Geoff Huggins, United Kingdom (UK)
Geoff Huggins is the Director of the NES Digital Service which is part of NHS Scotland and has responsibility for developing Scotland’s National Digital Platform. From 2014 to 2018 he was Director for Health and Social Care Integration and prior to that was Head of Mental Health at the Scottish Government. He led the production and delivery of Scotland’s three dementia strategies. He has been the lead for the Second EU Joint Action on Dementia and currently chairs the European Expert Group. Mr Huggins is one of the speakers in Plenary 1, on 24 October.
Elina Suzuki, OECD
Elina Suzuki is an Advisor to the Director of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. Her work focuses primarily on dementia, ageing, long-term care, and the use of new digital tools for health. She co-authored the recent OECD report “Care Needed: Improving the Lives of People with Dementia”, which presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive cross-country assessment of the state of dementia care in OECD countries. Ms Suzuki is one of the speakers in Plenary 3, on 25 October.
Debby Gerritsen, Netherlands
Debby Gerritsen is a geropsychologist and professor of wellbeing among frail elderly people and people with chronic illnesses in long-term care at the Department of Primary and Community care of the Radboud university medical center in Nijmegen (Netherlands). She is Chair of the Special Interest Forum on challenging behaviour of the International Psychogeriatric Association (IPA) and a member of INTERDEM. She is also Vice-chair of the UKON network, a collaboration between Dutch healthcare organisations and the Radboudumc in science, education and implementation. Prof. Gerritsen is one of the speakers in Plenary 4, on 25 October.
Tiia Ngandu, Finland
Dr Tiia Ngandu is an associate professor currently working at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) in Helsinki, Finland. She works as a research manager and leader of the Dementia Prevention group. Her major research interests are in the area of dementia epidemiology, particularly risk factors and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive impairment. She is the coordinator of the ongoing Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER), and she is also involved in several other dementia prevention projects, including the recently launched World Wide FINGERS network. Dr Ngandu is one of the speakers in Plenary 4, on 25 October.
Meike Vernooij, Netherlands
Meike Vernooij is a professor of Population Imaging and a neuroradiologist at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, Netherlands. She is an expert in applying medical imaging techniques in a population-based setting to study normal development as well as disease pathophysiology. Her particular expertise and focus is on studying the use of MRI in the investigation of age-related brain changes, specifically those which may be used as preclinical markers for cerebrovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Her work has been recognised with the European Prize for Neuroradiology (Lucien Appel Prize 2014), the Stroke Innovation Award by the Journal Stroke, and the Lourens Penning Prize of the Dutch Society of Radiology. Prof. Vernooij is one of the speakers in Plenary 4, on 25 October.
