Prof Kokila Lakhoo

Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, University of Oxford

Prof Kokila Lakhoo is a consultant paediatric surgeon at the Children’s Hospital in Oxford and the University of Oxford. She is also Chair of the International Forum for the British Association of Paediatric Surgeons and the President of the Global Initiative for Children’s Surgery (GICS). She is developing paediatric surgery through a link in Tanzania and has collaborative research projects in Malawi and South Africa. Besides general paediatric surgery and ambulatory surgery, her special interests are global health, fetal counselling, neonatal surgery, paediatric tumour surgery, paediatric thoracic surgery and specialist gastrointestinal surgery.

Prof Thomas Erb

University Children's Hospital Basel

Prof Thomas Erb completed his medical training with board examinations in anaesthesiology and critical care. Subsequently, he moved to Durham, North Carolina, USA, where he worked in the Pediatric Cardiology Program at Duke University. There, he also obtained a master of health sciences in clinical research. Returning to Switzerland in 2000, Prof Erb started his clinical research programme in the Department of Anaesthesiology at the University of Basel and University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB). In 2010, he became Titular Professor of Anaesthesiology, and in 2011 he was made Head of the Division of Paediatric Anaesthesia at UKBB. His clinical interests and research are focused on the effects of anaesthetic conditions on airway and lung mechanics in children. He is currently leading the BRCCH-funded COVent project aiming to develop practical solutions that reduce the risks associated with the use of mechanical ventilation, especially those associated with low-cost/do-it-yourself ventilators and off-label use that are now available in many resource-limited settings.

Dr Marianne Schmid Daners

Institute of Design, Materials and Fabrication, ETH Zurich

Dr Marianne Schmid Daners graduated from ETH Zurich as a mechanical engineer. She then completed her doctorate on the topic of “Adaptive Shunts for Cerebrospinal Fluid Control” at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control. Dr Schmid Daners heads the institute’s Biomedical Systems Group as a senior scientist. At the interdisciplinary interface of clinical research and engineering, her passion is the pathophysiological understanding of the dynamics of the intracranial and cardiovascular systems. Her research focuses on the modelling, control and testing of biological systems, as well as on the development and control of biomedical devices for the treatment of heart failure and hydrocephalus.