Meet the 2025 Scientific Committee
Professor Catherine Walshe is currently Professor of Palliative Care in the International Observatory on End of Life Care at Lancaster University, having worked there since 2013. Catherine is also Editor-in-Chief of the journal Palliative Medicine. Catherine is a nurse, with a PhD in Nursing (University of Manchester) and MSc in Nursing Research (King’s College, London). Catherine works mostly in research and education, and has interests in the ways that palliative care is provided, especially in community settings, and the deployment of volunteers.
Dr Simone Veronese is a trained palliative care physician in Torino, Italy. He has been working 1998 to date as a palliative care specialist for Fondazione FARO, an Italian charity providing home care, hospice inpatient units, outpatient clinics and hospital consultations. He is now head of research in FARO, his main research interests are development of outcome measures in palliative care, palliative care for people with neurological diseases and ACP. At the moment he is the secretary of the Italian Society for Palliative Care (SICP) and is now chairing its Scientific Committee. He is cochair of the Specialist Panel for palliative care of the Europeans Academy of Neurology (EAN), member of the Reference Group for neurology of the EAPC and of the Clinical Committee of the International NeuroPalliative Care Society.
In 2023 he was elected in the new EAPC Board of Directors and is serving with the role of Vice President.
Jeroen Hasselaar is a professor of social empowerment in palliative care at Radboudumc Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Also he is head of the department of primacy care research at Nivel Utrecht. Since 2019, Jeroen is Vice-President of the EAPC and since 2023 he is President of the EAPC. Jeroen Hasselaar is a board member of the national association for palliative care, Palliactief (the Netherlands). He has been coordinator and principle investigator of European and national research projects, and has presented about this at EAPC and other congresses. Publications are available via Pubmed.
Minna Hökkä, RN, PhD is working as a Senior Advisor in Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. She is also working as a project manager in the FinPall-Developing palliative care services in Northern-Finland project in the Oulu University Hospital in Finland. She has a master’s degree in advanced clinical practice a master’s degree in nursing sciences (education), her PhD was about palliative care education and competencies. She has been actively involved in the national development of palliative care services to all levels of the social- and health care. She has also been active in defining and developing palliative care education and competencies for nurses and physicians. She has made research about palliative care competencies and education in all levels, undergraduate, postgraduate and continuous education.
As a historian specialised in University Archives, Eduardo Garraldo currently serves as a research assistant at the ATLANTES Global Observatory of Palliative Care, located at the University of Navarra (Spain). He has experience in identifying and collecting indicators to measure palliative care from a macro-level perspective. His particular interest lies in monitoring palliative care development across various world regions, with the aim of promoting greater access to palliative care provision for the population.
Dr. Lucy Selman is Associate Professor in Palliative and End of Life Care at the University of Bristol, where she co-leads the research group. Specific current research interests include treatment decision-making and communication; family caregiving and bereavement; widening access to services; and public health approaches. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers (H index 41) and regularly contributes to discussions about end-of-life care and bereavement in the media. With Co-PI Emily Harrop, she is a 2023 ESRC policy impact award finalist for her research on bereavement during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020 she founded Good Grief Festival, a grief literacy initiative which has now reached over 27,000 people.
Dr Constanze Rémi MSc is a clinical pharmacist from Munich, Germany. She has been working in the Department of Palliative Medicine at University Hospital of Munich since 2003. Since 2021, she is Head of the Centre for Excellence in Palliative Pharmacy Care (www.arzneimittel-palliativ.de), which provides a national drug information service for health care professionals in palliative care. She holds a Master of Science in Palliative Care from King’s College, London. In addition to her clinical work as a ward pharmacist, she is involved in research on drug therapy safety in palliative care, particularly in relation to off-label use.
Is paediatric nurse with ICU experience and she has been working in palliative care for last almost 10 years in Czech Republic. She also works in humanitarian field with international organisation Doctors without Borders.
She is bord member of Paediatric Palliative Care Group, Czech Association of Palliative Medicine and bord member of Reference Group for Children and Young People, EAPC.
She is lector of communication courses, paediatric palliative care program in Czech Republic and a lector of Management Skills in Health care
She is director of Home-Based Hospice for adults and Children in East Bohemia region.
Saija Ristolainen-Kotimäki is an expert by experience. Her mother was diagnosed in the late 90’ with a rare, hereditary and incurable neurodegenerative disease called Huntington’s Disease (HD). She brings the perspective of patients and carers of Huntington’s Disease and other rare diseases. She is the chairwoman of the Finnish Huntington Association and a member at large in the board of the European Huntington Association. She is a member of a patient advocacy group of the Finnish Network for Rare Diseases.
Dr Reino Pöyhiä, MD, PhD is a professor of palliative medicine in the University of Eastern Finland and an adjunct professor of anaesthesiology in the University of Helsinki. He has special competences in academic medical teaching, pain and palliative medicine. He is also a vice president of the Finnish Association for Palliative Medicine. He has supervised several academic dissertations and is an author of over 130 publications mostly in pain and palliative medicine. His current research activities deal with pharmacology, teaching and spirituality in palliative medicine. He has been lecturing in Finland, Sweden, South-Korea, China, Oman, Kuwait, UAEs and Columbia about pain medicine. Dr Pöyhiä has served as a palliative care volunteer in Tanzania since 2013 and is also fully educated concert pianist.
Prof Joachim Cohen is a social health scientist and a professor of the End-of-Life Care Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In the research group he is chairing a research program on public health and palliative care
He graduated in 2001 as a Master in Sociology and in 2007 as a PhD in Social Health Sciences.
He has 20 years of experience with end-of-life care research and has been awarded with the Kubler Ross Award for Young Researchers and the Young Investigator Award from the European Association of Palliative Care in 2010. Both prizes were awarded to him, mainly because of his large-scale population-based and population-level cross-national research on end-of-life care.
Prof. Cohen has published over 220 articles in international peer reviewed journals and co-edited the Oxford University Press book: “A public health perspective on end of life care”.
