Meet the organisers
Jacob George
Jacob George is the Robert W. Storr Professor of Hepatic Medicine at the Storr Liver Centre, Westmead Institute for Medical Research, University of Sydney and Head of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Westmead Hospital and Director of Gastroenterology and Hepatology Services for the Western Sydney Local Health District.
He studies the causes of and mechanisms for the development of liver disease and liver cancer. He contributes to investigator-initiated and multicentre international clinical trials on therapeutics for liver diseases, and leads a program of research on MAFLD, viral hepatitis, liver fibrosis, host genetics/liver immunology and the epidemiology, prevention and management of liver cancer. His research has a strong translational component, linking laboratory and clinical research. Jacob George is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Hepatology, and a senior Editor for Seminars in Liver Disease (since 2022) and Journal of Hepatology Reports (from Oct 2023). He is on the executive of the International Association for the study of Liver (IASL), was a past Executive Council member and Chair of Research for the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver, and a past board member of the Gastroenterological Society of Australia and of the Liver Faculty of the Gastroenterological Society of Australia. He has published many papers, has >61,000 citations and an h index of 107 (July 2023).
Henning Gronbaek
Henning Gronbaek (MD, PhD) is the Clinical Chair Professor at the Department of Hepatology and Gastroenterology, Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark, and consultant in Internal Medicine. He is a member of the EASL Educational Committee focused on training of future clinical and academic hepatologists.
In research he has a key interest in clinical and experimental chronic inflammatory liver diseases. The primary focus has been pathogenesis and interventions focused on macrophages and the macrophage activation marker soluble (s)CD163. He is involved in a number of international collaborations including the EF-CLIF on acute-on-chronic liver failure. A special clinical and research interest has been non-alcoholic fatty liver disease with experimental and clinical studies on pathogenesis, biomarker discovery and new treatments.
Furthermore, Henning Gronbaek has supervised more than 40 PhD and research year students.
Karen Louise Thomsen
Karen Louise Thomsen (MD, PhD) has a strong basic research background in experimental and translational hepatology, as well as being a fully trained consultant Hepatologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Hepatology and Gastroenterology, Aarhus University Hospital.
Her principal early research contributions were within the area of metabolic liver function in inflammatory states. She pursued studies at the bench and in animal disease models, and translated her findings to clinical studies in the setting of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
Her experimental research skills were honed by a significant time spent in the lab of Professor Jacob George in Sydney, Australia. She further enriched her clinical translational skills with a year in London at The Royal Free Liver Transplant Unit as a Senior Research Fellow, allied to the UCL Institute for Liver and Digestive Health. This rounded her research and clinical specialist training, and generated interests in the study of cirrhosis decompensation.
Her ongoing clinical studies investigate metabolic liver and brain dysfunction in NAFLD patients through in vivo functional tests as well as MRI and PET imaging. Also, she is the PI of a large, multicentre, randomised, placebo-controlled study investigating the effect of faecal microbiota transplantation for prevention of complications, progression and mortality in patients with decompensated liver cirrhosis.
Karen Louise Thomsen has supervised numerous PhD students, as well as overseeing pre-graduate scholar students.