Minna Kaikkonen-Määttä was born in 1980 in Kiuruvesi, Finland. She obtained her Bachelor's degree from the Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 in 2002 and Master’s degree from University of Jyväskylä in 2005. She obtained her PhD in Molecular Medicine under the supervision of Prof. Seppo Ylä-Herttuala in Kuopio in 2008. She did her postdoctoral studies with Prof. Christopher Glass at UCSD in 2009-2012. She started her own lab in 2015 at the University of Eastern Finland with a focus on gene and cell level understanding of atherosclerosis. A combination of cellular and genetic model systems, single-cell transcriptomics and epigenetics, high-throughput functional genomics techniques and bioinformatics are used to unravel the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to disease. Currently she is a Professor in Cardiovascular Genomics and runs a lab of 20 members while acting as a Vice Director of the A.I.Virtanen Institute and a Director of the Single Cell Genomics Core. She has published 95 articles with ~5000 citations (H-index 32). She has received over 5 million in research funding (e.g. ERC and Academy of Finland). She is the President of the Finnish Society of Atherosclerosis and member of the board of EVBO, SSAR, and Membership Engagement Committee of the AJHG.

Dr. Sekar Kathiresan is co-founder and CEO of Verve Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new approach to the care of cardiovascular disease, transforming treatment from chronic management to single-course gene editing medicines. Dr. Kathiresan is a cardiologist and scientist who has focused his career on understanding the inherited basis for heart attack and leveraging those insights to improve the care of cardiovascular disease. Based on his groundbreaking discoveries in human genetic mutations that confer resistance to cardiovascular disease, Dr. Kathiresan co-founded Verve Therapeutics with a vision to create a pipeline of single-course, gene editing therapies focused on addressing the root causes of this highly prevalent and life-threatening disease. Today, Verve is advancing two initial programs that target PCSK9 and ANGPTL3, respectively – genes that have been extensively validated by Dr. Kathiresan and others as targets for lowering blood lipids, such as low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, which is a major driver of cardiovascular disease. Prior to joining Verve, Dr. Kathiresan’s roles included director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Genomic Medicine, director of the Cardiovascular Disease Initiative at the Broad Institute and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. There, Dr. Kathiresan’s research laboratory focused on understanding the inherited basis for blood lipids and myocardial infarction. For his research contributions, he has been recognized by the American Heart Association with its highest scientific honor - a Distinguished Scientist Award and by the American Society of Human Genetics with the 2018 Curt Stern Award. Dr. Kathiresan graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in history from the University of Pennsylvania and received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and cardiology at MGH and his postdoctoral research training in human genetics at the Framingham Heart Study and the Broad Institute.

Maryam Kavousi MD PhD is Associate Professor and Principal Investigator of Cardiometabolic Epidemiology at Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Her research involves primary prevention of cardiometabolic disorders with an emphasis on sex and gender differences; covering the course from an asymptomatic phase, to advent of sub-clinical disease, to overt disease. She has received numerous grants, awards, and honors for her scientific and educational contributions to sex- and gender-specific cardiovascular prevention. Maryam Kavousi is member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is currently chair of the Population Science and Public Health Section of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC).