia, Inc. (acquired by Bristol Myers Sqibb), which develop therapeutics for inherited cardiomyopathies. She is a Fellow of the AAAS, a former MERIT Awardee of the NIH, an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. She received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, her PhD from Yale University, and did post-doctoral training at Rockefeller University.

Jolanda van der Velden (Amsterdam University Medical Center, Netherlands)

Jolanda van der Velden, PhD, is Professor of Physiology, and chairs the Department for Physiology and the Department of Experimental Cardiology at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. The main research interest of the van der Velden group is to study the role of sarcomere proteins in cardiac performance. As mutations in sarcomere proteins are a frequent cause of heart disease, research on inherited cardiomyopathies is a central research line in Amsterdam, and experiments are performed from bench to the clinic. Expertise includes functional studies at single cardiac muscle cell and multicellular level, and mitochondrial studies in patient samples obtained during cardiac surgery and stem cell-derived  heart models. Close collaboration with clinical departments allows translational research in which the functional studies in cardiac samples are combined with in vivo parameters of cardiac pump function and energetics. Moreover, methods have been developed to refine research in animal models, including high-throughput analyses of cardiomyocyte function. From June 2025, she will co-direct the Netherlands Heart Institute.

Session speakers:

John McCarthy (University of Kentucky, USA)

Dr. McCarthy received a B.S. in Biology from the University of California at Irvine, a M.S. in Physical Education for California State University at Fullerton and a PhD in Exercise Physiology from the University of Oregon. He completed post-doctoral training at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of Missouri at Columbia. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Physiology at the University of Kentucky. The primary focus of his lab is to better understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms regulating skeletal muscle mass in response to exercise and with aging. Ongoing projects are investigating the role of satellite cells, the gut microbiome and muscle-specific microRNA miR-1 in hypertrophy, atrophy and aging. Dr. McCarthy’s research is primarily supported by funding from NIH.

Joost Lumens (Maastricht University, Netherlands)

Professor Joost Lumens is Full Professor of Computational Cardiology at the Cardiovascular Research Institute Maastricht (CARIM) of Maastricht University and chair of the CARIM Division Heart. His research bridges cardiovascular physiology and clinical cardiology through computational modeling and simulation technologies, developing multiscale approaches spanning subcellular mechanisms to electromechanical myocardial tissue function and whole-heart pump function.​ His team develops patient-specific cardiac Digital Twin solutions that reveal how cellular abnormalities manifest as clinical phenotypes in cardiovascular disease. This multiscale methodology enables mechanistic investigation from sarcomere-level perturbations to system-level cardiovascular function, facilitating experimental validation across biological scales.​ His laboratory developed and hosts the CircAdapt framework for cardiovascular simulation (www.circadapt.org), serving fundamental research and clinical decision support through computational modeling. Professor Lumens has established international recognition through leadership roles in cardiovascular societies (ESC) and editorial positions (European Heart Journal – Digital Health).

Matthew Stroud (King’s College London, UK)

Dr. Stroud’s research centre of interest lies in elucidating the mechanisms underlying alterations to nuclear shape and the nuclear envelope, which impact ageing and lead to inherited forms of skeletal and cardiac myopathy. He completed his Wellcome Trust-funded PhD in Molecular Cell Biology at the University of Manchester with Professors Christoph Ballestrem and Richard Kammerer (2010). Subsequently, he relocated to California to pursue NIH and AHA-funded Postdoctoral Fellowships in Cardiology at UC San Diego, where he with Professor Ju Chen. During his postdoctoral fellowship, he uncovered the pathophysiological functions of the LINC complex proteins, which link the nucleoskeleton to the cytoskeleton, and the inner nuclear membrane protein TMEM43.​ In 2016, Dr. Stroud established his independent laboratory within the BHF Centre of Research Excellence at King’s College London and was appointed as a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in 2023.​ Throughout his academic career, Dr. Stroud has received numerous accolades, including the Chancellor’s Award and the Schulman Prize during his tenure at UCSD (2015). In 2023, he was awarded the AHA’s Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award. Notably, one of his PhD students, Ed Battey, was recognised with the Early Investigator Prize from the Physiological Society for his groundbreaking paper, which elucidated the effects of exercise and ageing on skeletal muscle nuclei (2024).​ Dr. Stroud serves as the academic lead for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) at the BHF Centre at King’s. This role entails mentoring ECRs, organising ECR forums, and hosting an annual Fellows’ day that are designed to enhance research culture, foster diversity, and promote inclusion at King’s.

Sam Walcott (Worcester Polytechnic Institute,  USA)

​I received my undergraduate degree in Biology and my PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, both from Cornell University. I did my first postdoc with David Warshaw at the University of Vermont, performing measurements in the laser trap to understand smooth muscle regulation. I did my second postdoc with Sean Sun at Johns Hopkins, developing mathematical models for cell mechanosensation. I then became an independent investigator at UC Davis in the Department of Mathematics. I am currently at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. My primary research interest is using mathematical modeling to tie together experimental measurements of biological systems at the molecular, cellular, and larger scales.

Dieter Fürst (University of Bonn, Germany)

Studied Biology at the University of Salzburg (Austria) from 1978 till 1986. PhD thesis at the Institute for Molecular Biology (Austrian Academy of Sciences) under the supervision of Prof. J.V. Small (1981-1986). From 1986 till1989 Postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology in Göttingen (Germany) with Alexander von Humboldt- and Max Planck Society fellowships, under the auspicies of Prof. Klaus Weber. Senior scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology in Göttingen (Germany; 1989-1995). Habilitation in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the University of Salzburg (1993). Assistant Professor (C3) for "Cell Biology" at the Institute for Zoophysiology and Cell Biology, University of Potsdam (Germany; 1995-2004). Since 2004 Professor (C4) and Chair, Department of Molecular Cell Biology, Managing Director of the Institute for Cell Biology at the University of Bonn (Germany).

Vitold Galkin(Old Dominion University in Norfolk, USA)

​Dr. Vitold E. Galkin obtained his doctorate at the Institute of Cytology, Russian Academy of Sciences, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Virginia. In 2013, he joined the Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences at Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, USA, where he currently serves in the rank of Associate Professor. Dr. Galkin uses high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy and advanced image analysis techniques to elucidate the structural dynamics of the native cardiac thin filament and its partners (myosin and myosin binding protein C). His current work demonstrates that the thin filament works as a molecular machine comprised of an array of allosterically coupled protein subunits suited to maintain adequate sarcomere response to physiological calcium levels during a heartbeat.

Claudia Crocini (Charité Berlin)

​Claudia Crocini obtained her PhD at the University of Florence, where she applied advanced imaging techniques to investigate excitation-contraction coupling in heart failure and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. She completed her postdoctoral training in the Leinwand Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, studying sex differences in cardiac physiology, mechanisms of physiological hypertrophy, fibrosis, and nuclear mechanotransduction. In 2023, she established her independent research group at the Charité Berlin, focusing on cardiac mechanobiology and sex differences.

Mathias Gautel (King’s College London, UK)

​Mathias Gautel received his MD from Heidelberg University in 1991, and moved to EMBL Heidelberg as post-doctoral fellow, where he worked on titin for his habilitation in Biochemistry until 1998. After a Heisenberg fellowship at the Max-Planck-Institute Dortmund, he joined King’s College London in 2002. He is head of the School of Basic and Medical Biosciences and holds the British Heart Foundation Chair of Molecular Cardiology. He was awarded the International Society for Heart Research Outstanding Investigator Award in 2009 and is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. His work is centred on sarcomeric structure and mechanosignalling using structural, biophysical and cellular approaches. His team identified and characterised many novel sarcomeric components and mechanisms like cardiac myosin-binding protein-C, the giant protein obscurin, the regulatory mechanism of sarcomeric alpha-actinin. Recent interests are the pathomechanisms of missense mutations and the role of proteostasis in titin-linked myopathies and cardiomyopathies.

Leo Ferreira (Duke University, USA)

​Leo Ferreira, PT, PhD, is an Associate Professor in Orthopaedic Surgery, Pathology, and the Cardiovascular Research Center at Duke University School of Medicine. Previously, he was Professor and Vice-Chair in Applied Physiology & Kinesiology and Director of the Center of Exercise Science at the University of Florida. He received a physiotherapy degree from Universidade Estadual de Londrina (Brazil), a PhD from Kansas State University, and completed postdoctoral training at the Center for Muscle Biology at the University of Kentucky Medical School. At Duke University School of Medicine, Leo Ferreira directs the Basic and Clinical Muscle Biology and Rehabilitation laboratory. The scientific mission of the laboratory is to examine mechanisms and advance therapies for striated muscle abnormalities in disease and aging performing experiments spanning from individual cells to non-invasive studies in humans.

Thibaux van der Stede (VIB-UGent Center, Belgium)

​Thibaux Van der Stede completed his joint PhD in 2024 at Ghent University and the University of Copenhagen, working in the labs of Dr. Wim Derave and Dr. Ylva Hellsten. His research focused on the molecular adaptations of human skeletal muscle to exercise, employing advanced omics technologies to explore muscle fiber heterogeneity and cellular diversity in muscle. Currently, he is employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the VIB-UGent Center for Inflammation Research, working on the molecular immunology and inflammation of musculoskeletal diseases. His work bridges fundamental musculoskeletal biology with translational research, aiming to contribute to a better understanding of muscle physiology and its implications for health and disease.

Marco Linari (University of Florence, Italy)

Marco Linari, PhD, studies the molecular mechanisms of skeletal and cardiac muscle contraction. These goals are pursued through biophysical techniques applied to skeletal and cardiac muscle at different levels in the hierarchical organization of the contractile machinery. The mechano-chemistry and structural dynamics of the muscle molecular motor myosin II has been determined in situ, combining sarcomere-level mechanics and X-ray diffraction from synchrotron light (at the ESRF, Grenoble, France and APS, Argonne, USA) in single intact and demembranated cells from the most suitable animal models.More recently the same approach has been applied to study thin and thick filament-based regulation of muscle. A new regulatory system based on myosin filament mechano-sensing has been defined firsts in the intact skeletal muscle fibre of the frog and then in intact trabeculae of the cardiac ventricle of the rat. The same techniques are currently applied to investigate the role of titin in muscle function and disease.

Carol Gregorio (Mount Sinai, New York City, USA)

Carol Gregorio, PhD started at Mount Sinai in April 2023 as the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine, Senior Associate Dean for Basic Science, Founding Director for the Center for Cardiac Muscle Biology within the Cardiovascular Research Institute, and Vice-Chair for Strategic Innovation. Additionally, she is building a Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Care Center at Mount Sinai. Dr. Gregorio is an active member of several Editorial and Philanthropic Boards and is a chair/grant reviewer at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Gregorio is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Heart Association, and American Association for Anatomy. Dr. Gregorio runs a continuously-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) research program broadly focused on deciphering the cellular mechanisms involved in development and regulation of contractile proteins in healthy hearts and cardiomyopathy. Her research program spans the fields of Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Biophysics, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, and Genetics. She received her BS degree in Biological Sciences and a MA degree in Natural Sciences from the State University of New York at Buffalo, Subsequently, she received her Doctorate in Molecular Immunology from Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, NY and did her Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA.

Thomas Iskratsch (QMUL, London, UK)

Thomas Iskratsch is a Professor in Cardiovascular Mechanobiology and Bioengineering in the School of Engineering and Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London. His group specialises in mechanosensing mechanisms in the cardiovascular system. Thereby the research combines bioengineering (from cell mechanical measurements to micro and nanofabrication) with advanced imaging and image analysis, in order to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of the mechanical sensing and signalling. In addition to the research activities, he is committee member of the British Society of Cardiovascular Research and member of the leadership team (Cardiovascular theme lead and Industrial Engagement lead) of the Centre for Bioengineering and the Centre for Predictive in vitro models at Queen Mary University of London.

Isabelle Marty (Grenoble France)

​Isabelle Marty is INSERM Research Director, leader of the team “Cellular Myology and Pathologies” at Grenoble Institute of Neurosciences (France). Working for more than 30 years in the field of muscle biochemistry, muscle cell biology, and calcium release for muscle contraction, she has published more than 80 papers on the calcium release complex and its alterations, both in skeletal and in cardiac muscles. Her research interests are centered on the ryanodine receptor and its associated protein triadin. Her lab, gathering basic researchers and geneticists, focuses on the identification of pathophysiological mechanisms resulting of mutation in a protein of the calcium release complex. She is working on the development of therapies for central core disease patients with mutations in the ryanodine receptor gene. Both pharmacological and gene therapy approaches are studied in her team. She has provided recently the first experimental demonstration of benefit of some gene therapies for RYR1 mutations.

Katia Kontrogianni-Konstantopoulos (U Maryland,USA)

​Dr. Aikaterini Kontrogianni-Konstantopoulos received her PhD from Baylor College of Medicine. In 2007, she joined the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine as Assistant Professor and was promoted to Professor in 2017. Using the muscle and epithelial cells, her laboratory has pioneered the molecular and functional characterization of major cytoskeletal proteins in health and disease, ranging from myopathies to breast cancer. Her research has been continually funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), the American Heart Association (AHA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Kontrogianni-Konstantopoulos has received several awards, including the 2018 Dr. Patricia Sokolove Outstanding Mentor Award and the 2023 Teacher of the Year award. In addition to her roles as researcher and mentor, she serves as Director of the Interdisciplinary Training Program in Muscle Biology and the Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Graduate Program. Dr. Kontrogianni-Konstantopoulos has been a member of the AHA BCVS Council and has served or chaired AHA, MDA and NIH study sections.

Jorge Allegre Cebollada (National Institute for Cardiovascular Research, Spain)

​Bio: I earned my PhD in Biochemistry from Complutense University in 2008. Prompted by an interest in quantitative science, I trained in single-molecule biophysics and protein mechanics with Julio Fernandez at Columbia University. My independent research career started in 2014 at the National Institute for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) in Madrid, Spain. At that time, I felt that I was in a privileged position to build on the biochemical and biophysical concepts I had learned to build a research program to examine protein mechanics in biological context, including connections to human disease. Some years later, I was ready for the next step: developing and exploiting novel tools to study protein mechanics in living cells and animals, an idea that raised funding from the ERC-consolidator program in 2020. My presentation will show some the insights we are getting with these new methods.

Manuel Pioner (University of Florence, Italy)

​Josè Manuel Pioner (b. 26 January 1987, Bolzano-Bozen, Italy), PhD, is a tenure-track assistant professor in Physiology at the Department of Biology, University of Florence. He earned his PhD in Molecular Medicine from the University of Siena and trained at the University of Washington and the University of Cologne. His research focuses on cardiac muscle biophysics, with emphasis on human iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes and genetic models of hypertrophic and dystrophic cardiomyopathies. He has contributed to EU, Italian Ministry of Health, and Telethon-funded projects, coordinating advanced cell culture and precision medicine studies. Dr. Pioner has authored 28 peer-reviewed publications (Scopus ID: 57035436600) and received awards at international conferences. A member of the Biophysical Society, he collaborates with international institutions and mentors young researchers. He also lectures in general physiology and holds Italy’s National Scientific Habilitation for Associate Professorship.

Sandra de Haan (Leiden UMC, Netherlands)

Sandra de Haan is a postdoctoral researcher in Pietro Spitali’s Neuromuscular Disease Biomarker Group at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). She holds a PhD from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, and the National Institutes of Health, USA, with a strong background in developmental biology. Her doctoral research focused on Notch signaling (de Haan et al., Development, 2024) and transcriptome-based lineage tracing (de Haan et al., Science, 2025). Currently, Sandra employs advanced spatial transcriptomics to unravel the complex disease mechanisms underlying muscle pathologies, with a particular focus on inclusion body myositis (IBM). Her work aims to deepen understanding of the immune and degenerative processes in IBM and to identify novel therapeutic targets to address the unmet clinical needs of IBM patients.

Natalie Weber (Hannover Medical School, Germany)

​Dr. Natalie Weber, MD, PhD, is a cardiovascular researcher at Hannover Medical School (MHH) at the Institute of Molecular and Translational Therapeutic Strategies, specializing in heart diseases such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), heart failure, and other cardiac conditions. She obtained her MD and PhD at MHH in the department of Molecular and Cellular Physiology. She utilizes patient-specific stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes and living myocardial slices to investigate early disease mechanisms and cardiac remodeling in HCM, heart failure, and injury. Her recent work includes studies on allelic and contractile imbalance in early-stage HCM and the development of novel cardiac injury and fibrosis models using living myocardial slices. Dr. Weber also explores novel drug effects, including myosin inhibitors and SGLT2 inhibitors, in multiple myocardial models. Her findings have been published in leading journals such as Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, Basic Research in Cardiology, and the European Heart Journal. Recognized with the Young Investigator Award at the European Molecular Cardiology (EMC) conference, Dr. Weber is committed to advancing therapies that improve outcomes in complex cardiovascular diseases.

​Fabien Le Grand (Claude Bernard University, Lyon, France)

Fabien Le Grand is a French researcher in the field of muscle cell biology. He is Director of Research at the CNRS and Principal Investigator at the Claude Bernard University of Lyon. Dr. Le Grand obtained his Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of Nantes in 2004. He then went on to complete a postdoctoral fellowship at Ottawa University, where he worked on the role of the Wnt signaling pathway, before starting his own lab in Paris. Dr. Le Grand's research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that regulate muscle development, regeneration, and disease. He made significant contributions to our understanding of the roles and functions of satellite cells, the adult muscle stem cells. He also identified new signaling pathways and transcription factors that control satellite cell fate. In recent years, the Le Grand lab delved into single cell/nuclei analyses to study the muscle tissue in all its states.

Anthony Hessel (University of Münster, Germany)

Theresia Kraft (Hannover Medical School, Germany)

Theresia Kraft is Professor of Physiology at Hannover Medical School, Germany. During her PhD at Tübingen University with Professor Bernhard Brenner, she used skeletal muscle mechanics to study the role of weak-binding cross-bridge states during the force generating cycle. Her postdoc with Dr. Leepo Yu at NIH was focused on x-ray diffraction analysis of weak-binding acto-myosin complex conformation. In Hannover, she began to study the effects of missense mutations in the cardiac beta-myosin isoform in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). Her present focus is on pathomechanisms of HCM. Biomechanical analysis of cardiomyocyte function, transcriptional activity, mRNA and protein expression in human adult and stem cell derived cardiomyocytes are employed to address this. She and her group have evidence that burst like, stochastic and independent transcription of mutated and wildtype alleles cause unequal fractions of the respective wildtype and mutated protein from cell-to-cell, which may lead to contractile imbalance among cardiomyocytes in HCM.

Leonardo Nogara (University of Padova, Italy)

Dr. Leonardo Nogara is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Padua (Italy), working in the Muscle Contractility and Neuromuscular Plasticity unit. He has experience measuring muscle contractility at different scales, from in vivo murine models to ex vivo isolated muscle preparations, down to single muscle fibers mechanically isolated. His work centers on the Super Relaxed State (SRX) of myosin, the main skeletal muscle motor protein. Muscle tissue experiences about a 100-fold increase in metabolic load ranging from rest to active exercise; in this context, the SRX is a biochemical state evolved as an energy-saving mechanism. To explore the physiological and pathological effects of SRX modulation, he developed a single-fiber ATPase assay, which he applies to screen new compounds for the pharmacological modulation of basal metabolism and to biopsies of patients to evaluate myosin energy consumption in hypermetabolic or hypometabolic conditions.

Lykke Sylow (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

Lykke Sylow is an Associate Professor and group leader of the Molecular Metabolism in Cancer & Aging Group at the University of Copenhagen. With over 15 years of experience in muscle metabolism research, her focus is on understanding the molecular regulation of skeletal muscle adaptations in response to conditions of diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and the beneficial adaptations elicited by exercise. She aims to utilize her research on exercise adaptations to harness the positive effects of exercise on aging, diabetes, and cancer. She recently received the International Award by the Biochemical Society and the EFSD Novo Nordisk Foundation Future Leaders Award.

Jonne Doorduin (Radboud UMC, Netherlands)

Dr. Doorduin is a technical physician and assistant professor in Intensive Care at the Radboudumc in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is deeply passionate about the intricacies of breathing and an expert in respiratory (neuro)physiology, respiratory muscle ultrasound, medical technology and mechanical ventilation. In Nijmegen, he leads a research group on acute and chronic respiratory failure and mechanical ventilation, comprising multiple (international) PhD students and post-docs. Dr. Doorduin’ approach to respiratory failure is unique: he focuses on the interaction between the brain, muscles and lungs. He has conducted numerous physiological and clinical studies in the field of respiratory failure, critical illness, neuromuscular disorders and mechanical ventilation (>80 peer-reviewed publications). Dr Doorduin’ mission is to improve outcome for patients with respiratory failure. For his innovative ideas, he received the prestigious Academic Career award from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.