John A. Bergfeld, M.D., is the Senior Surgeon, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.

He is a graduate of Bucknell University where he played football, followed by his Medical Doctor degree at Temple University. He did his internship and orthopaedic residency at Cleveland Clinic.

He served in the US Navy as Chief of Orthopaedics of the United States Naval Hospital (Annapolis, Maryland, USA) and US Naval Academy and aboard the USS Dubuque with rank of Commander MC USNR.

Dr. Bergfeld served as Team Physician for the Cleveland Browns NFL, Cavaliers NBA, Cleveland Ballet, and Baldwin Wallace University.

He served as President of:

• American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)
• American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine (AOSSM)
• International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine (ISAKOS)

He has trained over 90 post graduate fellows, both Primary Care (Sports and Exercise Medicine) and Orthopaedic/Sports Medicine (known as the Warthog Society). He has published over 90 peer review articles and book chapters. He has served as visiting professor and presented multiple endowed lectureships in the USA and internationally.

AWARDS

AOSSM

• Thomas A Brady Community Service Award
• Mr. Sports Medicine
• Hall of Fame
• George Rovere Education Award
• Godfather – Traveling Fellows

City of Cleveland, Ohio USA

• Five Star General Award – City of Cleveland
• Lifetime Achievement Award - Greater Cleveland Sports Commission
• John H. Budd MD Distinguished Membership Award – Northeast Ohio Academy of Medicine Master Educator Award – Cleveland Clinic Outstanding Alumnus Award
• Cleveland Clinic
• Bucknell University – Class of 1960
• Bucknell University Outstanding Alumni Varsity Athlete- 1991
• Temple University Medical School

National

• NFL Trainers Jerry Rhea Award
• NFL Lifetime Achievement Award
• USA Rugby Medical Hall of Fame
• American College of Sports Medicine – Legacy Award
• NATA Team Physician of the Year
• Ohio Athletic Trainers Outstanding Physician Award

Honorary Memberships

• European Society Sports Knee and Arthroscopy (ESSKA)
• American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM)
• European Federation of Orthopaedic Sports Traumatology (EFOST)
• International Society of Arthroscopy, Knee Surgery and Orthopaedic Sports Medicine (ISAKOS)
• Spanish Knee and Sports Medicine Society

Dr. Allan Gibofsky is Professor of Medicine, Health Policy and Research at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is an Attending Physician and Rheumatologist at The New York Presbyterian Hospital and Hospital for Special Surgery, where he is Co-Director of the Clinic for Inflammatory Arthritis.

Dr. Gibofsky received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, his MD from Weill Medical College of Cornell University and his law degree from Fordham University. He did his internship in Pathology, followed by a residency in Medicine at New York Hospital. He completed a fellowship in Rheumatology/Immunology jointly at Hospital for Special Surgery and at The Rockefeller University. Dr. Gibofsky has authored or co-authored numerous papers and text chapters, primarily on the immunogenetics of rheumatic diseases and legal aspects of medical practice. He is known for his work on mechanisms of host-microbe interactions in rheumatology, and, in particular for his basic and clinical studies on rheumatic fever as well as for his work on therapeutic strategies in the treatment of inflammatory rheumatic diseases.

Currently Secretary-Treasurer of The New York Rheumatism Association, Dr. Gibofsky is past Chair of the Medical & Scientific Committee of the New York Chapter of The Arthritis Foundation and received their Physicians’ Leadership Award. He also served as a member of the local and national Arthritis Foundation Board of Trustees, and was Chair for Professional Education. Dr. Gibofsky has participated in numerous professional and public education programs, nationally and internationally. He is a past President of the American College of Legal Medicine, and is past Chair of the American Board of Legal Medicine. In 2002, Dr. Gibofsky served as President of The American College of Rheumatology. Dr. Gibofsky is a Jonas Salk Scholar of the City University and was named Alumnus of the Year by Brooklyn College.

Dr. Gibofsky is a Master of the American College of Rheumatology, a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American College of Legal Medicine.

Dr. Lamees Hamdan is an Integrative medical doctor and a graduate of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and the Andrew Weil Integrative Institute at the University of Arizona, and a certified Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner.

Dr. Lamees is a believer in a healthier lifestyle. She has launched several companies and is a spokesperson for natural health and preventative medicine through video blogs and panels.

In 2009 Dr. Lamees Hamdan was bestowed with the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity for her work spearheading the first UAE National Pavilion at the 53rd International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, 2009. The order was officially bestowed on Dr. Lamees Hamdan as Knight of the Order by the President of the Republic of Italy, The Honorable Giorgio Napolitano by the signing of the Presidential decree in Rome, Italy. The order is granted to non-Italian citizens making a significant contribution to the country.

Dr. Lamees is the co-chair of the Guggenheim NYC Middle Eastern Circle and an active member of the arts in the region and abroad supporting many art talks and publications.

Dr. Lamees lives in Los Angeles and Dubai with her husband, 4 children and 6 dogs.

Morgan Jones, MD, MPH is a practicing sports medicine orthopaedic surgeon and clinical outcomes researcher with a special interest in the development of post-traumatic osteoarthritis after arthroscopic knee procedures. His research has focused on radiographic changes, including joint space narrowing, after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction and has been supported by the National Institutes of Health. He attended undergraduate and medical school at the Ohio State University, completed his orthopaedic residency at the Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, spent a year as a sports medicine fellow at the University of Iowa, and obtained a Masters in Public Health at Harvard University. He currently works as an Assistant Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School and is a practicing physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Nancy E. Lane, MD is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine, Rheumatology, and Aging Research, Director for the Center for Musculoskeletal Health. She is an internationally recognized scientist in the fields of both osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. Her translational research team has been instrumental in defining the role of glucocorticoids in bone fragility including pioneering a seminal clinical trial to demonstrate that daily injections of the hormone PTH could reverse glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis. In addition she has uncovered novel genetic variations that predispose individuals to osteoarthritis and has studied novel treatments for osteoarthritis. Her research accomplishments have been recognized by the UC Davis School of Medicine Dean’s Team Science Award (2012), the American College of Rheumatology for the Oscar Gluck Memorial Lecture for outstanding work in Osteoporosis (2011), David Trentham Lectureship and Women in Medicine Lectureship at Harvard Medical School (2013), election to Association of American Physicians (2006) and election to the National Academy of Medicine (2012). Dr. Lane was President of the Board of the United States Bone and Joint Decade (2006-2008), co-led the International Bone and Joint Decade Conference in Washington DC (2010), was elected and served on the council of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research (2010-2013), and the Orthopedic Research Society, and the Northern California Arthritis Foundation.

Dr. Lane is on the editorial boards of Nature Reviews Rheumatology, Rheumatology (Editorial Board), Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism (Associate Editor), Co-editor Arthritis and Rheumatism (2005-2010), and The Journal of Rheumatology; has been named Best Doctors in America annually since 2004, and continues to have an active rheumatology practice.

Rik Lories directs the Laboratory for Tissue Homeostasis and Disease that is part of the Skeletal Biology and Engineering Research Center at KU Leuven. He is a consultant physician in the Division of Rheumatology at the University Hospitals Leuven. KU Leuven, the largest and oldest university in Belgium, ranks 40^th in the Times Higher Education World 2017 Ranking and tops Reuter’s 2017 ranking of Europe’s most innovative universities.

His research focuses on endogenous tissue responses in the joint with specific attention towards translational questions in chronic arthritis, in particular osteoarthritis, axial spondyloarthritis, and psoriatic arthritis. Currently full Professor (“gewoon hoogleraar”) at KU Leuven, he obtained his medical degree summa cum laude in 1996. He subsequently started specialty training in internal medicine and rheumatology. In 2003, he was certified as rheumatologist. In 2003 he also obtained a PhD in biomedical sciences at KU Leuven. He received PhD (4 years) and Postdoctoral fellowships (6 years) from the Flanders Research Foundation. Rik Lories and his team were the first to demonstrate the key homeostatic role of Wnt signaling in the postnatal joint. The observation that mice in which the Wnt antagonist Frzb has been genetically deleted show increased severity of osteoarthritis pointed the attention of a large research community towards this pathway in particular in osteoarthritis. A recent study on DOT1L in osteoarthritis has identified a novel regulatory mechanism of Wnt signaling in the joint.

He has (co-)authored over 140 publications, including original research reports or reviews in Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Journal of Clinical Investigation, PNAS, Nature Reviews Rheumatology, Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases and Arthritis and Rheumatology.

Dr. McAlindon has a 20-year research track in the field of osteoarthritis (OA) and currently has set his goals on the development of simple and inexpensive disease-modifying interventions for osteoarthritis. This has brought a focus on the mechanisms of structural progression, its measurement, and comparative effectiveness testing of potential disease modifying interventions. Dr. McAlindon is one of a small number of investigators developing expertise in highly technological image-based evaluation of osteoarthritis structural progression, such as three-dimensional cartilage volume measurement from MRI, trabecular morphometry from MRI, and subchondral DEXA. Dr. McAlindon currently has NIH-funded research grants evaluating the role of bone in OA progression using periarticular DEXA and MRI-based trabecular morphometry, testing the effectiveness of intra-articular corticosteroids on structural progression of knee OA, and developing an integrated parsimonious quantitative knee OA structural damage outcome measure using MRI. Dr. McAlindon has national and international recognition in the field of osteoarthritis, and is a member of the steering committee of the NIH Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI), co-principal investigator of its Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island clinical site.