EP PerMed Conference on Personalised Medicine Research

Affiliation: DLR PT / EP PerMed

• Since 2023; Coordinator of the European Partnership for Personalised Medicine (EP PerMed) and the related Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda SRIA 2023
• 2015-2023; Coordinator of the ERA-Net Cofund action dedicated to cardiovascular diseases
• since 2000: Project management and policy advise for health topics and related funding on the European level and nationally primarily on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
• 1997 – 2000: Researcher (Postdoc), Medical Research Council (MRC), Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology (LMBC) at the University College in London (UCL)

Co-author of several strategic and policy-oriented publications in different areas of health research, such as the STARS Common Strategy: Regulatory Support and Advice for Academia (2022), the Strategic Research Agenda for Cardiovascular Diseases (SRA-CVD, 2019) or the ICPerMed “Vision Paper”, 2019 and “Action Plan, 2017

Affiliation: IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini

After graduating in Biological Sciences in 1982 from the University of Pisa (Italy), Isabella Ceccherini obtained a PhD. degree in Genetic Sciences in 1987 from the University of Ferrara (Italy), followed by a post-doc period at the Medical Research Council, Cell Mutation Unit, Brighton (UK) in 1987-1988.

Isabella Ceccherini began working at the Medical Genetics Unit of the Gaslini Institute in 1988. Since then she has acquired a broad scientific background, specific training and skills in human molecular genetics. She has been involved in numerous projects, including the generation and characterization of radiation hybrids, the dissection of the genetics of Hirschsprung disease and other neurocristopathies (such as congenital central hypoventilation syndrome), and the use of the NGS technology to diagnose rare diseases, also through the search for new genes.

Omics data and their potential in discovering specific molecular signatures, useful for clustering patients, is a recent interest that she has applied, within a European Consortium (PerSAIDs) to patients with monogenic systemic autoinflammatory diseases (SAIDs) and multifactorial undifferentiated SAIDs to support the choice of existing treatments and to try to apply personalized medicine.

Isabella Ceccherini is currently responsible for the UOSD “Research Laboratory Aggregation Area” of the Gaslini Institute in Genoa (Italy).

Affiliation: Vall d’Hebron Institute of Research

Irene de la Calle is an early career scientist and PhD candidate at the Biomedical Re-search in Gynecology group at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Research (VHIR), in Barcelona, Spain. The group, led by Dr. Eva Colás, investigates the paradigms surrounding the diag-nosis, prognosis, and treatment of gynecological cancers (endometrial, cervix and ovari-an), as well as other benign conditions (endometriosis).

Irene has contributed to several scientific projects, particularly those focused on endome-trial cancer diagnosis. Her research aims to develop and implement a non-invasive diag-nosis tool for endometrial cancer, to avoid unnecessary procedures for patients.

Throughout her PhD, Irene has also presented her research findings at multiple interna-tional conferences, enhancing the global exchange of scientific knowledge. Driven by a passion for research, Irene strives to translate innovative approaches into clinical practice and tackle real-world challenges.

Affiliation: Institut Curie

Célia Dupain is a scientific coordinator at the Institut Curie in Paris, where she has been a member of the Drug Development and Innovation Department (D3i), led by Prof. Chris-tophe Le Tourneau, since 2019. She has served as the leader of the Scientific Coordinati-on team since 2024.
Her team specializes in the implementation and coordination of translational research projects in precision medicine, fostering collaboration among multidisciplinary teams, including researchers, clinicians, and external partners. Her expertise ensures projects align with timelines and budgets while contributing to scientific outputs such as publica-tions, abstracts, and conference presentations.
The team is also in charge of the operational coordination of two Molecular Tumor Boards, in alignment with the national PFMG2025 initiative. Their recognized expertise at the European level is demonstrated through participation in several European pro-jects leveraging this specialization.
Célia was awarded the prestigious Paris Universities Chancellery Prize in 2019 for her doctoral research titled “Discovery and characterization of novel fusion transcripts in relapsed pediatric tumors.” She earned her PhD in Life and Health Sciences from Univer-sité Paris-Sud, with her research conducted at the Gustave Roussy Cancer Center.
Passionate about bridging science and innovation, Célia combines her academic rigor with operational expertise to advance translational medicine and improve patient out-comes.

Affiliation: French National Research Agency (ANR)

As International Coordinator for the French National Research Agency, Dr Monika Frenzel represents ANR, in the European Partnership for Personalised Medicine, EP PerMed and the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine, ICPerMed.

In the EP PerMed, she is coordinating the activities of WP2 on “Personalised Medicine Research-related Funding and Support”.

She is also leading the international strategic working group of the ICPerMed.

In the former ERA-Net ERA PerMed, Monika Frenzel has acted as chair of the funders consortium and managed two Joint Translational Calls as Joint Call Secretariat.

Affiliation: Tampere University

Mark van Gils is Professor of Digital Healthcare, leading the research group Decision Support for Health, at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology at Tampere University in Finland. Activities in his over 25-year career in health data analysis have ranged from AI-driven patient monitoring in critical care to preventive approaches during daily living. He has special interest in addressing real-life challenges such as dealing with imperfect data, heterogeneity of data sources and ambiguity in outcomes. He has worked tightly with renowned university hospitals and health tech companies, and he has obtained extensive experience in carrying out leading roles, including coordination, in multi-disciplinary international research consortia, such as in EU projects.

Affiliation: University of Freiburg, Medical Center, Department of Radiation Oncology

Anca-L. Grosu, MD, FACR, Professor, Chair, Department of Radiation Oncology Medical Center – University of Freiburg, Germany

• Member of German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Senator of Radiolagy Section, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
• Member of the Review Board for Nuclear Medicine, Radiation Therapy, Molecular Radiation Biology of the German Research Foundation (DFG)
• Member of the Advisory Board of German Cancer Aid (DKH)
• Deputy Chair of German Cancer Aid (DKH) Expert Panel Care Provisions and Research
• Member of the Executive Committee of the German Neuro-Oncology Working Group (NOA)
• University Council Member, University of Freiburg, Germany
• Honorary Fellow of the American College of Radiology (FACR)

Research Focus

• Personalized radiation therapy by biological imaging for radiation therapy planning and monitoring
• High precision radiation therapy: Radiosurgery, stereotactic radiotherapy, intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), intraoperative radiotherapy, brachytherapy
• Radiotherapy and immunotherapy: Combination of radiotherapy and immunotherapy, radiotherapy and immune system
• Digital data management in radiation oncology: Electronic patient file, data management, administration

Affiliation: South African Medical Research Council

Julia Goedecke is a Chief Specialist Scientist at the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC) and hold honorary Professorships at the Universities of Cape Town and Witwatersrand. She leads a research group that explores the non-communicable disease risk factors in Africans using a multi-disciplinary approach to characterize the involvement of genetic, molecular, physiological and lifestyle determinants and their interaction. A major focus of my research is to understand the pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes in black Africans, which we have shown to be different to populations of European ancestry.

Affiliation: Universidad de Salamanca

Jesús María Hernández-Rivas is Professor of the Department of Medicine of the University of Salamanca in Spain, senior hematologist at the Hospital Universitario de Salamanca and Head of the Research Groups in Molecular Cytogenetics at the Biomedical Institute of Research of Salamanca (IECSCYL-IBSAL), and Cancer Research Centre (CIC). For more than three decades, he has been the leader of the Oncology Cytogenetics Unit (UCO) in the Hematology Service of the University Hospital of Salamanca, which is the reference center for studies of molecular cytogenetics in the Community of Castilla y León, Aragon, Extremadura, and Andalucía. Prof. Dr. Hernández Rivas has published over 300 articles in international scientific journals, directed 54 research projects and 26 doctoral theses. In addition, he has been a member of the executive committee of the Concerted Action funded by the Marie-Curie Foundation “CGH Arrays and Molecular Cytogenetics”, as well as of several scientific committees and advisors, participating in the organization of I+D+I activities. He has also been a member of the editorial board of the journal Cancer Genetics and Cytogenetics, editor of the journal “Continuing Education in Hematology and Hemotherapy” and has been coordinator of the Doctorate program with a mention of quality “Advances in Internal Medicine”. He has been involved in many national and international research projects, such as MILE (“Microrarrays Innovations in Leukemia”, IRON “Interlaboratory Robustness of Next-generation sequencing”, and NGS-PTL “Next Generation Sequencing Platform for Personalized Therapy for Leukemia” program of FP7- HEALTH-2012 INNOVATION-1. At present, he is the Project Coordinator of the Project HARMONY PLUS “Healthcare alliance for EP PerMed Conference 02/2025 2 | 3 This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101137129. resourceful medicines offensive against neoplasms in hematology – PLUS” (Grant agreement 945406) approved by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI2), which is part of the Big Data for Better Outcomes initiative (BD4BO) of the Horizon 2020 projects. HARMONY PLUS continues the HARMONY’s work, a European Network of Excellence that captures, integrates, analyses, and harmonizes Big Data from high quality multidisciplinary sources for the purpose of acquiring valuable knowledge across the spectrum of hematologic malignancies. The aim of HARMONY PLUS is to build on HARMONY’s work, adding additional blood cancers to the list of diseases under study and turning the existent HARMONY platform into an integrated services platform that will improve clinical decision making and clinical trial design. Prof. Dr. Hernández Rivas is also the project coordinator of the ERA PerMed project SYNtherapy “SYNthetic Lethality for Personalized Therapy-based Stratification in Acute Leukemia”. Moreover, he currently leads another European project: NEMHESYS “NGS Establishment in Multidisciplinary Healthcare Education SYStem” (an Erasmus+ project) and participates in oncNGS, a H2020 project that aims at developing novel affordable NGS solutions both for solid and hematological tumors. He is also participating in the EU projects IMPACT, CAN.HEAL and RESOLVE. Prof. Dr. Hernández Rivas’ group works on the molecular characterization of tumoral cells from hematological malignancies (chronic lymphocytic leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, myelodysplastic syndromes), the application of CRISPR/Cas9 in the study of blood disorders, and the integration of genomic highthroughput technologies for the study of cancer. ORCID: 0000-0002-9661-9371

Affiliation: Hasso-PIattner-lnstitut

Stefan Kalabakov is a PhD candidate and research assistant at the Connected Healthcare Chair, Hasso-Plattner-Institute, Germany. Their current research focuses on applying federated learning to develop clinical prediction models using electronic health records. Prior to their PhD, they earned a Master’s degree specializing in human activity recognition using inertial sensors.

Affiliation: Trinity College Dublin

Mark is Professor of Nephrology in Trinity College Dublin and consultant nephrologist in Tallaght and Beaumont Hospitals. After graduating from medicine in Trinity he completed his Nephrology training in North London in 2006. During this time, he obtained a PhD from Imperial College London, and post-doctoral time spent at Hammersmith Hospital, University of Birmingham and University College London consolidated a translational research programme focused on autoimmunity and systemic vasculitis. His research interests include novel model systems for investigating the pathogenesis of ANCA vasculitis, biomarker development and application of data science techniques to study autoimmunity. He leads the HELICAL, PARADISE and FAIRVASC EU consortia, which seek to apply novel data science and linkage techniques to health data. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts and was awarded the President of Ireland Young Researcher Award in 2012. He is a co-founder and autoimmune lead of ERN-RITA, the rare immune disorders European Reference Network, lead of the European Vasculitis Society Registry initiative, chair of the RITAIreland Vasculitis Network and co-founder of UKIVAS, the vasculitis society of UK and Ireland.

Affiliation: Shamir Medical Center

Prof. Ron Maymon M.D., graduated from the medical faculty Tel Aviv university. He is the chairman of the department of Ob/Gyn, Shamir medical centre, the chairman of the Israeli society of Ob/Gyn and the director of the director of the school of medical education, medical faculty, Tel Aviv university.

His main field of interest is prenatal ultrasound.

Affiliation: Shamir Medical Center

Dr. Meiri has a PhD in Neuroscience (the Hebrew University) and a MBA (Tel Aviv University). For ten years she was a faculty at Tel Aviv, Technion and NUU Faculties of Medicine, and has a life Visiting Professor at Weil-Cornel Medical School, New York. She was the 1st CEO of the National Committee of Biotechnology (5 years), and the founder of Israel Telemedicine Forum. She was the director of a MAGNET Program of IIA, and of Israel-North Carolina RTD Fund and a team member of USISTC. As a CEO of TeleMarpe, she founded the Israel Forum of Telemedicine and served as a senior advisor of the Scandinavian Prime Ministers commission of Telemedicine. In 2001-2011 she served as the CEO and the Board Director of Diagnostic Technologies Ltd (DTL) that developed diagnostics of prenatal complications, subsequently acquired by hylabs, where she became project director of BIRD, Israel China Fund, and of EU Pregenesys (EU PF6 , Diagnostics to predict preeclampsia), and the Exploitation Manager of ASPRE (EU FP7,Predicting and preventing preeclampsia), awarded 1 of 10th most influential EU projects of the decade. She is now the Exploitation Manager of PreTwin Screen of EraPerMed for developing gold standards for managing twin pregnancy. Dr. Meiri is the author of >143 publications and text book chapters in leading peer review journals.

Affiliation: Hospital for Sick Children

Dr. Seema Mital is a Staff Cardiologist & the Head of Cardiovascular Research at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto, and a Senior Scientist at the SickKids Research Institute. She is also the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Chair of Cardiovascular Science, and the Scientific Co-Lead of the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research. She leads the Cardiac Precision Medicine program at SickKids that leverages genomics, stem cells, AI and digital technology to model disease, test therapies, and implement precision-focused decision support tools. Dr. Mital established the SickKids Heart Centre Biobank, a multi-centre biorepository for childhood onset heart disease as well as a pan-Canadian Transplant Biobank Registry. She leads the ERAPerMed/CIHR funded PROCEED network for Personalized Genomics in congenital heart disease, the multi-centre international Precision Medicine in Cardiomyopathy (PRIMaCY) network, the CIHR-funded multi-centre INSERT-HCM study, and co-leads the CIHR-funded Precision Medicine for Heart Failure in the Young (PRIORITY) project of the Canadian Heart Function Alliance.

Affiliation: Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu

Psychologist (UAB, 1996), with a Master’s in Mental Health and Clinical Psychology (UB, 1998), a Doctorate in Research and Clinical Study of Mental Disorders (2000), and a PhD in Psychology (UB, 2004). She also holds a Bachelor’s in Market Research and Techniques (UAB, 2009). Since 2007, she has coordinated the Research Unit at Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, where she has been a researcher since 1997. Co-PI of the MERITT group (Etiopathogenesis and Treatment of Severe Mental Disorders, AGAURrecognized) and G11 of CIBERSAM. Her research focuses on metacognitive approaches to psychosis, particularly schizophrenia, exploring metacognitive, psychosocial, and clinical aspects. She evaluates psychological treatments, incorporating technologies like AVATAR-VR, and addresses gender-specific needs, especially for women with severe mental disorders and mothers. She has led over 20 competitive research projects and published more than 200 articles in high-impact journals.

Affiliation: Technical University Munich

Dr. Holger Prokisch is the head of the research group “Genetics of Mitochondrial Diseases” at the Institute of Human Genetics, School of Medicine, TUM Klinikum, and the Institute of Neurogenomics, Department of Computational Health, Helmholtz unich, Germany.

Holger Prokisch explores genetic variation in both rare and common diseases with a functional focus on mitochondria-related disease mechanisms. His group was successful in integrating genomic approaches with detailed functional biochemical investigations. Holger Prokisch contributed to the discovery of more than 80 novel disease genes, by applying whole exome and genome sequencing. He extended the diagnostic toolbox by establishing RNA-sequencing and proteomics pipelines for the diagnosis of Mendelian diseases. Much of his work is focused on advanced diagnostics by multi-omics integration. He coordinates the German network for mitochondrial disorders and two Eurasian networks, the GENOMIT network for mitochondrial disorders (EJP RD), and the Personalized Mitochondrial Medicine network, PerMiM (ERA PerMed). In 2024 Holger Prokisch was awarded with the GfH most prestigious award, the GfH Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor was presented to Prokisch in front of 5,000 attendees at the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics. The Medal recognizes human geneticists who have made significant scientific contributions, advanced the field of human genetics, and demonstrated exemplary character in Germany.

Affiliation: Karolinska Institutet

Mattias Rantalainen (PhD, Senior Lecturer) leads the Predictive Medicine group at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet. He is the co-founder and CTO of Stratipath – a company developing AI-based precision pathology for clinical use. Dr. Rantalainen completed his PhD at Imperial College London and was a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Oxford.

Dr. Rantalainen focus on medical research driven by machine learning, artificial intelli-gence (AI) and large population representative studies – in the areas of cancer precision medicine and computational pathology.

Dr. Rantalainen leads the CHIME project, focused on large cohort studies in computational pathology. He is the coordinator of the Swedish AI Precision Pathology (SwAIPP) consor-tium, the ABCAP consortium and the CARE-B consortium. He received the 2022 Athena prize and was awarded the 2023 prize for Innovation and Utilization at Karolinska Institute.

Affiliation: Meyer Children’s Hospital IRCCS

Paola Romagnani, MD, PhD, graduated and obtained her PhD in Endocrinology and her Residency in Nephrology from the University of Florence, Italy. She is Full Professor andChair of Nephrology at the University of Florence, Head of the Pediatric Department and of the Nephrology and Dialysis Unit at the University Children’s Hospital Anna Meyer IRCCS, Florence, Italy. Paola Romagnani has published 260 papers with an H-index of 93. Her studies received over 31000 citations. She served in the Editorial Board of JASN and KI. She has given over 400 lectures, including numerous plenaries, in the most important international meetings of nephrology and other disciplines. She is funded by national and international agencies and coordinated a European cooperative project. In 1999 she was awarded the Hoechst Marion Roussel Young Investigator Award. She won three European Research Council (ERC) Grants, a Starting in 2007, a Consolidator in 2014 and an Advanced in 2020. In 2014-2019, she served as member of the ERA-EDTA Scientific Advisory Board. In 2020 she has won the ERA-EDTA Award for Outstanding Basic Science Contributions to Nephrology.

Affiliation: Oslo University Hospital

Sigrid S. Skånland received her PhD from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences atUniversity of Oslo in 2009, under the supervision of Prof. Kirsten Sandvig. She was then awardedwith a long-term EMBO fellowship to do her post-doctoral training in the Molecular Signaling Groupof Prof. Ivan Dikic (2009-2011) at the University Hospital Frankfurt, Germany. From 2011, Skånlandhas been affiliated with the research group of Prof. Kjetil Taskén, first at the Nordic EMBLPartnership for Molecular Medicine in Norway (NCMM), currently at Oslo University Hospital. Here,she has established her own research group focusing on functional precision medicine inhaematologic cancers, in particular the B-cell malignancy chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Byperforming functional analyses including ex vivo drug sensitivity screening and single cell signalinganalyses, her aim is to identify biomarker signatures that can predict treatment outcomes for theindividual patient. In 2020, Skånland became coordinator of the European Commission ERA PerMedconsortium CLL-CLUE on tailoring the targeted treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and in 2023 she was awarded “Researcher of the year” at the Institute for Cancer Research.

Affiliation: RWTH Aachen University

Klaus Tenbrock is a trained pediatric rheumatologist, pneumologist and allergologist, heading the research group for Translational Pediatric Rheumatology and Immunology at the RWTH Aachen, Germany and is leading the Pediatric Rheumatology department at the Inselspital University of Bern, Switzerland. He is currently president of the German Society of Pediatric Rheumatology (GKJR) and research chair of the Juvenile idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) working party at the European Society of Pediatric Rheumatology (PRES). His main interest is T cell immunology and immune metabolism with a focus on childhood arthritis. He is consortial lead of the German Pro-Kind study, a nationwide study involving more than 700 patients with JIA treated according to a Treat to Target concept (T2T) and of the ERA Permed Permdiriar study that focuses on children with refractory childhood arthritis. 

Affiliation: Institut Curie

Christophe Le Tourneau is senior Medical Oncologist at the Institut Curie and Professor of Medicine at Paris-Saclay University. He is heading the Department of Drug Development and Innovation (D3i), as well as the Head and Neck Cancer Clinic. Christophe is leading the early phase clinical trials program of the Institut Curie.
Christophe Le Tourneau was certified in Medical Oncology in 2005 and got his PhD in Clinical Epidemiology in 2007. He did a 2-year Clinical Research Fellowship at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, Canada, in the Drug Development Program.
His main interests are precision medicine, phase I clinical trials with a special attention at the methodology to conduct these trials, as well as Head and Neck oncology. Christophe Le Tourneau is the principal investigator of numerous phase I and II trials, as well as of clinical trials in Head and Neck oncology. He ran the first randomized precision medicine trial (SHIVA01) that compared the efficacy of matched targeted therapy versus conventional chemotherapy in patients with advanced cancer. Christophe Le Tourneau leads the UNICANCER Precision Medicine group. He is the vice-chair of the GORTEC Head and Neck cancer group.

Affiliation: Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Dr. Eirini Tsirvouli holds a PhD in Computational Biology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and has several years of experience in mechanistic disease modeling. Through her affiliation to the OncoLogics ERA PerMed project, she develops computational models of colorectal cancer to guide experimental design and identify effective drugs and drug combinations.
With extensive expertise in disease modeling, data analysis, and their combination, Eirini’s work bridges computational and experimental research to deliver actionable insights. Her broader research interests include leveraging predictive models and interdisciplinary collaboration to advance the adoption of computational models for personalized medicine.

Affiliation: University of Bordeaux / Liryc

Edward Vigmond received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. He was an associate professor at the University of Calgary, as well as the Director of the Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering programme. He lmoved to Bordeaux, France, in 2012 to be the head of the modelling department at the Liryc Heart Rhythm Disease Institute.

His research is centered on the computer simulation of cardiac function, primarily electrophysiological, but increasingly multiphysics. He develops and implements mathematical models of the heart that run on high performance computers. He has contributed a free version of code to the modelling community, called openCARP. He uses digtal twins to better understand and treat cardiac disease, as well as help design biomedical devices.

Affiliation: CZ Health Insurance & Leiden University Medical Centre

Sahar Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn-Khosrovani is a pharmacist in Medicine & Society (CZ Health Insurance) with a PhD in haemato-oncology from Erasmus University, Rotterdam. She is a member of the National Payer’s Evaluation Committee for Specialised Medicines and Companion Diagnostics (CieBAG), National Horizon Scanning Group for Oncology and Haematology and the KWF’s Committee for Long-term Biomarkers Programme. Sahar is Associate Professor of ‘Medical Oncology, with a special focus on Accessibility of Medicines’ at Leiden University Medical Centre.

Affiliation: Comprehensive Cancer Center Munich LMU

Dr. Benedikt Westphalen studied Medicine and Molecular Biology in Hamburg, Philadelphia, New York, and Bern. After completing his medical studies, Dr. Westphalen initiated his training in Internal Medicine at the University of Hamburg in 2008. In 2010, he joined the laboratory of Prof. Timothy C. Wang at Columbia University in New York City as a postdoctoral fellow. Here, his research centered on the intricacies of cellular plasticity and the origins of gastrointestinal malignancies.

Subsequently, in 2013, Dr. Westphalen affiliated with the Department of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Munich. In this role, he concentrated on clinical and translational research pertaining to pancreatic cancer and early-phase clinical trials. By 2017, he assumed leadership of the Molecular Tumor Board and subsequently the Precision Oncology Program at the University of Munich. In 2023, he took the clinical leadership position of the newly certified Center for Personalized Medicine at University of Munich. Dr. Westphalen has authored and co-authored over 150 research papers.

Dr. Westphalen joined ESMO in 2017 and participated in the ESMO Leaders Generation Programme in 2018. In 2024, he assumed the role of Chair of the Translational Research and Precision Medicine Working Group and became a member of the Public Policy Committee in 2025. On a European level, Dr. Westphalen he has been a member of the EU Commission expert group: Mission Board for Cancer from 2022 onwards.