Speakers

Kristian Sommerfelt (Norway)

Kristian Sommerfelt is a paediatric neurologist, professor emeritus and has worked with children and adolescents with ME for over 30 years. He is a member of the European ME Research Group, the National Network for Long-Term Fatigue, and the Norwegian Directorate of Health's working group for the development of new guidelines for ME. Sommerfelt has contributed to several studies on ME, as well as to the development of a new form that maps patients' functional capacity.

Øystein Fluge (Norway)

Øystein Fluge is a professor, senior consultant at the Department of Cancer Therapy and Medical Physics at Haukeland, and one of the leaders of the ME research group at Haukeland. He has been working on uncovering disease mechanisms and testing drug treatments for ME for around 15 years, and has helped to develop a hypothesis model for ME. Fluge sits on the advisory board of the Open Medicine Foundation in the USA.

Karl Johan Tronstad (Norway)

Karl Johan Tronstad is a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and head of the cell metabolism group at the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Bergen. He has been researching ME and metabolism for almost 10 years and collaborates with the ME research group at Haukeland. Tronstad was invited to lecture at the National Institute of Health's research conference on ME in the USA in 2023.

Photo: Endre Stigen

David Systrom (USA)

David Systrom is a physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cardiopulmonary laboratory in Boston. He is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, and has been on the Harvard faculty for over 35 years - where he also directs an ME research centre. Systrom has been researching ME and CPET for over 10 years and is involved in several clinical trials on ME.

Carmen Scheibenbogen (Germany)

Carmen Scheibenbogen is an internal medicine specialist, professor of immunology and deputy head of the Department of Medical Immunology at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin. She heads the Immunodeficiency Outpatient Clinic, as well as the Charité Fatigue Centre, and has been researching ME since 2010. Scheibenbogen is co-author of a new joint consensus statement on ME for Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and is also involved in Long Covid.

Brian Hughes (Ireland)

Brian Hughes is a psychologist, professor at the University of Galway, author and specialist in stress psychophysiology, health psychology, public understanding of psychology and science, and the application of psychology to social issues. He is on the advisory board of the world's largest ME study (DecodeME), and is a member of the Irish Health Authority's working group for the development of guidelines for ME.

Rob Wüst (Netherlands)

Rob Wüst is a muscle physiologist with a double PhD, working on cardiac metabolism, mitochondrial function, clinical exercise physiology and cell physiology. He is an assistant professor at the Vrije University Amsterdam, and head of section in the department of Human Movement Sciences. In recent years, Wust has researched muscle function and exertion-triggered symptom exacerbation (PEM) in ME and Long Covid.

Photo: Photo team KenMI

Michelle Bull (UK)

Michelle Bull is a physiotherapist with a PhD in health research and expertise in cardiac rehabilitation. She works as Frailty Academy Programme Manger at Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust, and has extensive experience in educating physiotherapists in ME and Long Covid. Bull is co-founder of Physios for ME and co-author of the book "A Physiotherapist's Guide to Understanding and Managing ME/CFS."

David Putrino (USA)

David Putrino is a physiotherapist with a PhD in Neuroscience. He is a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, Director of Rehabilitation Innovation for the Mount Sinai Health System and Director of The Cohen Centre for Recovery from Complex Chronic Illness. Putrino has spent the last few years researching Long Covid and ME, becoming a leading expert on the underlying pathophysiology of Long Covid.

Photo: Claudia Paul Productions

Trude Schei (Norway)

Trude Schei is Assistant Secretary General of the Norwegian ME Association. She has worked with large surveys on the conditions of ME patients in Norway and internationally, and is co-author of a study on the sickest ME patients in Norway. She is also co-author and one of the initiators of FUNCAP - a questionnaire that measures the functional capacity of patients with PEM.

Anniken Aase Sommerfelt (Norway)

Anniken Aase Sommerfelt is a specialist in general practice and has worked as a GP in Skien since 2010. She has extensive experience and interest in the follow-up of ME patients in general practice. Sommerfelt was also a lecturer and one of the chairs of a clinical course on ME for doctors in 2023.