Neurological Pain Research & Therapy

Germany

Professor Dr med Ralf Baron is Head of the Division of Neurological Pain Research and Therapy and Vice Chair of the Department of Neurology, Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet Kiel, in Germany.

From 1999-2004, he served as General Secretary of the German Interdisciplinary Pain Society (DIVS), from 2005-2010 he served as a Management Committee Member of the Neuropathic Pain Special Interest Group (NeuPSIG) of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and from 2008-2010 as a board member of the Deutsche Schmerzgesellschaft.

He has been a Councilor of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) since 2010. His main research interest is the pathophysiology and therapy of neuropathic pain states.

He has intensive scientific collaborations with several researchers worldwide, e.g., Professor EM McLachlan, Sydney, Australia, Professor HL Fields, San Francisco, USA, and Professor TS Jensen, Aarhus, Denmark.

Professor Baron is associate editor and reviewer for many scientific journals (Advisory Board Member for Nature Reviews Neurology 2005-present, Associate Editor for Pain 2003-present, and the European Journal of Pain 2006-2012).

He has been the recipient of the German Pain Award, the Heinrich-Pette-Award of the German Neurological Society and the Sertürner-Award. In 1998 he was awarded a Feodor Lynen fellowship by the German Humboldt Foundation and was visiting professor at the Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco. Professor Baron has authored more than 200 publications with his outstanding and motivated research team, and has lectured at numerous conferences and symposia worldwide.

Speaker supported by Seqirus

Royal Prince Alfred Hospital

NSW

Dr Maria Cigolini MB BS(Syd) FRACGP FAChPM Grad.DipPallMed(Melb)

Clinical Head, RPAH Department of Palliative Medicine, RPAH Sector of SLHD.

Clinical Lecturer, University of Sydney

Professional Member, SLHD HREC

Maria oversees and is involved in the care of patients referred to RPAH, the Chris O’Brien LifeHouse Cancer Centre, Balmain Hospital, and RPA Sector Palliative Care Community Service. These services provide outreach to the regions around Dubbo Base Hospital and Lourdes Hospital in the NSWLHD. Maria's experience is in supportive and palliative care of patients with cancer as well as in chronic disease management. 

Royal Prince Alfred Hospital

NSW

Dr Steve Gibson is Director of the Pain Service at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. With a background in anaesthesia he is keenly interested in acute pain management and early intervention to prevent the transition to chronic pain conditions. He also consults in the Pain Management Centre treating patients with chronic pain, and within RPAH provides an interventional pain management service to the Palliative Care Service to assist in the pain relief of the terminally ill. His other interests in pain management include education and data management as a quality assurance tool.

University of Adelaide

SA

Professor Hutchinson is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) and a Professor within the School of Medicine at the University of Adelaide.

Professor Hutchinson returned to the University of Adelaide in 2009 as an NHMRC CJ Martin Research Fellow, and established the Neuroimmunopharmacology research laboratory. From 2005 to 2009 Mark worked in the world leading laboratory of Prof Linda Watkins in the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Here he pioneered with Prof Watkins the research which has led to the discovery of novel drug activity at innate immune receptors.

Mark’s research has implicated the brain immune-like cells in the action of drugs of dependence and the negative side effects of pain treatments. His work has enabled the translation of compounds at the lab bench to clinical agents used at the bedside. Mark has published over 100 papers in journals and refereed conference proceedings.

He is now added Director of the CNBP to his roles. The CNBP is an ARC Centre of Excellence with $47M of funding committed for 7 years, headquartered at The University of Adelaide, with nodes at Macquarie University, Sydney and the RMIT, Melbourne. We are partnered with universities and companies in Europe, the US and China, as well as other Australian institutions.  

The CNBP has a mission to "Discover new approaches to measure nano-scale  dynamic phenomena in living systems”.

Royal Prince Alfred Hospital

NSW

Associate Professor Mark Latt is a senior lecturer at the Sydney Medical School, the University of Sydney. He researches the adverse effects of analgaesic, antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs and examines ways to make medication use safer in older persons. He is a principal investigator in multicentre randomised controlled trials involving exercise, falls prevention, dementia and Parkinson’s disease. As a Geriatrician at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, he manages older persons with delirium, dementia, falls, polypharmacy, pain and other syndromes of ageing. Pain is extremely common in older persons and can cause problems with their mood, cognition, balance, independence and general quality of life. However, the drugs used to manage pain can frequently make these problems worse. How can Aged Care physicians strike the right balance between treating pain effectively and avoiding the adverse effects of analgaesic drugs in older persons?

University of Western Australia & Royal Perth Hospital

Professor Stephan Schug is Professor and Chair of Anaesthesiology in the School of Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Western Australia. He is also the Director of Pain Medicine at the Royal Perth Hospital and is responsible for overseeing the Comprehensive Inpatient Pain Service, as well as a multi-disciplinary Pain Medicine Centre.  

His principal research interests include the management of acute and chronic pain, cancer pain, regional anaesthesia, the pharmacology of local anaesthetics and analgesics and quality improvement in health care.

Professor Schug studied medicine at the University of Cologne, Germany, where he also obtained his MD in clinical pharmacology and subsequently specialised in anaesthesia and pain medicine. He has written over 80 research and 170 review papers, as well as abstracts, letters, and editorials, and has edited or co-authored several books, book chapters, and monographs. He is currently on editorial and review boards of several leading journals including Pain & Therapy, Annals of Palliative Medicine, Current Opinion in Anaesthesiology and CNS Drugs. Professor Schug is an active member of several pain and anaesthesia societies including Chair of the SIG Acute Pain of IASP and Chair of the SIG Acute Pain of ACE, and is a Fellow of the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) and its Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPMANZCA), where he is a member of the Board of the Faculty.

Greenwich Hospital

NSW

Clinical experience in the field of pain management for over 25 years with positions at Royal Prince Alfred and Royal North Shore Hospitals and completed a PhD in pain physiology at the University of Sydney. 

As well as an academic appointment at the University of Sydney, currently Director of the Pain Management Service at Greenwich Hospital, a university teaching hospital.

He is recognised internationally for his work in the field of pain management with many publications in scientific and medical journals, regular invitations to speak at national and international meetings and for six years was the Australasian representative on the international council of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

Workshop Convenor

Olly  Zekry obtained  her  Bachelor  of  Pharmacy  and  Post  Graduate Diploma  in  Hospital  Pharmacy from  the University of  Tasmania. She has completed her  Masters Degree  in  Pain  Management  from  Sydney University and is now  the unit coordinator  for  the pharmacology units of the course with the Pain Management and Research Centre, Faculty of  Medicine, Sydney  Medical  School  at  the  Royal  North  Shore Hospital. 
 
Olly has had a strong interest in education and  teaching  for many  years.  She  has  had  international  publications  including Subanesthetic, Subcutaneous Ketamine Infusion Therapy in the Treatment of Chronic Nonmalignant Pain with Dr Stephen B Gibson  and Conversion of Gabapentin  to  Pregabalin with Professor Stephan Schug. ..
 
Olly  also  works as  a  Clinical  Consultant  Pharmacist in  the  Pharmacy Department at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. She  won  the  QUM  (Quality  Use  Of  Medicine)  Award for  Pain Management for Pharmacists across Australia in 2014.
 
Olly does Home Medications Reviews mainly in the rural areas of NSW. She was heavily involved with the ketamine project at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Pain  Management  Centre and  has  presented  posters and oral presentations overseas  at  major  international  pain  conferences  in Milan, Toronto and Rotorua for the Pain Management Centre. 

Olly  also presented oral presentations on Neuropathic Pain Treatments  at  major international pain conferences  in  China , Taiwan  and Japan, was a  speaker at the joint Australian Association of Musculoskeletal Medicine (AAMM), Australasian Faculty of Musculoskeletal Medicine (AFMM), and New Zealand Association of Musculoskeletal Medicine (NZAMM) Annual Scientific Meeting in Adelaide in October 2017 on Novel Pharmacological Management of Pain and Pharmacological Phenomena. 

Olly conceived the idea of running the Pharmacology workshop for the 2015  Australian Pain Society (APS)  Annual Scientific  Meeting  in  Brisbane  and  was  responsible  for generating the topics to be covered by the international and eminent domestic  speakers. She organised and chaired the Pharmacology workshop at the 2017 APS Scientific Meeting in Adelaide in 2017.

Olly presented at international medical conferences  in Canada, New Zealand, China , Taiwan  and Japan, was a  speaker at the joint Australian Association of Musculoskeletal Medicine (AAMM), Australasian Faculty of Musculoskeletal Medicine (AFMM), and New Zealand Association of Musculoskeletal Medicine (NZAMM) Annual Scientific Meeting in Adelaide in October 2017 on Novel Pharmacological Management of Pain and Pharmacological Phenomena.

She has been heavily involved as the organiser of the Pharmacology workshop for the 2018 Australian Pain Society 38th and New Zealand Pain Society Conjoint Annual Scientific Meeting on Sunday  8th April 2018 at the International Convention Centre, Sydney , Australia.