Elie Akl is a tenured Professor of Medicine at the American university of Beirut (AUB). He serves as the Associate Dean for Clinical Research at the Faculty of Medicine, leads the division of General Internal Medicine and Geriatrics (GIMG) at AUB Medical Center, directs the AUB GRADE Center, and co-directs the Center for systematic reviews of health policy and systems research (SPARK). His research expertise is in systematic reviews, practice guidelines, and conflicts of interest. He serves as a guideline methodologist for a number of leading professional organizations and the World Health Organization. He published close to 500 peer-reviewed papers and was listed by Thomson Reuters as one of the 2015 “world’s most influential scientific minds” and as one of the “Highly Cited Researchers” yearly since 2015.

Sue Brennan is the Director of the Melbourne GRADE Centre and a Senior Research Fellow at Cochrane Australia, in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University. Her field of expertise is systematic review and guideline methodology, with a focus on evidence-informed decision-making in public health where contributions include leading reviews for national guidelines on lower risk alcohol consumption and infection control. Through leadership roles in the international GRADE working group and Cochrane, she works with researchers, national policy-makers and guideline developers to implement best practice methods in evidence synthesis and guideline development. She has trained more than 1000 participants in GRADE and systematic review methodology, is an author of four core chapters in the Cochrane Handbook, and co-author of the PRISMA, PRIOR and SWIM reporting guidelines.

Paul is the Director for the Centre for Guidelines at NICE and member of NICE’s executive team and board. He has been with NICE since 2009, where he was responsible for setting up the Institute’s accreditation programme for guideline developers. This programme evaluated the quality of processes used by organisations that developed guidelines, and awarded an accreditation mark to those achieving the required standard. The aim was to raise the quality of guideline production. Before joining NICE, Paul spent over 20 years in international medical publishing and communications, focusing on evidence to aid healthcare decision making and therapeutics. Now based in Manchester in the UK, during his career Paul has lived, worked and travelled internationally as part of his role. Paul is a member of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and has a postgraduate diploma in publishing studies.

Miranda is an epidemiologist with a background in health sciences and a keen interest in evidence-based health care. After her PhD in infectious diseases epidemiology she worked as senior researcher at the Dutch National Health Care Institute and senior staff member of Cochrane Netherlands. Currently she is an assistant professor and principal investigator at the department of Epidemiology and Data Science of the Amsterdam Medical Centers (University of Amsterdam). The focus of her research and teaching is evidence synthesis methodology, in particular guideline development and implementation. Her research line covers a broad spectrum of projects: from developing core outcome sets and risk of bias instruments to evaluation of guideline implementation and development of methodological frameworks. As methodologist she contributed to numerous guidelines on a variety of topics, for example for WHO and the European Commission. She is a board member of the GRADE working group, co-chair of the Dutch GRADE network and an active member of Cochrane.

Professor Joerg Meerpohl is director of the Institute for Evidence in Medicine at the Medical Center & Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg, Germany and founding director of the Freiburg GRADE Center, which was established in 2013. He is a board-qualified pediatrician and pediatric hematologist and oncologist by training. For more than a decade Prof. Meerpohl has been an active member of the GRADE working group and has worked as GRADE methodology advisor with national and international expert panels including WHO and the Robert Koch Institute in Germany. Professor Meerpohl is also the Director of Cochrane Germany. From 2015 to 2018, he has been an elected member of the Cochrane Governing Board. His main research interests include systematic review methodology, transparency in research, and guideline methodology. Professor Meerpohl has published more than 300 PubMed listed articles.

Dr. Vivian Welch is editor in chief and acting CEO of the Campbell Collaboration, Director of the Methods Centre at the Bruyère Research Institute, and Associate Professor at University of Ottawa School of Epidemiology and Public Health. Her research interests include methods and reporting guidelines for synthesizing evidence on health equity.  She is also an avid cross-country skier, runner and mother of four.

Jun is a healthcare researcher with over 17 years of experience in evidence-based medicine. She is the Director of Nottingham Ningbo GRADE Centre at the University of Nottingham Ningbo (China), and lead for systematic review and clinical practice guidelines at the University of Nottingham (UK). The scope of her expertise spans across primary research and secondary synthesis. Her strength lies particularly in establishing national and international platform, promotes research collaboration and knowledge exchange. Born and raised in north China, educated in the UK, she has a keen interest in improving standards of care in LMIC and resource-limited settings. She is the founding member of China Clinical Practice Guideline Alliance (GUIDANCE) – the first and largest national platform for evidence-based guideline production in China. Jun has been an active reviewer/editor for Cochrane Collaboration since 2005, working across culture, continents, and stakeholders to promote evidence-based practice, particularly in guideline development and implementation. Besides those research activities, she enjoys teaching and knowledge sharing with other users in science community. Her teaching video has over 200,000 viewings on Youtube.