Ilona Obara is a Reader in Pain Pharmacology and Neuroscience and Director of Research in the School of Pharmacy at the Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. She received an MSc in Biology from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (2000) and earned a PhD in Medical Sciences (with distinction) from the Institute of Pharmacology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow, Poland (2007). She then conducted post-doctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA (2007-2009), at the University College London, London, UK (2009-2012) and at the University of Leeds, Leeds, UK (2012). In 2012, she joined the faculty at the Durham University, Durham, UK and moved to the Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK in 2017. Her studies employ a combination of pharmacological, behavioural and immunochemical approaches in the understanding of cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying neuroplasticity induced by nerve/tissue injury in chronic pain. Currently on-going projects focus on the understanding of the contribution of the peripheral histamine system in the regulation of neuropathic pain as well as she is interested in the development of pre-clinical models of spinal cord stimulation and chronic pain to identify novel stimulation methods for rodents that would better reproduce clinical SCS procedures.

Prof. Occhigrossi is Head of the Pain Therapy Unit at San Giovanni Addolorata Hospital (AO San Giovanni Addolorata). For the last 30 years, Prof. Occhigrossi has been in practice in the areas of Anesthesiology, Critical Care, and Pain Medicine.