Meet the organisers
Prof. Carlo Merkel
Carlo Merkel is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Head of the Section of Emergency Medicine for Liver Transplantation and of the Hepatic Hemodynamic Laboratory. He also served for five years as Director of the Post-Graduate School of Internal Medicine (2010-2014) and of the Post-Graduate School of Emergency Medicine (2015-2020).
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His main scientific interests were dedicated to hepatology, and in particular to epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis and treatment of advanced liver disease. On these subjects, his most important achievements were those related to the use of beta-blockers in primary and secondary prevention of variceal bleeding, those related to the clinical use of hepatic venous pressure gradient measurement in the evaluation of patients with portal hypertension, those concerning the natural history of the complications of cirrhosis (variceal bleeding, ascites, hepato-renal syndrome, hepatic encephalopathy and liver failure).
Because of his achievements in these fields, he was appointed as member of many study groups and scientific committees for the production of clinical practice guidelines, was member of editorial board or associate editor of the most important journals dedicated to Hepatology, and received international awards.
The list of his publications contains more than 250 full papers, with more than 7.000 quotations, and an H-index of 49.
Prof. Sara Montagnese
Sara Montagnese is an Associate Professor of Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician at Padova University Hospital, in Italy. She has a longstanding clinical and research interest in hepatic encephalopathy, a cerebral complication of liver disease on which she has published extensively, especially in relation to diagnosis and differential diagnosis. She currently serves as President of the International Society for Hepatic Encephalopathy and Nitrogen Metabolism (ISHEN) and is a member of the Governing Board of the Italian Association for the Study of the Liver (AISF) and the European Biological Rhythms Society (EBRS).
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She is Associate Editor and Special Section Editor (Snapshots) of Journal of Hepatology, Associate Editor of Frontiers in Physiology – Chronobiology, and part of the Editorial Boards of Hepatology and BMJ-Open Gastroenterology.
She also has a research interest in the sleep-wake disturbances exhibited by patients with cirrhosis and she has made significant contributions to their understanding and their treatment. She is currently using her experience in the liver field as a model, and applying it to other areas of medicine. In addition, she is interested in the definition and management of hospitalisation-related sleep-wake and circadian abnormalities. Her research has been funded by the European Association for the Study of the Liver, the University of Padova, the CaRiPaRo foundation, the Italian Ministry of Health, and the EU- H2020.
Prof. Marco Di Pascoli
Marco Di Pascoli is an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Padova. He was a visiting doctor in New York Medical College (Prof. N. Abraham) and Hepatic Hemodynamic Laboratory, Liver Unit, Hospital Clínic Barcelona (Professor J. Bosch). His main research interests are portal hypertension and cirrhosis.
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His research has been funded by the Italian Ministry of Health and the University of Padova. He was recipient of EASL’s Sheila Sherlock Fellowship for his project entitled “Effect of Resveratrol on Portal Hypertension in cirrhotic rats”.
Prof. Marco Zoli
Marco Zoli is Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Bologna. He is also the Director of the Internal Medicine Unit at University Hospital S. Orsola-Malpighi (Bologna). He served in the Executive committee board of the Italian Association for the Study of the Liver (AISF) and the Italian Society of Gerontology and Geriatrics. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology & Geriatrics and served as peer-reviewer of the main gastroenterology journals.
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He is author of more than 850 scientific publications and more than 450 oral communications at national and international congresses.
His main interest are the applications of ultrasound and doppler ultrasound in internal medicine and geriatrics, HCC epidemiology and therapy, physiopathology and therapy of portal hypertension, the study of prognostic factors for patients with liver cirrhosis, functional, metabolic and instrumental changes with aging and the study of prognostic factors in stroke patients.