Prof. Giancarlo Carli was born near Siena, Italy in 1938. He received his MD Degree from Siena University (1962) and was postdoctoral fellow both at Siena (Prof. Alberto Zanchetti) and Pisa (Prof. Giuseppe Moruzzi) Universities and at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland, USA, Prof Vernon B. Mountcastle). He developed his academic carrier in Siena first as associate (1971) and then as full Professor (1981). He served as Chairman of the Institute of Human Physiology (1974-2002) and as Chairman of the Department of Physiology (2008-2010). He is an expert on the effects of persistent pain on animal behavior and on chronic pain in fibromyalgia patients.

Marshall Devor was born in Toronto, Canada in 1949. His AB and PhD degrees were from Princeton University (1970) and MIT (1975). He was a postdoctoral fellow with the pain research pioneer Prof. P.D. Wall at University College London and later at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (HUJI). He joined the HUJI faculty as Research Associate in 1977 and rose to the rank of Professor in 1988. He served as Department Chairman (3 terms) and in a number of other University, national and international roles. He has contributed considerably to the understanding of the physiological basis of neuropathic pain and more recently to mechanisms involved in loss of consciousness and pain-free surgery.

William Maixner received his PhD and DDS degrees from the University of Iowa, where he also completed a 2-year Fellowship before being appointed Staff Fellow and Pharmacology Research Associate at the NIH. He joined the Dental School faculty at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1985, rising through the academic ranks from Assistant Professor to Distinguished University Professor and serving as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1999-2005, when he was named Director of the Center for Pain Research and Innovation. He joined Duke University in January 2016 as Director of the Center for Translational Pain Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology. An expert in the pain field, Dr. Maixner has published widely in basic pain mechanisms, neuronal pain coding properties, pharmacology of opioids, gender differences in pain perception, and human pain genetics. His Duke program focuses on translating laboratory and clinical findings into novel diagnostics and therapeutics to prevent or alleviate chronic pain.

Dr Jordi Serra received his medical degree from the Universitat de Barcelona and completed his residency in Neurology at Hospital de Bellvitge, Barcelona, in 1992. He spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Neuromuscular Unit of Good Samaritan Hospital and Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon, USA, where he specialized in the study, diagnosis, and treatment of neuropathic pain patients. Dr Serra has authored many scientific journal articles, and book chapters. Dr Serra has produced pioneering work on the recording of abnormal activity in pain fibers using microneurography, both in animals and in neuropathic pain patients. Dr. Serra serves as Consultant in Clinical Neurophysiology at King’s College Hospital in London.