Speakers

Prof. Robin Christensen 

Biostatistician Robin Christensen, BSc, MSc, PhD is a Professor of Biostatistics and Clinical Epidemiology at the Department of Clinical Research, at the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Southern Denmark, and he is also a founding member of Section for Biostatistics and Evidence-Based Research at the Parker Institute, Bispebjerg and Frederiksberg Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark. Professor Christensen work with a broad field of biostatistical methods in medical research. The field covers a range of clinical epidemiological problems, where inference from meta-research, study designs, decision making processes, statistical analysis plans, use and misuse of statistics, and transparency dominate. He states that he “has a passion for meaningful, accurate studies that address answerable questions”, owing a great debt of gratitude to a long history of distinguished founding fathers of clinical epidemiology, who highlighted the need for strengthening the empirical practice of medicine and proposed initial evidentiary rules for guiding clinical decisions. Professor Christensen works internationally as a biostatistics editor for the Cochrane Collaboration, as well as a member of the ’Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation’ (GRADE) Working Group, the ’Outcome Measures in Rheumatology’ (OMERACT) and was part of the establishment of the ’International Dermatology Outcome Measures’ (IDEOM) initiative. In the fall of 2017, he was invited to become a founding member of the ‘Technical Advisory Group’ (TAG) in OMERACT; the global role of the OMERACT TAG is to collaborate and critically appraise submitted documentation from various working groups on the choice of outcome measures.

Prof. Tuhina Neogi

Dr. Tuhina Neogi is Professor of Medicine and of Epidemiology at Boston University Schools of Medicine and of Public Health, the endowed Alan S. Cohen Professor of Rheumatology, and Chief of Rheumatology at Boston Medical Center. As a rheumatologist and PhD-trained epidemiologist, her research focuses on osteoarthritis and gout, with a particular focus on pain mechanisms in recent years. She is a past chair of the FDA Arthritis Advisory Committee, serves or has served on the boards of international societies (Crystal-Associated Diseases Network (G-CAN), Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI)), and on committees for the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and International Association for the Study Pain (IASP), among others. Her work was recognized with the 2014 ACR Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award for outstanding and promising independent contributions to rheumatology research, the 2022 OARSI Clinical Research Award in recognition of her contributions to osteoarthritis research, and an honorary doctorate from Lund University in Sweden. She has led or engaged in development of new classification criteria for a number of rheumatic diseases, and has led national ACR treatment guidelines for gout and osteoarthritis. In addition to research and clinical care, Dr. Neogi mentors early stage researchers. In recognition for her mentoring excellence, she was awarded the 2016 Robert Dawson Evans Research Mentoring Award.

Assoc Prof. Marinka Twilt

Dr Marinka Twilt received her Medical School training in the Netherlands at the Erasmus University. After medical school she proceeded in obtaining her MSc Clinical epidemiology and her PhD at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam before her residency in pediatrics at the Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden. Dr Twilt moved to Canada to perform her pediatric rheumatology training at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Before joining the Alberta Children’s Hospital and University of Calgary as a clinician scientist in 2015, Dr Twilt worked at the Birmingham Children's Hospital in Birmingham, UK and Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus Denmark. Dr Twilt has numerous publications in the field of TMJ arthritis and co-leads the international TMJ juvenile arthritis working (TMJaw) group. Dr Twilt is active in the CARRA registry as a past CARRA registry Associate and current director of the CARRA associate Program, JIA committee Chair and co-lead for the inactive disease working group. Dr Twilt’s research interests are in JIA-associated TMJ arthritis and precision medicine.

Prof. Kenneth J. Warrington