Links to other EMEUNET Sub-Committee membership posts:
New EMEUNET Sub-Committee members
Dr Rym Abida
Tunisia, UK
Rym is a specialty doctor who graduated in Tunis, Tunisia, focusing on autoimmune rheumatic diseases and vasculitis. She is currently a clinical research fellow and a PhD student in the department of Ageing, Rheumatology and Regenerative Medicine at University College London and an honorary clinical fellow in the Rheumatology department at University College London Hospital.
Her research interests are mainly focused on systemic lupus erythematosus, trying to identify predictive markers of prolonged remission. She is also contributing to the ongoing lupus research trials in the department. Rym is the past president of the Tunisian Association of Young Internists and representative of Tunisia in the European Young Internists board.
Rym is a member of the EMEUNET Country Liaison Sub-Committee
Dr Jennifer Amsler
Switzerland
Jennifer is a rheumatologist and senior physician at the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, University Hospital Bern and a PhD fellow at the Graduate Health School (GHS) at the University of Bern.
She has spent two years as a postdoc in an immunology laboratory at Institut Cochin in Paris, France, working on neutrophils in rheumatoid arthritis and ANCA-associated vasculitis. Her PhD topic involves translational research in vasculitis.
Her clinical focus lies on maternity and fertility in inflammatory rheumatic diseases, where she helps to build the Swiss RePreg cohort.
Jennifer is a student representative of the GHS in Bern and a member of the EMEUNET Country Liaison Sub-Committee.
Dr Deniz Bayraktar
Bulgaria, Türkiye
Denis is a physiotherapist by background and an associate professor at Izmir Kâtip Çelebi University in Turkey.
His major interest is studying the effects of different exercise approaches in childhood and adulthood rheumatic diseases. He is the president of the Association of HPR (Turkish) and the HPR representative of the Auto-Inflammatory Working Party in PReS. He is also appointed as an affiliate scientist at Arthritis Research Canada.
Denis is a member of the EMEUNET Education Sub-Committee.
Dr Alessandra Bettiol
Italy
Alessandra is Assistant Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at the University of Florence.
Her research interests focus mainly on translational research in rare systemic vasculitis, especially Behçet’s syndrome (BS) and ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAVs).
She is also interested in biostatistics, epidemiology and guideline development. She is Convenor of the Study group on Epidemiology of the International Society for Behçet’s disease (ISBD), and is a member of the panel for the 2025 update of EULAR recommendations for BS.
Alessandra is a new member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee.
Dr Milena Bond
Italy, Austria
Milena is a rheumatology consultant based in northern Italy and a PhD candidate at Paracelsus Medical University of Salzburg (Austria).
Her research focuses on polymyalgia rheumatica and systemic vasculitis, and she participates in several international task forces dedicated to these topics, including EULAR and ACR/EULAR initiatives.
She is an active member of EUVAS and part of the Italian and Austrian Societies of Rheumatology.
She is a member of the EMEUNET Visibility and Global Affairs Sub-Committee.
Dr Emanuele Bozzalla Cassione
Italy
Emanuele is a consultant rheumatologist and physician-researcher at the Division of Rheumatology, Careggi University Hospital, Florence.
He is the president-elect of the SIRyoung (young committee of the Italian Society of Rheumatology) and has been serving as Country Liaison for Italy and San Marino in the past three years.
His main research focus is on clinical and translational research in inflammatory arthropathies, especially rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis (RA, PsA, along with interstitial lung disease.
Emanuele is a member of the EMEUNET Visibility & Global Affairs Sub-Committee.
Dr Hannah den Braanker
Netherlands
Hannah is a rheumatologist in training at Maasstadt Hospital with a strong background in translational research. She holds a PhD and Master’s degree in molecular medicine, with her doctoral research focused on the transition from psoriasis to psoriatic arthritis, investigating T cells, lymphatics, and their interplay in disease progression. Her main research interests encompass basic/translational science and psoriatic arthritis.
Currently, Hannah works on projects exploring the relationship between obesity, lymphatics, and inflammatory arthritis, contributing to understanding how metabolic factors influence rheumatic disease development. Her work bridges immunological research with clinical applications, translating basic science discoveries into improved patient care.
Hannah is an active member of Young GRAPPA and a new member of the EMEUNET Newsletter Sub-Committee.
Dr Omar Dhrif
Tunisia, France
Omar is an internal medicine specialist from University Tunis El Manar, currently residing in Dijon, France.
His main clinical and research interests are focused on vasculitis, global access to health care and educational therapy. Omar is the past treasurer of the Tunisian Association of Young Internists, Co-Founder of the Francophonic Young Internists Group, member of the Research Committee of the Tunisian Society of Internal Medicine and American College of Rheumatology Social Media Ambassador.
Omar is a member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee.
Dr Mustafa Ekici
Türkiye
Mustafa is a researcher and clinician who completed his internal medicine and rheumatology training at Hacettepe University.
His primary research focus areas encompass rheumatoid arthritis, interstitial lung disease and inflammatory myopathies. Mustafa is an active member of the Turkish Society for Rheumatology, the Turkish Society of Young Rheumatologists, and GRAPPA.
Mustafa is a member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee.
Dr Andreu Fernández-Codina
Spain, Canada
Andreu is a Rheumatologist and Adjunct, Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. He is also an Associate professor, Internal Medicine and Rheumatology, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada. His PhD thesis was centred on IgG4-related disease.
His research interests are clinical trials, epidemiological research and translational research in vasculitis, IgG4-related disease and systemic sclerosis.
He has been a member of the ACR/EULAR classification criteria task force. He is the co-founder of the Spanish IgG4-RD registry. He is a member of the Scleroderma Clinical Trials Consortium, CANVASC and ACR.
He is a new member of the Peer Mentoring EMEUNET Sub-Committee.
Dr Giovanni Fulvio
Italy
Giovanni is a rheumatologist and researcher at the University of Pisa, where he completed a PhD in Clinical and Translational Sciences.
His research is focused on salivary gland ultrasonography and the role of multi-modal imaging techniques in rheumatology, particularly in the diagnosis and management of Sjögren’s syndrome. He completed his fellowship at the Rheumatology Unit, University of Pisa, where he also serves as a tutor in salivary gland ultrasonography.
Giovanni is actively involved in European and national professional networks. He is a member of the Italian Society of Rheumatology, ERN ReCONNET, including the Sjögren’s disease group and the Transversal Working Group on Pregnancy and Family Planning, and EMEUNET. He has also served on the EMEUNET Newsletter Sub-Committee since 2024.
Dr Roba Ghossan
France
Roba is a rheumatologist at the Department of Rheumatology of Cochin Hospital APHP in Paris, France.
Her main interests include musculoskeletal ultrasound and the epidemiology of inflammatory rheumatic diseases.
Roba is a member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee.
Dr Alejandro Gómez-Gomez
Spain
Alejandro is a rheumatologist at Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona. His current clinical and research activities are primarily focused on Sjögren’s Disease and the application of –omic technologies in immunomediated diseases. Another area of interest is ocular inflammation, which was also the focus of his thesis on the use of immunomodulatory therapy in non-infectious uveitis.
He has served as a board member in the Society of Rheumatology of the Community of Madrid and as one of the coordinators of the Crystal-Induced Arthritis Study Group within the Spanish Society of Rheumatology.
He was a member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee from 2023 to 2024, and since 2024 he has been part of the Visibility & Global Affairs Sub-Committee.
Dr Elvis Hysa
Italy, Albania
Elvis is a rheumatologist and PhD Candidate at the Laboratory of Experimental Rheumatology and Academic Division of Clinical Rheumatology, University of Genova, Italy.
His research focuses primarily on clinical and translational studies in polymyalgia rheumatica and giant cell arteritis, imaging aspects of systemic sclerosis and other autoimmune connective tissue diseases (particularly capillaroscopy and skin ultrasound), and rheumatic-immune-related adverse events in oncology patients following immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy.
His PhD research centres on characterising cultured macrophages derived from peripheral circulating monocytes in patients with polymyalgia rheumatica and giant cell arteritis, both before and after treatment.
Elvis is a member of the EMEUNET Newsletter Sub-Committee.
Dr Claudia Iannone
Italy
Claudia is a Rheumatologist at IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele and Gaetano Pini in Milan, Italy. Her research focuses on systemic sclerosis, interstitial lung disease in RMD, and vasculitis.
She is a member of the Italian Society of Rheumatology and the EULAR Lung Study Group and serves as Clinical Group Coordinator of the EUSTAR Young Investigators Group (YIG). Dr. Iannone is a member of the Peer Mentoring EMEUNET Sub-Committee.
Dr Ufuk Ilgen
Turkey
Ufuk is a clinical rheumatologist and translational researcher at Mersin University. His main interest areas are antiphospholipid syndrome, systemic lupus erythematosus, autoinflammatory syndromes, RNA biology and endothelial cells. He is a previous Country Liaison for Türkiye and currently a member of the EMEUNET Country Liaisons Subcommittee. He is also a member of the European Lupus Society (SLEuro) and Turkish Society for Rheumatology (TSR), and one of the co-founders of the TSR-Young.
Dr Piotr Kuszmiersz
Poland
Piotr is a PhD in Medical Sciences and an internal medicine specialist, currently undertaking his rheumatology training at the Department of Rheumatology and Immunology, Jagiellonian University Medical College in Kraków, Poland.
His research interests focus on patient-reported outcome measures, epidemiology and the application of AI in medicine. Clinically, he specialises in inflammatory arthritis, systemic sclerosis and rare diseases such as idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD). Piotr is actively involved in research, including the Polnor Rheuma Research Grant working group.
Piotr is a member of the EMEUNET Country Liaison Sub-Committee.
Dr Saverio La Bella
Italy
Saverio is a resident in Pediatric Rheumatology at the IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini in Genoa, Italy. His research focuses on autoinflammatory diseases, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and the application of artificial intelligence and digital tools, such as social media as educational platforms, in pediatric rheumatology.
He is an active member of the JIR autoinflammatory disease working group and the young working group of the Italian Society of Pediatric Rheumatology (ReumaPed), Italian representative in the EMERGE group of the Paediatric Rheumatology European Society (PReS), and a member of the EMEUNET Education Sub-Committee.
Dr Margarida Lucas Rocha
Portugal
Margarida is a Rheumatologist at the Unidade Local de Saúde de Lisboa Ocidental in Lisbon, Portugal. She has broadened her clinical experience through short-term internships at the Lupus and Vasculitis Service at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and within the Rheumatology Department at the Royal Free Hospital in London. She is an enthusiastic researcher with a particular interest in Vasculitis and Systemic Sclerosis. Since 2021, she has served as an invited referee for ARP Rheumatology and became a facilitator for the EMEUNET Peer Review Programme in 2025. Margarida is also an active member of the EUSTAR Young Investigators Group and a member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee
Dr Maxime Melchior
Belgium
Maxime is a PhD fellow at the Université Libre de Bruxelles Centre for Research in Immunology (U-CRI), where he conducts fundamental and translational research on spondyloarthritis and associated diseases. His research aims to decipher the role of genetic risk factors in shaping T cell dysfunction in these conditions.
Maxime is an active member of the Belgian Society of Rheumatology’s Young Rheumatologists Working Group (NextGen Academy – SRBR/KBVR) and a member of the EMEUNET Newsletter Sub-Committee.
Dr Clara Mistegaard
Denmark
Clara is a medical doctor and researcher at the Department of Rheumatology at Odense University Hospital, specialising in clinical and translational research on inflammatory rheumatic diseases, with a particular focus on axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) and psoriatic arthritis (PsA). She holds a PhD centred on the role of the complement system in axSpA.
She is an active member of the Danish Society of Rheumatology, where she contributes to the development of national clinical guidelines for the management of axSpA and the medical treatment of rheumatoid diseases.
Clara is involved in the EMEUNET Social Media Subcommittee and is also a member of Y-GRAPPA.
Dr Magda Osipyan
Armenia
Magda is a clinician at Vardanants Medical Centre and an Associate Professor at Yerevan State Medical University.
Her research interests are connected mainly with systemic lupus erythematosus, Behçet’s disease and familial Mediterranean fever. She is fond of organising conferences and training sessions and is currently working on establishing a patient educational school for rheumatology patients in Armenia.
Magda is the secretary of the Armenian rheumatological association and a member of the EMEUNET Visibility & Global Affairs Sub-Committee.
Dr Cécile Philippoteaux
France
Cécile is a physician and a clinical fellow in the Rheumatology Department at Lille University Hospital, France. Her clinical and research interests primarily focus on bone diseases, including secondary osteoporosis, rare and constitutional bone disorders, and the use of real-world data for outcomes research. She is currently pursuing a PhD in public health and epidemiology. Her work leverages the French nationwide health claims database to study pharmaco-epidemiological and prognostic aspects of bone diseases, such as drug-induced osteoporosis, fracture risk prediction, and comorbidity profiles in rare skeletal disorders.
Cécile is a former active member of the young division working group of the French Society of Rheumatology (SFR) and a member of the EMEUNET Newsletter Sub-Committee.
Dr Antony Psarras
United Kingdom
Antony is an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Rheumatology at the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospitals.
His research interest lies in immune regulation of autoimmune rheumatic diseases, particularly systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). He is currently focusing on high-dimensional single cell multiomic approaches to investigate the immunometabolic reprogramming in preclinical autoimmunity and SLE.
Antony is a member of the EMEUNET Visibility & Global Affairs Sub-Committee.
Dr Myriam Reisch
Austria
Myriam is a physician researcher at the Medical University of Graz, where she is involved in clinical and translational research with a focus on ANCA-associated vasculitis and large vessel vasculitis. She is currently pursuing a PhD project investigating the pathogenesis of giant cell arteritis.
She is an active member of the young division working group (JOEGR) and of the visibility working group of the Austrian Society of Rheumatology. She is also a member of the EMEUNET Visibility & Global Affairs Sub-Committee
Dr Victoria Sadovici-Bobeica
Moldova
Victoria is currently a rheumatologist at the Medpark International Hospital and Assistant Professor at the Department of Internal Medicine of the State University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Nicolae Testemitanu”, both in Moldova. She holds a PhD degree in rheumatology, her research topic being cutaneous involvement in systemic lupus erythematosus.
Her research interests are mainly focused on systemic diseases. She has been a member of the Board of the Doctoral School of the Republic of Moldova since 2019 and she is the EMEUNET Country Liaison for the Republic of Moldova.
Victoria is a member of the EMEUNET COuntry Liaison Sub-Committee.
Dr Marc Scherlinger
France
Marc is a rheumatologist and translational researcher committed to advancing the understanding of autoimmune disease pathogenesis, particularly systemic lupus. His work also focuses on translational and clinical research into intensive immunotherapies, including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells and T-cell engagers, in the context of autoimmune disorders.
He is a member of the French Society of Rheumatology and serves as vice-president of the Club for Innovating Immunotherapies in IMIDs (C3I).
Additionally, Marc acts as the country liaison for France within EMEUNET and contributes to its Country Liaison Sub-Committee.
Dr Agata I. Schramm-Luc
Poland
Agata is an internist and rheumatologist. She is a lecturer (research/teaching) in the Department of Internal and Rural Medicine of the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where she earned a PhD in medicine for research entitled “T cell proinflammatory cytokine production and clinical manifestations of inflammatory diseases.”
In her work, she combines clinical practice at the Rheumatology Outpatient Clinics with research in the Translational Medicine Laboratory. Her main scientific interest is the role of the immune system in hypertension in rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory spondyloarthropathies.
Agata is an active member of the Young Rheumatologists’ Sub-Committee of Polish Society of Rheumatology, a member of the Polish Society of Internal Medicine and a member of the EMEUNET Peer-Mentoring Sub-Committee.
Dr Gagandeep Sukhija
United Kingdom/India
Gagandeep is a Rheumatology Trainee in London, UK, currently working at St George’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He holds postgraduate degrees in Internal Medicine and Rheumatology and has an academic background from both India and the UK. His clinical interests include SLE, systemic vasculitis, Myositis & ILD in rheumatology and global disparities in rheumatology care.
He has a strong interest in education and quality improvement. Gagandeep is also the current South London Rheumatology Trainee representative. He is passionate about global health equity and community engagement.
He is a member of the EMEUNET Social Media Sub-Committee.
Dr Yvonne Tan
United Kingdom
Yvonne is a Clinical Research Fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Manchester and NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre. She is undertaking her rheumatology and general internal medicine training in the North West Health Education England Deanery. She has a keen interest in MSK ultrasonography and recently completed the EULAR accredited intermediate training course. Her research is focused on predicting treatment response in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis using proteomics. She is a member of the British Society for Rheumatology and the associate advisor of the North West region at the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh. Yvonne is a member of the EMEUNET Education sub-committee.
Dr Alessandro Tomelleri
Italy
Alessandro is a consultant rheumatologist at San Raffaele Hospital and adjunct professor at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. His research focuses on polymyalgia rheumatica, large vessel vasculitis, autoinflammatory diseases, and VEXAS syndrome. He is part of the ACR-EULAR classification criteria committee for VEXAS syndrome. He is involved in an OMERACT project to define an ultrasound-based monitoring score in Takayasu arteritis. In giant cell arteritis, he has contributed to several national and international studies and has led a translational project on the role of IL-6R polymorphisms as predictors of treatment response.
Alessandro is actively engaged in international collaborations through OMERACT and the GCA-PMR study group, and is currently a member of the EMEUNET Peer Mentoring Sub-Committee.
Dr Nikolaos Vlachogiannis
Greece
Nikos is a postdoctoral researcher in Rheumatology and Internal Medicine resident at the Medical School of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His main clinical and research interests include systemic sclerosis, and specifically the pathogenetic mechanisms connecting vasculopathy / innate immunity with fibrosis.
Nikos is the EMEUNET country liaison for Greece and a new member of the Education Sub-Committee.