Dr Kristen Bubb is Lead of the Translational Vascular Therapeutics Group in the Biomedicine Discovery Institute at Monash University. Kristen obtained her PhD at Monash University, before completing a post-doctoral fellowship at the William Harvey Research Institute in London, supported by the British Pharmacological Society. She then co-led a research program to investigate novel therapeutics and signalling pathways applicable to vascular diseases at the University of Sydney, before being recruited to Monash University in 2019 to establish the founding laboratory in the Victorian Heart Institute. Her main research interests are to investigate inflammatory and redox signalling in vascular diseases, with the aim of developing novel therapeutics for atherosclerosis, pulmonary hypertension and pre-eclampsia.

A/Prof Simon Foster is a Bellberry-Viertel Senior Medical Research Fellow, Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow and head of the Cardiac Drug Discovery lab at QIMR Berghofer. A/Prof Foster’s research focusses on novel aspects of cell signalling and receptor biology, with recent publications in Cell, Brit J Pharmacol, Cell Reports and Nat Cardiovasc Res. He was awarded the ASCEPT/BPS Outstanding Young Investigator Prize and Certara New Investigator Award in 2019. After his BA/BSc (Hons) degrees (University of Melbourne) and PhD (University of Queensland), Simon led a large project on orphan GPCRs in Denmark, supported by consecutive fellowships from Lundbeck Foundation and Danish Council for Independent Research. He returned to Australia in 2018 to Monash University, and was recruited to QIMR Berghofer in late 2020. A/Prof Foster is now combining his expertise in cardiovascular biology, inflammation and cell signalling to discover new avenues to target cardiac fibrosis and heart failure.

Dr Figueiredo Galvao is a post-doctoral research officer at the Center for Cardiovascular Biology and Disease Research at La Trobe University. Her work investigates the role of immune-mediated inflammation in the development of hypertension. She uses a range of pharmacological interventions, genetically modified mice and next generation single-cell transcriptomic and proteomic sequencing to expand the current knowledge in her field.

Louise is a registered pharmacist who has worked in a variety of pharmacy sectors including community pharmacy, hospital pharmacy, research, and academia. She is an experienced compounding pharmacist and clinical trials pharmacist, with extensive experience in pharmacy clinical practice. She has a special interest in cardiovascular disease, diabetes and its associated microvascular complications, deprescribing, and more recently, applications of retinal imaging in hypertension. Her passion for helping others and reducing the risks of cardiovascular disease saw Louise successfully implement a Heart Foundation Walking Group through the community pharmacy she worked at in Albany. Louise authored several articles in peer reviewed journals and presented research outputs at national pharmacy conferences before being awarded her PhD in 2024.

Hudson is an emerging researcher who is currently an Honours student at the University of Technology Sydney under the supervision of Distinguished Professor Brian Oliver.

Julia is a dedicated pharmacologist specialising in lung diseases, focusing on COPD and viral AECOPD, with a special interest in the cytokine Transforming Growth Factor Beta. Julia is currently a Research Fellow at Monash University, where her research aims to develop a novel mouse model of COPD to assess therapeutic strategies for viral-induced inflammation and lung damage. I utilise cutting-edge ex vivo models, including precision-cut lung slices (PCLS), to test drug efficacy and improve treatments for COPD.