Prof Emery trained at Cambridge, Guy’s and Brompton. After completing his accreditation in Rheumatology and GIM. He was Head of Rheumatology at Walter & Eliza Hall Institute and Consultant at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in 1985. He returned to the University of Birmingham as a Senior Lecturer in 1987. Since 1995 he has been Versus Arthritis UK (formerly ARC) Professor of Rheumatology in Leeds, and inaugural Director of the Leeds NIHR Biomedical Research Centre 2009-present. Leeds under his direction is one of the worlds’ largest and most highly rated centres. Since 2009, he has been Director of the Leeds NIHR Biomedical Research Centre.

Prof Emery was President of EULAR 2009-2011. He was inaugural chair of FOREUM Executive. He is an ACR Master. He has served on the editorial boards of all the major rheumatology journals. He was inaugural President of ISEMIR (International extremity MRI society). He has been an NIHR Senior Investigator since 2008. He is a recipient of the Roche Biennial Award for Clinical Rheumatology; the Rheumatology Hospital Doctor of the Year award 1999; and EULAR prize 2002 for outstanding contribution to rheumatology research. In 2012 he was awarded the Carol Nachman Prize. In 2018 he was awarded an OBE by the Queen and in 2020 received the Meritorious Service Award from EULAR.

Professor Emery’s research interests centre around the immunopathogenesis and immunotherapy of rheumatoid arthritis, SpA, psoriatic disease and connective tissue diseases. He has a special interest in the factors leading to persistent inflammation. He was instrumental in bringing sensitive imaging (MRI/US) into rheumatology practice. He established the concept of early intervention in inflammatory arthritis, with a model for early arthritis now adopted. He is currently focusing on the prevention of autoimmune diseases with national programmes identifying patients in the pre-clinical phase. This prevention strategy is applied not only to inflammatory arthritis but to systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjogren’s syndrome, scleroderma, and psoriatic disease. He has published >1200 peer-reviewed articles in this area and has an h index of >140.

John J. O'Shea, M.D., graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Science degree from St. Lawrence University, and received a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Cincinnati. He then served as an intern and resident in Internal Medicine at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. Dr O'Shea joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1981 for subspecialty training in Allergy and Immunology in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He did additional postdoctoral work in the Cell Biology and Metabolism Branch in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Dr O’Shea is board certified in Internal Medicine and Allergy and Immunology.

He moved to the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) in 1994 as Chief of the Lymphocyte Cell Biology Section of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Branch. He was appointed Chief of the Molecular Immunology and Inflammation Branch in 2002, and became Scientific Director and Director of the NIAMS Intramural Research Program in 2005.

Dr O'Shea has served on the editorial boards of multiple journals, including: Immunity, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Immunology, and Blood. He has been an invited lecturer at numerous universities and international meetings in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia.

Dr O'Shea has authored more than 225 articles. His area of scientific interest is cytokine signal transduction, dissecting the role of Jaks and Stats family transcription in immunoregulation. Dr O'Shea and his colleagues cloned the tyrosine kinase, JAK3, and demonstrated its role in pathogenesis of severe combined immunodeficiency.

Professor John Isaacs is the Director of Therapeutics North East at Newcastle University, and Professor of Clinical Rheumatology. He is also an Honorary Consultant Rheumatologist with the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He is the Scientific Chair-elect for the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR). Professor Isaacs’ research interests include immunotherapy of rheumatic, autoimmune disease, therapeutic tolerance induction, pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis and genetics and pharmacogenetics of rheumatoid arthritis. His translational research is considered internationally renowned.