Dr. Jean-Pierre Van Buyten MD, PhD. °1954 is currently the Chairman of The Multidisciplinary Pain Management Center in VITAZ Hospital in Sint-Niklaas Belgium and consultant Pain Management at the Neuro Rehabilitation center TrainM/ BrainM Antwerp. He is the Pricipal Scientist and co-founder of Man & Science, a company developing medical devices for Headache and facial pain. He is a founding member of the BENELUX Chapter of International Neuromodulation Society, chairman of the executive board of the European Continuing Medical Training, a non-profit organization which organizes more than 40 meetings and workshops per year for education in the field of neuromodulation in EU. He is also a member of the Belgian Pain Society, and founding member, Past President and currently member of the board of VAVP (Vlaamse Anesthesiologische Vereniging voor Pijnbestrijding). Dr. JP Van Buyten is an active researcher in the field of neuromodulation and pain management for many decades and has published number of scientific publications in many scientific journals, His PhD thesis was on ganglion stimulation in chronic pain. He serves in many advisory boards of Medical device companies. Dr. JP Van Buyten is lecturing on Pain Management in most of the international congress’s all over the globe.

Simone graduated from Nursing school at School voor Gezondheidszorg Rotterdam. After she started working as a nurse at the Burn centre Rotterdam She started the study Social Pedagogic Worker and obtained her Bachelor degree. Started working at the Center for Pain Medicine and spasticity in Rotterdam. In 2008 she obtained her Master degree in Advanced Nursing Practice. Simone was given the opportunity to start as PhD-student at the Center for Pain Medicine, Erasmus mc, with Prof dr. F.J.P.M Huygen as her promotor and Dr. S.G.P Frankema as her copromotor. She combined her PhD research with her work as a nurse practitioner at the Ambulant Care Clinic Care4homecare.

Audrey Van Scharen, graduated Master in Political Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2008). While working at science communication department of the research department (RD)at Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) from 2010 to 2018, she obtained her Master in Laws. While studying Law she got the opportunity to create the Ethics in research department at the VUB. She followed the growth and importance Belgian, European and international funding organizations and publishers gave in responsible research: legal compliance, ethics principles, scientific integrity and transparency in research. While working at the research department of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She noticed researchers had a lot of questions on the use of data. She decided to obtain a Data Protection Officer (DPO) certificate. The awareness on privacy legislation in research was low at that time, but she noticed the change (for the good or the bad(?)) the GDPR brought with its creation in 2016. Given her experience in data protection she started the implementation process for the GDPR at the VUB. Currently she is still a DPO for the National Belgian Council of Doctors and the National Belgian Council of Pharmacists in Belgium, where she advises on the use of health data in both professional orders. In the University Hospital Brussels, she is the Manager in Ethics and Research. She obtained that function after several years being a member of the medical ethics committee of the UZ Brussels (2015 - today). Currently vice-president of the Medical Ethics Committee University Hospital/VUB and vice-chair of the Health Ethics Committee of the University Hospital Brussels, she is still very close to the essential question researchers and healthcare professionals have in their legal and ethics compliance while preforming their professional activities. In the past years she noticed health care is confronting new challenges in ethics and legal compliance with the fast-growing technological possibilities in medical devices and data driven solutions. She chairs the Medical Device Framework Board of the University Hospital, advising on the implementation of the Medical Device Regulation, the In-Vitro Diagnostics Regulation, and the AI act. As an affiliated Professor to the Faculty of Health and Pharmacy of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, she teaches Bioethics, Ethics in research and Ethics in Health Management and Policy where she aims to transfer her knowledge she gathers in daily practice to the students. Drawing on her practical experience in the field on ethics evaluations and the application of the CTR, GDPR, MDR, IVDR she started a PhD on the topic: “The sense and nonsense of Ethics Committees in health care" On the one side she will look at the focus of Belgian research ethics committees in an ethics review of innovative (bio)medical research and on the other side she will propose a best practice for the creation of ethics consultancy in healthcare in the University Hospital. She works on her PhD under supervision of Prof. dr. Pieter Cornu, Prof. dr. Maarten Moens, Prof. Dr. Michel Deneyer at the faculty of health of the VUB.

1987 - 1993 Medical School, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany 1993 final practical training at Brown-University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA and Kantonsspital Frauenfeld, Switzerland 1993–1995 Internship at the Neurosurgical Department, Friedrichshain Hospital, Berlin, Germany 1995 - 2000 Residency in Neurosurgery, Department of Neurosurgery, Benjamin Franklin Medical Center, Free University of Berlin (Director: Prof.Dr.med.Dr.h.c. Mario Brock) 1993 Doctoral degree (Dr.med.) by the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany 2000 Board Certification for Neurosurgery 2000–2002 Board certified Neurosurgeon, Department of Neurosurgery, Benjamin Franklin Medical Center, Free University of Berlin (Director: Prof.Dr.med.Dr.h.c. Mario Brock) 2000-2003 Associate Professor for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, Department of Neurosurgery, Benjamin Franklin Medical Center, Free University of Berlin (Director: Prof.Dr.med.Dr.h.c. Mario Brock) 2003-2007 Associate Professor for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, Department of Stereotaxy, Neurocenter, University Clinic Freiburg, (Director: Prof. Dr. med. C.B. Ostertag) 2004 venia legendi, (PhD) Charité, Berlin 2007-2012 Full Professorship for Functional Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, University Clinic, Duesseldorf Since 2012 Full Professorship for Functional Neurosurgery and Stereotaxy, University Clinic, Head of the Center of Neuromodulation, Düsseldorf, Germany Since 2017 Head of Dept. of Functional Neurosurgery and Stereotaxy International Neuromodulation Society (INS): board member, secretary Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neuromodulation (DGNM): Vice-president, past president American Association of Neurosurgeons (AANS), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (DGNC), European Association of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery (ESSFN), German working group for Deep Brain Stimulation,

Jens Volkmann is full professor and chairman of the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital Würzburg, Germany. He is an internationally renowned movement disorder specialist with an extensive scientific record in the field of movement disorder pathophysiology and deep brain stimulation therapy. He has planned and executed several seminal studies on deep brain stimulation in Parkinson’s disease, tremor and dystonia, which have helped to establish level I evidence for this therapy. He is responsible for the dystonia treatment guidelines of the German Neurological Association. He coordinates or serves on the board of several national and European research consortia such as ERANet-Neuron (Eurdyscover), SFB-TRR 295 “Retune” or DYSTRACT (German dystonia research network). He is past president of the German Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders society, co-founder of the German Parkinson Foundation, past president of the German Society for Clinical Neurophysiology and active member of the International Movement Disorder Society. Dr. Volkmann graduated in medicine at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf in 1993 and received a doctoral degree in medical sciences in 1995. For his doctoral research Dr. Volkmann studied central oscillations related to parkinsonian resting tremor using magnetoencephalography. This work was conducted as visiting researcher in the laboratory of Prof. Rodolfo Llinás at the Department of Physiology of New York University from 1991 to 1993. From 1994 to 2001 Dr. Volkmann trained in neurology and psychiatry at Heinrich-Heine-University Hospital, Düsseldorf, and worked in several research projects related to the pathophysiology of movement disorders. He was among the first neurologists in Germany to start a program for deep brain stimulation in movement disorders in collaboration with Prof. Volker Sturm at the Department of Stereotaxy and Functional Neurosurgery of Cologne University in 1995. He continued this work during an appointment as associate professor of neurology at Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Germany from 2001 to 2010, where he worked with Prof. Günther Deuschl on several larger clinical trials on deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease and dystonia. He was appointed full professor and director of neurology at Würzburg University Hospital in 2010. His current research activities include physiological research into mechanisms of deep brain stimulation, clinical trials for optimized DBS therapy and pathophysiologivcal studies on the circuitry dysfunctions underlying movement disorders.