Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat, Director of the Division of Country Health Policies and Systems, WHO Regional Office for Europe.
Dr Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat is a medical doctor, a specialist in public health, and the author of several publications in public health and European health policy.
Following her qualification as a medical doctor from the University of Malta in 1995, Dr Azzopardi-Muscat worked in various areas in the health sector in Malta, including maternal and child health, mental health, and primary care. Her transdisciplinary research bridging health policy, European studies and small states studies led to her PhD entitled “The Europeanisation of health systems: a small state perspective”.
Since 1999, Natasha has been a resident academic at the University of Malta, teaching in the department of health services management and public health. In 2003, she completed her specialization in public health medicine and obtained her membership in the Faculty of Public Health of the United Kingdom. Between 2001 and 2013, she occupied various senior positions in the Ministry of Health in Malta, including that of Chief Medical Officer.
Before joining WHO, Dr Azzopardi-Muscat served as President of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) from 2016 to 2020, where she was actively involved in health advocacy at the European level.
Dr Azzopardi-Muscat is married to Dr Conrad Azzopardi, a practicing physician, and has 3 children.

Donna Ferriero, MD MS is a Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at UCSF. She is also a member of the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program and the Weill Institute for Neurosciences. Dr. Ferriero is Director of the Neonatal Brain Disorder Laboratories and co-director of the Newborn Brain Research Institute at UCSF. Her laboratory has been critical in defining the relationship of selectively vulnerable populations of neural cells during maturation-dependent injury. She received the UCSF Chancellor’s Award for the Advancement of Women and the Maureen Andrew Mentor Award from the Society for Pediatric Research. She is Past-President of the Child Neurology Society and the American Pediatric Society. She is the recipient of the 2000 Sydney Carter Award for excellence and leadership in Child Neurology, and was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2005. She received the Royer Award for Excellence in Academic Neurology in 2007 and the Willis Lecture for outstanding contributions to stroke research in 2010. She was elected to the Association of American Physicians in 2011 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013.

Dr Rebeccah Slater is a Professor of Paediatric Neuroscience and Senior Wellcome Fellow in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Oxford. She is also a Professorial Fellow at St. John’s College.

Rebeccah studied Physics (BSc) at Imperial College and Neuroscience (MSc) at UCL, and in 2007 was awarded her PhD at UCL under the supervision of Prof Maria Fitzgerald (FRS). Since 2013 she has led the Paediatric Neuroimaging Research Group, which focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the development of pain perception in the human infant. She uses a range of non-invasive brain imaging tools, including EEG and fMRI, to explore the development of pain perception in the human nervous system.

She has published many articles about infant pain and is regularly involved in science communication and the public engagement of science. Rebeccah holds an honorary research position in the Neonatal Care Services at the John Radcliffe Children’s Hospital and is a PI at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN). In 2017 was elected as a ‘Young Scientist’ by the World Economic Forum.

Sir Michael Marmot has been Professor of Epidemiology at University College London since 1985, and is Director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity. He is the author of The Health Gap: the challenge of an unequal world (Bloomsbury: 2015), and Status Syndrome (Bloomsbury: 2004). Professor Marmot is the Advisor to the WHO Director-General, on social determinants of health; Distinguished Visiting Professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong (2019-), and co-Director of the of the CUHK Institute of Health Equity. He is the recipient of the WHO Global Hero Award; the Harvard Lown Professorship (2014-2017); the Prince Mahidol Award for Public Health (2015), and 21 honorary doctorates. Marmot has led research groups on health inequalities for nearly 50 years. He chaired the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health, several WHO Regional Commissions, and reviews on tackling health inequality for governments in the UK. He served as President of the British Medical Association (BMA) in 2010-2011, and as President of the World Medical Association in 2015. He is President of Asthma + Lung UK. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Honorary Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and of the Faculty of Public Health; an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy; and of the Royal Colleges of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Psychiatry, Paediatrics and Child Health, and General Practitioners. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Medicine and of the Brazilian Academy of Medicine. In 2000 Marmot was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen, for services to epidemiology and the understanding of health inequalities. Prof Marmot was appointed a Companion of Honour for services to public health in the King’s 2023 New Year Honours.