Shadi Yaghi, MD, a board-certified vascular neurologist, is director of vascular neurology at Lifespan, as well as co-director of the Comprehensive Stroke Center and director of research at the Neurovascular Center, both at Rhode Island Hospital. Dr. Yaghi earned his medical degree at the American University of Beirut and completed an internal medicine internship and a research fellowship at the American University of Beirut Medical Center. He continued his training with an internal medicine internship and neurology residency at the University of Arkansas Medical Center. Dr. Yaghi spent two years at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University furthering his training in vascular neurology. Dr. Yaghi is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Board of Vascular Neurology. He is a fellow of the American Heart Association, active on its Stroke Council, and is a member of the American Academy of Neurology. Dr. Yaghi’s research focuses on intracranial atherosclerosis, treatment and outcome of thrombolysis-related hemorrhage, and cardiac biomarkers in patients with cryptogenic stroke. He has presented widely and has been lead author of or contributor to more than 100 peer-reviewed research articles as well as abstracts and book chapters. He has been a reviewer for several medical journals and is on the editorial board of the journal, Stroke. Among honors Dr. Yaghi has received are the Brown University Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Rhode Island Top Vascular Neurologist Award in 2018-19.

Bernard Yan is Academic Professor (salaried) of Neurology at the University of Melbourne. He is the Immediate Ex-President of the Stroke Society of Australasia which is the foremost society which links all stroke researchers of Australasia. He is a practicing clinical Neurologist and Endovascular Neurointerventionist in Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia. His clinical expertise is in stroke intervention and cerebrovascular diseases. His major research interest is in large clinical trials especially on the topic of acute endovascular clot retrieval (thrombectomy) and machine learning applications in different subspecialty fields of neurology. He supervises together with the Engineering Department many PhD research students with focus on the interface between engineering solutions and neurological diseases. Bernard Yan’s 253 clinical trial papers include 1 (as co-first author) published in Lancet and 4 published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In particular, the Lancet paper (Endovascular thrombectomy versus standard bridging thrombolytic with endovascular thrombectomy within 4.5 h of stroke onset) showed that bridging therapy was associated with better outcomes. This has effected change in stroke treatment guidelines. Other clinical papers include publications in Lancet Neurology, Circulation and Stroke. Recently, Bernard’s paper published in Journal of Stroke (Nurse led smartphone electrographic monitoring for atrial fibrillation after ischemic stroke) demonstrated superiority of atrial fibrillation detection by a mobile device and this effected a change in practice in neurology units in Australia. In total, Bernard has published 253 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has achieved an H-index of 47. He is the founding organizer of the Australia and China Training Initiative of Neurology (ACTION) programme. The programme is in its 12th year of operations and has successfully trained over 300 young neurologists from China. He is one of the founding directors of the Australasian Stroke Academy which is the leading provider of stroke medicine education to young doctors in Australia.

I did my MBBS in St.John's Medical College, Bangalore, India and MD Internal Medicine from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. I am currently working as a consultant and Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Jigme Dorji Wangchuck National Referral Hospital. I am also the Primary Physician to the Royal Family of Bhutan, and the focal person for collaboration between WHO-SEARO and Ministry of Health, Royal Government of Bhutan's Stroke Care Improvement Initiative.

Dr. Dileep R. Yavagal, MD is the Director of Interventional Neurology and Co-Director of Neuroendovascular Surgery at the University of Miami & Jackson Memorial Hospitals and Clinical Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery. He completed his MBBS and MD in Internal Medicine at Seth G. S. Medical & King Edward Memorial Hospitals in Mumbai, India. He did his Neurology training at Harvard affiliated Massachusetts General and Brigham Women’s Hospitals followed by Neurocritical Care and Interventional Neuroradiology Fellowships at Columbia Presbyterian in NYC and UCLA respectively. He is the co-founder and Past-President of the Society for Vascular and Interventional Neurology (SVIN). Dr. Yavagal is an international thought leader in endovascular therapy for ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke as well as a pioneer in the translation of intra-arterial delivery of cell therapy for stroke. Dr. Yavagal co-led the first randomized controlled trial of Intra-arterial delivery of stem cells in ischemic stroke: RECOVER-Stroke. He has been on the steering committees of several landmark RCTs of mechanical thrombectomies including SWIFT-Prime and MR-RESCUE. Dr. Yavagal is the founder and Global Chair of the global Mission Thrombectomy 2020+ campaign to accelerate access to stroke thrombectomy globally.

Dr. Xiong is born in 1984 and majors in clinical studies in the field of ischemic stroke, especially intravenous thrombolysis and endovascular therapy. She has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers with an h-index of 27. Currently, dr. Xiong is an associate professor of neurology at Capital Medical University, China. She is also the vice director of the neurovascular department of Beijing Tiantan Hospital, China.