Andrew Bush

Professor Andrew Bush qualified from Cambridge University and University College Hospital, London, and initially trained in adult medicine, obtaining a research fellowship in the Department of Clinical Physiology, Brompton Hospital. Here he completed an MD thesis under the supervision of Professor David Denison, and was persuaded to retrain as a paediatrician by Dr Elliott Shinebourne, both of whom remained lifelong friends and mentors. He trained in paediatric respiratory medicine at the Royal Brompton Hospital and the Royal Postgraduate Medical School before becoming Consultant in Paediatric Chest Medicine at the Brompton Hospital in 1991. He was appointed Professor of Paediatric Respirology at the National Heart and Lung Institute in 2007, and in 2011, he was appointed an NIHR Senior Investigator.

His research interests have included paediatric clinical physiology, especially respiratory mass spectrometry, and the invasive and non-invasive assessment of airway inflammation in children. He has published more than 600 papers in peer review journals, with an H-index of 107, as well as numerous editorials and reviews, and more than 100 chapters in books and monographs. He pioneered the use of endobronchial biopsy for research in children and continues to use this and other bronchoscopic techniques to study early origins of paediatric airway disease. His most enduring academic achievement is supervising 47 PhD and MD(Res) theses, and he is proud that his trainees occupy senior clinical and academic posts all over the world.

Professor Bush has been Assembly Head and Chair of the ERS Publication Committee, and was appointed in the first group of Fellows of both the ERS and the ATS. He has been awarded the Jonxis medal (2008), the Imperial College Rectors Medal for excellence in Research Supervision (2011), the Otto Wolfe medal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2013) and the ERS Assembly Lifetime Achievement award (2014), and has held numerous visiting Professorships internationally. He continues in his present position leading a £4.6 million Wellcome Strategic Award, aided and abetted by his family.

Richard Casaburi

Professor Casaburi completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He followed this with a master’s degree and doctorate in biomedical engineering, also from RPI, before completing a post-doctoral fellowship in biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California. Five years after joining the Department of Medicine faculty at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Professor Casaburi returned to school to pursue a medical degree at the University of Miami School of Medicine in Florida. After returning to Harbor-UCLA, he completed an internship, residency and pulmonary fellowship and rejoined the faculty of the Division of Respiratory Medicine. He became Chief of the Division and served in this position for six years and is currently Associate Chief for Research in the Division of Respiratory and Critical Care Physiology and Medicine. He has occupied the Grancell/Burns Chair in the Rehabilitative Sciences at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center since 2001.

Professor Casaburi established the Rehabilitation Clinical Trials Center in 1999. A clinical research facility dedicated to improving the lives of COPD patients, Professor Casaburi and his group of investigators have completed more than 75 clinical research studies, including participation in three major NIH multicentre projects. He has been invited to present over 750 lectures on the topics of respiratory physiology, exercise science, pulmonary rehabilitation and COPD disease management, and has published more than 340 papers and 300 abstracts. With an h-index of 88, his papers have received over 69,000 citations.

Professor Casaburi is a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation and is a member of the inaugural class of Fellows of the European Respiratory Society. Since 1993 he has served as President of the Pulmonary Education and Research Foundation – a non-profit corporation dedicated to advancing the scientific basis and practice of pulmonary rehabilitation. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the COPD Foundation and is immediate past chair of the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Assembly of the American Thoracic Society.

Sebastian Johnston

Sebastian Johnston is Professor of Respiratory Medicine & Allergy at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College London, and Honorary Consultant Physician in Respiratory Medicine & Allergy at St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust, London.

He is Head of Airway Disease at NHLI, Director of the Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma and is the Clinical Academic Training Lead for Respiratory Medicine at Imperial College and Imperial Healthcare NHS Trust.

He is an NIHR Emeritus Senior Investigator and is the Asthma UK Clinical Professor. He held a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator Grant from 2008-2013, and he recently won his second ERC Advanced Investigator Grant. He is a Fellow of the ERS.

Notable discoveries that have emerged from his work include establishing the viral aetiology of the vast majority of asthma exacerbations, discovering novel mechanisms of susceptibility to virus infection in asthma, and developing novel and effective treatment approaches for acute exacerbations of asthma.

His work has led to the publishing of 10 patents, the licensing of these patents to industry, and to completion of Phase I and II clinical studies on the use of IFN-beta for treatment of acute exacerbations of asthma.