Current Opinion in Pulmonary Medicine was launched in 1995. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The field of pulmonary medicine is divided into nine sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Journal's Section Editors for this issue.
SECTION EDITORS
Michael S. Niederman
Michael S. Niederman is Clinical Director and Associate Chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Center, and Professor of Clinical Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, USA. Prior to this, he was a Professor of the Department of Medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA, and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola, New York, USA for 16 years. He obtained his medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine, USA, and then completed his training in internal medicine at Northwestern University School of Medicine, USA, before undertaking a pulmonary and critical care fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine, USA.
His interests lie in respiratory tract infections, and include mechanisms of airway colonization, the management of community- and hospital-acquired pneumonia, the role of guidelines for pneumonia, and the impact of antibiotic resistance on the management and outcomes of respiratory tract infections. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed or review articles, and has lectured widely, both nationally and internationally. Dr Niederman served as co-chairman of the committees that created the American Thoracic Society 1993 and 2001 guidelines for the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia, and the 1996 and 2005 committees that wrote guidelines for the treatment of nosocomial pneumonia. He was also a member of the ATS/IDSA committee that published guidelines for community-acquired pneumonia in 2007. Recently, he was the co-lead author of the 2017 guidelines on nosocomial pneumonia, written on behalf of the European Respiratory Society and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine. He served for 6 years as a member of the Board of Regents of the American College of Chest Physicians, and in 2013 was elected as a Master of the American College of Physicians. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Pulmonary Medicine and serves on the editorial boards of Critical Care Medicine, Intensive Care Medicine, Critical Care and Chest. He has previously served on the editorial board of The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Alimuddin Zumla
Sir Professor Alimuddin Zumla GCDS, PhD, MD, FRCP, FRCPath, FRSB, FAAS, is Professor of Infectious Diseases and International Health in the Division of Infection and Immunity, University College London, UK, and is Consultant Infectious Diseases Physician at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He serves as honorary and visiting Professor at several institutions in Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Sir Professor Alimuddin Zumla is internationally renowned for his outstanding and extensive research, training, capacity development and advocacy outputs in infectious diseases and tropical medicine. Sir Ali has a specialist interest in respiratory tract infections and emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases with epidemic potential.
Sir Ali is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, prizes and medals including: the Royal of Physicians Weber Parkes Medal (1999); the University of Amsterdam Spinoza Leerstoel Award (2011); the World Health Organisation STOP TB Partnership Kochon Prize and Medal (2012); the 2013 Times Higher Education Award; the Order of the Grand Commander of Distinguished Services from the President of Zambia (2014); the Albert Chalmers Medal (2000) and the Donald Mackay Medal (2014) from the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; the UCLHospitals-NHS-Foundation Trust Excellence Award for World Class Research (2015); the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden ’Doctorate honoris causa’ for ‘exceptional contributions to science, healthcare & humanity at large’ (2016); the UK-NIHR Senior Investigator Award (2017); a Knighthood (Knight Bachelor) in June, 2017 from Her Majesty the Queen for exceptional Services to Public Health and Infectious Diseases. In October 2018 Sir Zumla was awarded the Union Medal, the highest honour accorded by the International Union Against TB and Lung Diseases, France.
Sir Ali was born in Fort Jameson (Chipata), Zambia (British colonial Northern Rhodesia). He is dually qualified in medicine and science. He is an honors graduate (BSc and MB.ChB) of the University of Zambia, Africa. He gained his MSc degree in Tropical Medicine from the University of London, UK, for which he obtained a distinction and the Mugratroyd Prize. In 1982, whilst working as a Junior Doctor in London, he contracted life-threatening, crippling meningitis, and was informed that he would never walk normally again. Defying this poor prognosis and coping with a lifelong, persistent, disabling, painful neuropathy, he went on to make a remarkable recovery and returned to work a star-studded career. He obtained his PhD at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, UK, for which he was awarded the Alan Woodruff Medal. Whilst working as a medical registrar at the regional infectious disease hospital at Rush Green Hospital, Romford, UK, Sir Ali received international acclaim for rapidly identifying and reporting the first cases of the 1988 Legionnaires’ Diseases outbreak, which he traced back to BBC Broadcasting House in Central London. Sir Ali then worked for four years as Senior Registrar at the UK's premiere institute, the Hammersmith Hospital, Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London. After obtaining specialist clinical accreditation in infectious diseases and clinical immunology, Sir Ali subsequently spent two years as Associate Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Centre in Houston, Texas, USA, and as visiting Professor at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa.
Sir Ali plays an important leadership role in enhancing global research collaborations and in networking, capacity development, and training between Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. He initiates and leads multi-country translational research, clinical trials, and basic science research aligned closely with capacity development and training. His team's research findings and expertise have contributed to the development of the World Health Organization's guidelines and other policy guidelines on aspects of tuberculosis and on HIV and Mycobacterium tuberculosis co-infections. Sir Ali has over 650 publications (Google Scholar H-index=101; i10index=799; Citations= 51241) and he is in the Clarivate 2018 list of the world's top most influential and highly cited researchers.
Sir Ali is Editor of 20 medical textbooks, four of which are globally acknowledged classics: Manson's Tropical Diseases (co-edited with Gordon Cook), Tuberculosis: A Comprehensive Clinical Reference (co-edited with Simon Schaaf), Granulomatous Disorders (co-edited with Geraint James) and Tuberculosis-Perspectives in Medicine (co-edited with Stefan Kaufmann and Eric Ruben). Sir Ali has initiated and led several specialist journal theme series, ‘state of the art’ update reviews, involving a global authorship, for continuing medical education and for dissemination the latest literature to health personnel and scientists in developing countries.
Sir Ali serves on numerous international expert advisory groups and committees. He is a Founding Member and Trustee of the UK's first TB charity, TB Alert, which he formed together with other UK philanthropists in 1998, and which plays an advisory role to the UK All Party Parliamentary group on Global TB. He is also known for his pioneering leadership in developing ‘equitable north-south R&D partnerships’, the latest being PANDORA-ID-NET, a Pan African-European ONE-HUMAN-ENVIRONMENTAL-ANIMAL-HEALTH network for tackling emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. Sir Professor Alimuddin Zumla is well-known for his motto which states: Everyone should “hold hands together and move forward in the fight against infectious diseases”.
Coline H.M. van Moorsel
Dr Coline H.M. van Moorsel is Head of ILD Research at St Antonius ILD center of excellence and head R&D Pulmonology at St Antonius Hospital, Nieuwegein & Utrecht, The Netherlands. She is also Assistant Professor at the University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands. She received her MSc degree in Biology with honors from Leiden University, The Netherlands. Her PhD-studies on genetic diversification were performed in collaboration with Wageningen University, The Netherlands and the National Museum of Natural History, for which she received a PhD degree in molecular genetics from Leiden University, The Netherlands. As a postdoctoral researcher, she joined the Central Laboratory for Blood Transfusion Services to develop high-throughput micro-arrays for mutation detection in hereditary anaemia and bloodgroup typing in collaboration with Amsterdam Medical Center and Clinical Genetics Center Leiden. In 2004, she joined the Clinical Chemistry Laboratory at St Antonius Hospital to investigate genetic causes of pulmonary disease, and later joined the Pulmonology department at St Antonius Hospital and Utrecht University Medical Center as a senior scientist to investigate genotype-phenotype associations in Interstitial Lung Diseases. From 2012 – 2014, she was captain of the ILD-taskforce of the Netherlands Respiratory Society. From 2014 onwards, she has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Dutch Lung Foundation and from 2016 onwards, she is Managing Director of the Pulmonology Trial Department. She is currently head of the ILD Research Group, where she conducts research and supervises the research of PhD and MSc students and laboratory technicians and is responsible for management of the national ILD biobank and dataregistry, and the institute's TopCare lung program. Her interests lie in understanding biological factors that influence disease development in ILD and lung transplantation.
