PROF. ELISABETH DE WAELE, BELGIUM,
GETTING NUTRITION RIGHT: WHY EARLY AND CONTINUOUS CARE MATTERS
Medical Director, Intensive Care Department and Associate Professor at Vrije Universiteit.
Head of Clinical Nutrition Department, Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel, Belgium.
PROF. ARTHUR VAN ZANTEN, THE NETHERLANDS
BEST PRACTICE MADE EASY: EARLY ENTERAL NUTRITION IN THE ICU AND BEYOND
Chair of the Department of Intensive Care, Gelderse Vallei Hospital, Ede, the Netherlands
PROF. PAUL WISCHMEYER, THE USA
CHANGE MANAGEMENT: THE POWER OF SIMPLICITY AND SMALL INCREMENTAL STEPS
Professor of Anesthesiology, Professor in the Department of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine, the USA
“THE SILENT BURDEN OF INFLAMMATION IN CANCER: TIME FOR EARLY AND TAILORED ACTION”
“BRIDGING MALNUTRITION AND FRAILTY CARE: EMBEDDING NUTRITION IN GERIATRIC PRACTICE”
“EASY EARLY ENTERAL NUTRITION: WHY, WHAT TO USE AND HOW”
“FROM ICU TO HOME: TRANSLATING EVIDENCE INTO CONTINUOUS NUTRITIONAL CARE”
“MIND THE GUT: ENTERAL NUTRITION AND IT’S SUPPORT TO THE GI TRACT”
Elisabeth De Waele is head of the 2021 newly created Department of Clinical Nutrition at Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel which unites medical doctors, dietitians, pharmacists and nurses who take care of hospitalized and ambulatory patients challenged by nutritional and metabolic issues. She is Medical Director of the Intensive Care Department and Associate Professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Erasmus Hogeschool Brussel teaching medical students, pharmacists and dietitians in training.
Since 2018 she is Member of the Executive Board of the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism. She is an active member of the Metabolism and Nutrition Section of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine and Member of the Faculty of the International Symposium on Intensive Care & Emergency Medicine.
She graduated with great distinction from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 2004, completed postgraduate training in general surgery in 2010 and became a certified Intensive Care Physician in 2012. In 2008 she obtained a Bachelor diploma in Clinical Nutrition (Odisee Graduate School).
Her scientific work is focused on clinical research in metabolism and nutrition in critically ill, cancer and surgical patients and resulted in a PhD Thesis entitled “Energy Expenditure and Nutritional Therapy in Critically ill Patients” in 2015. She acts as a principal investigator in 9 studies and numerous times as a co-investigator.
Professor De Waele has published 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has an extended experience in lecturing live and virtual at international and national symposia (over 100 performances) and also dedicates here time to communicate to a non-medical audience on different topics (more than 60 press contacts in 2020). She is member of ISICEM, ESICM, ESPEN, SIZ and reviewer for several high-end peer-reviewed medical journals.
Prof. van Zanten holds the position of Medical Advisor at the Hospital Executive Board and is responsible for Quality and Safety, Acute and Complex Care, and Nutrition, Sports, and Exercise.Dr van Zanten graduated from the Medical School of the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1988. After training in Internal Medicine in Rotterdam, he followed a fellowship in Intensive Care Medicine, at the Academic Medical Center of the University of Amsterdam.
In 2008, Dr van Zanten successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at the Free University of Amsterdam on Infectious Complications in Critically Ill Patients, with a particular focus on clinical, pharmacological and economic aspects.
He was involved in the organizational aspects of Dutch Intensive Care for many years and served as Secretary of the Executive Board of the Netherlands Society of Intensive Care Medicine (NVIC) and Council member of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM). He chaired Fundamental Critical Care Support (FCCS) the Netherlands for many years. He was President of the NVIC Committee on Intensive Care Quality. He also was Co-Chair of guideline programs on ICU organization in the Netherlands and lead the Surviving Sepsis Campaign in The Netherlands.
He was Managing Editor of the Netherlands Journal of Critical Care for ten years. He is a reviewer for numerous journals such as Lancet, Am J Resp Crit Care Med, Crit Care, Intensive Care Med, JPEN, and Clin Nutr. He has organized over 150 medical congresses. In recent years, his interest has moved towards critical care nutrition with particular interest in immune modulating nutrition, protein needs and timing, mitochondrial dysfunction and refeeding syndrome. He is a lecturer at the Wageningen University for Clinical Nutrition Research. He is a member of the Working Group on Gastrointestinal Failure of the ESICM and the Practice Guideline Committee of ESPEN for Critical Care Nutrition for adults and member of the board of NESPEN.
In the period 2011-2018 he gave more than 200 lectures on Critical Care Nutrition and Sepsis in 27 countries. Among these, he was an invited keynote speaker at meetings of ESPEN, ASPEN, ISICEM, ESICM, BRASPEN, DAPEN, CSPEN, CSCCM and the Middle-East ICU Nutrition Summit.
Prof. Paul Wischmeyer is a nutrition, exercise, critical care, and perioperative physician-researcher who specializes in enhancing preparation and recovery from surgery, critical care and COVID-19. He serves as a Tenured Professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery at Duke. He also serves as the Associate Vice Chair for Clinical Research in the Department of Anesthesiology and Director of the TPN/Nutrition Team at Duke. Dr. Wischmeyer earned his medical degree with honors at The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, where he was elected into the honor society of Alpha Omega Alpha for outstanding academic achievement. He completed his pediatric internship at University of Colorado Children’s Hospital and his anesthesiology/critical care residency training at the University of Chicago. He also completed a Clinical Pharmacology fellowship and the NIH K30 Clinical Research Scientist Training Program while at University of Chicago.
Dr. Wischmeyer’s clinical and research focus is in critical care, perioperative care exercise, and nutrition to help patients prepare and recover from illness and surgery. His research interests include surgical and ICU nutrition and exercise rehabilitation; role of parenteral, enteral, and oral nutrition to improve patient outcomes; perioperative optimization; post-illness muscle mass and functional recovery; and probiotics/microbiome. His research interests have also recently been focused on COVID-19 research into COVID-19 metabolism, role of probiotics in COVID19 prevention and treatment, and exercise and nutrition programs to recover from COVID-19 and Long COVID-19. Dr. Wischmeyer’s research group has been awarded multiple NIH, DOD, and other peer reviewed grants to perform research ranging from basic mechanistic cell work to large-scale multi-center clinical trials in the fields of critical care, perioperative medicine, nutrition, illness metabolism, microbiome/probiotics, and exercise interventions to improve functional outcomes. For his research work and clinical work, Dr. Wischmeyer has received numerous awards from national and international societies including, The Jeffrey Silverstein Award and Memorial Lecture for Humanism in Medicine from the American Delirium Society, The John M. Kinney Award for the most significant contribution to field of general nutrition, the Stanley Dudrick Research Scholar Award and the 2025 Bruce Bistrian Award for Clinical Nutrition Mentorship by the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition and The Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Parenteral Nutrition Society (IPENEMA) for significant contributions to the field of nutrition. Dr. Wischmeyer has over 250 peer-reviewed publications in critical care, anesthesiology, and nutrition, including in the New England Journal of Medicine. Finally, he has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international medical meetings delivering over 1000 invited presentations over his career. He has an H-index of 77 with over 20,000 citations to his work, including 1 publication with > 1000 citations and >60 publications with > 100 citations. He is also the founder and co-director of the Duke Online Clinical Nutrition Fellowship, an international fellowship to provide clinical nutrition training to healthcare providers worldwide, as well as unique scholarship opportunities for healthcare providers in developing nations.
Dr. Wischmeyer passion for helping patients recover from illness and surgery arises from his personal experiences as both doctor and patient in the ICU. Dr. Wischmeyer has undergone over 27 major surgeries and personally experienced multiple ICU stays due to a childhood GI illness that took more than half of his intestinal tract. Thus, preparation for surgery/critical care and recovery from illness are a way of life for Dr. Wischmeyer that he is passionate about teaching his patients and other caregivers worldwide.
Prof. Alessandro Laviano, MD, is associate professor of Internal Medicine at the Department of Translational and Precision Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Dr. Laviano is Chief, Clinical Nutrition Unit at Sant’Andrea University Hospital in Rome, Italy. Dr. Laviano’s main research interest is the prevention and treatment of disease-associated malnutrition, and particularly cancer anorexia-cachexia, as well as the impact of biological aging in longevity and healthy aging.
Dr. Laviano is serving within the central committees of the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) as Coordinator of the Supervisory Board of the nutritionDay project, and Coordinator of the ESPEN Cancer Task Force. Dr. Laviano is currently Editor in Chief of Human Nutrition and Metabolism and Associate Editor of Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle. Dr. Laviano has >340 publications in international peer reviewed journals (source: Scopus, accessed April 2026), with a H-index: 70 (source: Scopus, accessed April 2026). Dr. Laviano is listed top 2% all-time scientists in the Stanford-Elsevier ranking list, and top 1% all-time researcher in the area of cachexia according to scienceleadr.com. Dr. Laviano is the host of a series of video-pills on scientific evidence, i.e., “The Odd Drop of Wisdom”, posted on Linkedin, Facebook and Instagram.
Prof. Alfonso Cruz‑Jentoft is a Founder and Past President of the European Geriatric Medicine Society, he is currently Editor-in-Chief of European Geriatric Medicine, the official journal of the society. He is member of the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain and part of the WHO Clinical Consortium on Healthy Ageing.
He is an international leader in sarcopenia, geriatric nutrition, and frailty. He coordinated the European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP), establishing the world’s most widely used definitions and diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia, and currently chairs the Global Leadership in Sarcopenia (GLIS), advancing understanding of both acute and chronic sarcopenia. He is also part of the SOGLI initiative on sarcopenic obesity. His work strongly integrates nutrition—particularly protein intake—into strategies to prevent frailty, disability, and functional decline, and he has contributed to major international initiatives such as the MaNuEl project on malnutrition in older adults. He has also played a key role in multimodal intervention trials (e.g. SPRINT‑T) combining nutrition, exercise, and technology to preserve mobility. Beyond research, Prof. Cruz‑Jentoft is a major leader in geriatric education and policy, His work is firmly focused on translating evidence into everyday clinical practice to improve outcomes for older adults.
Harriët Jager-Wittenaar is Professor of Malnutrition and Healthy Ageing within the Research Group Healthy Ageing, Allied Health Care and Nursing, at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences, and Professor of Dietetics and transitional nutritional care at the Radboud university medical center, the Netherlands. Moreover, she is Guest Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium.
Within her research programs, prof. dr. Harriët Jager-Wittenaar focuses on proactive prevention and treatment of malnutrition in patients and older adults, in order to increase people's healthy life years, quality of life and participation in society. Main research themes are: Valuable dietetics, Interprofessional collaboration and Transitional nutritional care.
Prof. dr. Harriët Jager-Wittenaar is a national and international leader in the field of malnutrition and also a much sought-after speaker. From 2017 to 2021, she led the European Specialist Dietetic Network on Older Adults within the European Federation of Associations of Dietitians (EFAD) and then led the EFAD-ESPEN Working Group within EFAD from 2021 to 2023. She is currently co-leader of the Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) Risk of Malnutrition Working Group, co-leader of the GLIM Implementation Working Group, and member of the Global Leadership Initiative on Nutritional Therapy and Support. In addition, she is co-developer of the ESPEN LLL Course Nutrition Support in Cancer.
As an ESPEN-certified Teacher, she is actively involved in education in clinical nutrition and metabolism. From 2015 to 2022, she served as Director of the Polish School of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism, leading educational and practical training programmes in nutritional therapy for physicians across multiple specialties.
She is the author and co-author of numerous national and international scientific publications, clinical guidelines, and expert recommendations in clinical nutrition, including standards in enteral and parenteral nutrition. She also co-authored the Polish edition of Basics in Clinical Nutrition.
Her main clinical and research interests include clinical nutrition and metabolism, gastroenterology, gut microbiota, and the comprehensive management of patients requiring enteral and parenteral nutritional support.
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