Professor (Emer.) Yehuda Shoenfeld, MD, FRCP, MaACR, Reichman University , Herx zeliya, Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases, Chaim Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer. Reichman University, Israel.Yehuda Shoenfeld is the founder and head of the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases, at the Sheba Medical Center, which is affiliated to the Sackler Faculty of Medicine in Tel-Aviv University, in Israel. Professor Shoenfeld is also the past Incumbent of the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair for Research of Autoimmune Diseases at the Tel-Aviv University. Professor Shoenfeld’s clinical and scientific works focus on autoimmune and rheumatic diseases, and he has published more than 2230 papers in journals such as New Eng J Med, Nature, Lancet, Proc Nat Acad Scie, J Clin Invest, J. Immunol, Blood, FASEB, J Exp Med, Circulation, Cancer, and others. His articles have had over 130,000 citations. (H index 130). He has written more than 400 chapters in books, and has authored and edited 35 books, some of which became cornerstones in science and clinical practice, such as "The Mosaic of Autoimmunity", "Infections and Autoimmunity" and the textbooks "Autoantibodies", "Diagnostic criteria of autoimmune diseases", "Covid, Autoimmunity and Post Covid", all of which were published by Elsevier and sold thousands of copies. Professor Shoenfeld is on the editorial boards of 43 journals in the field of rheumatology and autoimmunity and is the founder and the editor of the IMAJ (Israel Medical Association Journal) the representative journal of science and medicine in the English language in Israel, and also is the founder and Editor of Autoimmunity Reviews (Elsevier) (Impact factor 17.3) and co-Editor of the Journal of Autoimmunity (Impact factor 13,3). For the past twenty years he has been the Editor of “Harefuah” – The Israel journal in medicine (Hebrew). Professor Shoenfeld received the EULAR prize in 2005, in Vienna, Austria: "The infectious etiology of anti-phospholipid syndrome", and received a gold medal from the Slovak Society of Physicians for his contribution to Israel – Slovakia collaboration (March 2006). He is also an honorary member of the Hungarian Association of Rheumatology and the Royal Society of Physicians (UK). In UC Davis, USA, Professor Shoenfeld received the Nelson's Prize for Humanity and Science for 2008. In 2009 he was honored as Doctoris Honoris Causa, from Debrecen University (Hungary), UHASSELT University, the Netherlands and Ljubljana University in Slovenia, and from 2009 he is honorary member of the Slovenian National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded a Life Contribution Prize in Internal Medicine in Israel, 2012, as well as in Europe (Athens 2023) - Life contribution prize (EFIM) in Internal medicine, as well as the ACR Master Award (USA) in 2013. In 2019 YS was elected for the Israeli Academy of Sciences. He acted as the President of the University Ariel (2020-2022). From 2023 he is Professor of medicine, head of research office, in Reichman University, Herzelia, Israel. Professor Shoenfeld has educated a long list of students >70 becoming Professors and heads of departments and institutes.Dr. Ricard Cervera, MD, PhD is Senior Consultant and Head at the Department of Autoimmune Diseases, Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Director of the Research Group on Systemic Autoimmune Diseases at the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS) of Barcelona, Professor and Director of the UB-GSK Chair on Autoimmune Diseases, Coordinator of the Masters’ on Autoimmune Diseases and Academic Vice-Dean at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona (UB), Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.Dr. Cervera is founder member and Executive Board member of the European Lupus Society and the Spanish Society of Systemic Autoimmune Diseases as well as member of the Catalan, Spanish and International Societies of Internal Medicine, the Spanish Society of Rheumatology and the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR), Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (FRCP) of London, and Honorary Member of the Argentinian, Mexican, Peruvian, Equatorian, Colombian, Slovak and Hungarian Societies of Rheumatology, and the Society of Clinical Immunology of the Community of Madrid. He is past-coordinator of the European Working Party on Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (Euro-Lupus Group) (1990-2008) and the European Forum on Antiphospholipid Antibodies (2009-2017) and founder member of the Lupus Academy. He has been the chairman of the 6th, 8th and 11th International Congresses on Autoimmunity, the 1st, 2nd and 5th Latin-American Congresses on Autoimmunity, the 5th Meeting of the European Forum on Antiphospholipid Antibodies and the 8th European Lupus Congress. Among other awards, he has received the Prizes of the "5th European Conference on Systemic Lupus Erythematosus", EULAR 2003 and EULAR 2005 and the Award to the Professional Excellence of the College of Physicians of Barcelona - 2014. In 2019, he was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción, Paraguay.Dr. Gerard Espinosa (MD PhD) is a Consultant Staff at the Department of Autoimmune Diseases, Hospital Clinic, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, and Accredited Researcher (R3A) at the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi I Sunyer (IDIBAPS). He is also currently Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Barcelona and Academic Affairs Director of Hospital Clinic. He obtained his PhD degree in 2003 from the University of Barcelona for his thesis on thrombotic mechanisms in antiphospholipid syndrome and vasculitis. Over the last 20 years, Dr. Espinosa has investigated systemic autoimmune diseases, focusing on antiphospholipid syndrome and its catastrophic variant, systemic lupus erythematosus and its renal involvement, Behçet’s disease, and systemic sclerosis. He is currently the coordinator of the High-Risk Pregnancy clinic for women with autoimmune diseases and the multidisciplinary Lupus Nephritis clinic. Dr. Gerard Espinosa has published 342 peer-reviewed papers and 58 book chapters. Dr. Eric Gershwin is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine at UC Davis. He was the first scientist to clone the gene that produces the autoantigen involved in the anti-mitochondrial antibody test for patients with Primary Biliary Cholangitis. He is an expert on the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune disease and has been continuously funded by NIH for nearly 50 years. Dr. Gershwin is also a consultant for multiple federal agencies and has worked with NIH, FTC, FDA, USAID, and USDA. Dr. Gershwin is a world expert on the role of environment and autoimmunity and the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Autoimmunity. Dr. Gershwin graduated from Stanford Medical School and did his residency in internal medicine at the Tufts-New England Medical Center. He trained in immunology at the National Institutes of Health and joined the faculty of the University of California at Davis in 1975. Dr. Gershwin founded the Clinical Immunology Program at UC Davis in 1977. He has authored over 1000 experimental papers and more than 20 books and has been cited in the peer-review literature nearly 100,000 times.
