Angela Ciobanu

Angela Ciobanu is a medical doctor and graduated with a Master’s degree in the Hebrew University-Hadassah Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine and the Doctoral programs at the State University of Medicine and Pharmacy “Nicolae Testemițanu”, Republic of Moldova. For more than 10 years she worked in the National Center of Public Health of the Republic of Moldova starting as a hygienist in food safety department and later as Secretary of the National Codex Alimentarius Committee. In beginning of 2007 she joints the UNICEF Moldova providing consultancy support in the area of communication for behavior change and later in nutrition. In early 2011 she started working for the WHO CO of the Republic of Moldova as national professional officer coordinating the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases. In the second term of 2018 she moved to Copenhagen, Denmark in the position of technical officer in tobacco control of the WHO Regional Office for Europe where is currently working. 

Joan Brunet

Joan Brunet is a medical oncologist, graduated from the Faculty of Medicine in Reus, with a long career dedicated to hereditary cancer. He holds a PhD in Medicine from the Rovira i Virgili University (Tarragona) and a Master in Bioethics and Law from the University of Barcelona. He is Professor of Oncology, Bioethics and Critical Evaluation at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Girona. He was the founder and coordinator of the Hereditary Cancer Section of the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM). He has published more than 200 articles in this field and has led national and international research projects. He is also a member of ERN Genturis (European Network on Genetic Tumour Risk Syndromes of the European Commission). He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Precision Oncology Programme of CatSalut and coordinator of the Expert Committee on Hereditary Syndromes of this programme.

Pedro Gullón

Graduate in Medicine from the University of Alcalá and specialist in Preventive Medicine and Public Health. He also has a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Alcalá de Henares and a doctor in Epidemiology and Public Health from said university, where in recent years he has been a professor and researcher in the area of ​​public health and epidemiology. In addition, he is a specialist in Public Policies and Right to the City from the Open University of Catalonia. He is de General Director of Public Health in Spain. 

Gullón has carried out his main professional tasks in the academic field as a professor and researcher in institutions in Spain, the United States and Australia. His main field of research has been the analysis of how different policies, both health and other sectors such as urban planning, affect the health of the population and health equity. During the pandemic, he worked on the evaluation of non-pharmacological interventions, the social inequalities of COVID-19, and the determinants of vaccination and vaccine hesitancy. In addition, it collaborated with public health services such as the Alert and Emergency Coordination Center and the Navarra Department of Health, in advisory work and preparation of reports. 

Esteve Fernández 

Degree in Medicine from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in 1990. Pre-doctoral researcher from 1990 to 1994 at the Clinical and Molecular Cancer Epidemiology Research Unit (IMIM). Master’s in Public Health and PhD from the UAB in 1995. He did a postdoctoral stay (1994-1995) at the General Epidemiology Laboratory of the “Mario Negri” Institute in Milan. 

His research has focused on tobacco control, from the characterization of the epidemic to the study of its various determinants (social, price, advertising, industry, etc.) and how to implement preventive and control measures. Similarly, their studies include exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, use of e-cigarettes and new tobacco and nicotine products, as well as exposure to e-cigarette aerosols. He has written more than 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He has been director (2004 to 2010) of the Gaceta Sanitaria magazine, Vice-President (2013-14) and President (2015-16) of the Spanish Society of Epidemiology and Academic Director of the School of Public Health of Menorca (2016-2021) ). He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Tobacco Control magazine and since December 2023 he is the President of the Catalan Tobacco Advisory Council. He is currently the Secretary of Public Health in Catalonia. 

Cristina Martínez

Cristina Martínez is a Senior Researcher expert in Tobacco Control. She is the Deputy Chief at the Tobacco Control Unit and Assistant Professor at the University of Barcelona. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Nursing Science and Social Anthropology and pursued postgraduate education in Health Policy at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) where she is an Adjunct Assistant Professor, at the Department of Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Martínez main areas of research include the evaluation of tobacco control policies in health care services, by assessing the impact of smoke-free policies and evaluating the effectiveness of smoking cessation and training programs. She is currently developing online tobacco cessation training programs for health professionals and conducting implementation projects to foster smoking cessation interventions in health care services. Moreover, she is conducting research to assess tobacco use among mentally ill and drug abuse smokers and design cutting-edge interventions to reduce the burden of tobacco-related diseases in this vulnerable population. 

Dongbo Fu

Dr Dongbo Fu is a Medical Officer for tobacco cessation in No Tobacco Unit (TFI), Department of Health Promotion at World Health Organization (WHO). Dr Fu has over 15 years international and country-level experience in tobacco cessation and treatment of tobacco dependence. He is WHO’s principal focal point for providing technical leadership in working with WHO Member States to establish and strengthen their national tobacco cessation and treatment systems as part of comprehensive tobacco control strategy and part of the universal health coverage (UHC) intervention package. He has coordinated the development of WHO clinical treatment guideline for tobacco cessation, a series of WHO technical tools for integrating brief tobacco interventions into primary care services and for developing and improving national toll-free tobacco quit line services. He also provides direct specialized technical support to WHO Member States to develop and implement national tobacco cessation strategies through regional and country-level training workshops. He studied Medicine and received his M.D. from Jiangxi Medical College, China. He holds a Ph.D. in preventive medicine and a Master of Public Health both from the School of Public Health, Fudan University.

Michelle C. Kegler

Dr. Michelle C. Kegler is a Professor in the Department of Behavioral, Social and Health Education Sciences at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and Director of the Emory Prevention Research Center. Dr. Kegler conducts intervention research in tobacco control and obesity prevention with a focus on the home environment, and she evaluates community coalitions and partnerships focused on health promotion and health equity. Dr. Kegler received her Doctor of Public Health degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and her Master of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan. 

Marita Hefler 

PhD, University of Sydney, 2017; Master of Public Health, UNSW, 2004; Graduate Diploma International Social Development, , 2003; Bachelor of Asian Studies, ANU 1998. She is the editor in chief of tobacco control UNSW at MBJ Group and an associate professor and tobacco endgame program lead, global and tropical Health division at Menzies School of Health Research. Her research focuses on use of social media, smoke-free prisons, phasing out commercial sales of cigarettes and monitoring tobacco industry activities. Marita has particular expertise in qualitative research approaches, monitoring and evaluation. She has designed and led several research projects and evaluations of public health programs in partnership with Australian Indigenous communities and previously in South East Asia. Her sectoral experience spans mental health, lifecourse approaches to understanding health trajectories and disparities, youth health, health communication and justice

Coral Gartner

Bachelor of Applied Science, Queensland University of Technology; Bachelor (Honours), Queensland University of Technology; Doctor of Philosophy, Queensland University of Technology. Professor Coral Gartner is an international expert in tobacco control policy and the world’s leading expert on electronic nicotine delivery systems (or e-cigarettes). She is the Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence on Achieving the Tobacco Endgame (Tobacco Endgame CRE), an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and the Chair of the Interdisciplinary Tobacco Endgame Research Network, the country lead Investigator for Australia with the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project), and a Co-Investigator with the SewAUs Wastewater Epidemiology Project. She is currently the Director of Research at the University of Queensland’s School of Public Health, the Regional Editor for Australasia for the BMJ journal, Tobacco Control, after serving as a senior editor from 2012-2018. She is the immediate Past President of the Oceania Chapter of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT-O).

Ghazi Zaatari 

Dr. Zaatari is a Tenured Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine at the American University of Beirut, where he earned his MD degree. He had residency training in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and a Fellowship in Surgical Pathology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Dr. Zaatari is the Secretary of the International Academy of Pathology, Vice-President of the Arab Board of Pathology and Member of the High Council of the Arab Board of Health Specializations. He is also the Chair of WHO’s Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation, Member of the Executive Committee of the Tobacco Laboratory Network, and Director of WHO FCTC Knowledge Hub on Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking.

Laurent Huber

Laurent is the Executive Director of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH); a U.S. based non-governmental organization fully devoted to supporting global health and international tobacco control efforts. For over a decade Laurent was the first Director the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA), an international coalition of over 500 Non-Governmental Organizations from more than 100 countries that played a vital role in shaping the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and then helped integrate tobacco control in the UN and global development agendas. He now works to strengthen the link between the global tobacco control agenda and the work of the UN Human Rights and environmental bodies with the aim of advancing globally agreed health, human rights, environmental and development objectives. For his efforts Laurent received the American Lung Association-C. Everett Koop Foundation Award in 2005 and under his direction, the FCA received the prestigious Luther Terry Award in 2006, the WHO World No Tobacco Day Award in 2011, and ASH was also awarded the Health Leadership Award by the U.S. Surgeon General in 2014. Laurent holds a master’s of science degree with a focus on exercise physiology research and before beginning to work full time in tobacco control in 2000, he directed a number of nonprofit organizations where he helped develop and implement non communicable disease prevention programs for at-risk and native populations. 

Cornel Radu-Loghin

Cornel Radu-Loghin: Secretary General of the European Network for Smoking and Tobacco Prevention (ENSP). Cornel has been at the forefront of tobacco control advocacy in Europe, dedicating decades to improving public health and promoting smoke-free policies. His journey began in Romania, where he founded “Aer Pur Romania,” the first non-governmental organization in the country dedicated to protecting non-smokers’ rights. This pioneering effort marked the start of a lifelong commitment to tackling the dangers of tobacco and second-hand smoke. Under Cornel’s leadership, ENSP has become a reference point in tobacco control across Europe. He has not only inspired advocacy but also brought together some of the best experts in the field, creating a powerful coalition to push forward life-saving policies. Cornel is also an accomplished author, contributing significant research on tobacco use in Europe. His work has been recognized with prestigious awards, including the WHO World No Tobacco Day Award in 2021 and the ENSP Award for Excellence in Tobacco Control in 2022. Today, Cornel continues to drive forward crucial tobacco control initiatives, aiming for a healthier, tobacco-free Europe.

Armando Peruga

Armando Peruga is physician and a doctor in Public Health. He graduated from the Master’s and Doctoral programs of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In his native Spain, he was the director of the Research Institute on Health and Welfare in Madrid and later became the Dean of the National School of Public Health. In the early 80’s he worked for the Washington DC Commission of Public Health as a behavioral change epidemiologist and began to work with the Pan American Health Organization in 1990. He was the leader of this organization’s tobacco control team until the beginning of 2006, when he moved to Geneva as the coordinator for the capacity building unit of the Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI) of the World Health Organization. He was the program manager for TFI until January of 2016, when he retired from WHO. He is now an associate researcher at the Biomedical Research Institute of Bellvitge (IDIBELL) in Barcelona and the Center for Epidemiology and Health Policy of the Universdad del Desarrollo in Chile.

Lilia Olefir

Lilia Olefir is Director of the Smoke Free Partnership and the GATC Coordinator for the Euro region. Prior to that Lilia worked as Executive Director of Ukrainian tobacco control NGO Advocacy Center Life. In 2024, Lilia was recognised with the Judy Wilkenfeld Award for International Tobacco Control Excellence for her leadership in the fight against tobacco use. The SFP is based in Brussels and is a Coalition of over 55 NGOs that works exclusively on policy analysis and advocacy to implement the FCTC at the European level specifically to revise the EU Tobacco Tax and Tobacco Products and Advertising Directives. Lilia has a bachelor´s degree in History and a Master’s degree in Organizational Management and Administration.

Montse Ballbè

Researcher of the Tobacco Control Unit. The research activity is carried out in parallel and within the Catalan Network of Smoke-Free Hospitals, and at the same time in collaboration with the Addictions Unit of the Hospital Clínic de Barcelona. Degree in Psychology from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in 1999. In 2000 she did a research stay at the Faculty of Psychology at Royal Holloway (University of London). He obtained the Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and Behavioral Medicine from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2004 and the Master’s Degree in Serious Mental Disorder from the University of Barcelona in 2006. In 2009 he obtained the Diploma of Advanced Studies in Research Methods in Psychology from the University of Barcelona (UAB). In 2014, she obtained her doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Barcelona (UB). 

Sara Hitchman

Dr Sara Hitchman is a Technical Officer at the Secretariat of the WHO FCTC. She completed her MASc and PhD at the University of Waterloo in Canada, working on the International Tobacco Control Project. Before joining the Secretariat, she worked as an academic at the University of California San Francisco, King’s College London and the University of Zurich. She has been working in tobacco control for over 15 years.

Reinskje Talhout 

Dr. Talhout has a PhD in Physical organic chemistry and Master’s degree in the philosophy of science. She is a senior scientific advisor at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands. She is also head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Tobacco Product Regulation and Control at the same institution. She has published a number of articles and reports on the attractive, addictive and toxic properties of tobacco and related products. As a policy advisor for tobacco product regulation, she provides advice to the national government, to the European Union, and to WHO. She participated in different collaborative European projects, such as currently the Joint Action Tobacco Control. 

Maria José López  

PhD in Public Health and Biomedical Research Methodology, and a graduate in Environmental Sciences. She is the head of the Evaluation and Intervention Methods Service of the Public Health Agency of Barcelona. She is also the PI of the CIBERESP Research Group on Evaluation of Public Health Policies and Programs, also accredited as a consolidated research group by the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca(AGAUR). She has carried out stays at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley, and has published more than 100 scientific papers. She is associated professor and co-director of the interuniversity Master in Public Health offered by the Pompeu Fabra University and the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

Ranti Fayokun 

Dr Ranti Fayokun works within the No Tobacco Unit within the Health Promotion Department, World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva, Switzerland, where she supports country implementation of Articles 9 and 10 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.  She has close to 20  years’ experience working on tobacco product regulation.  Dr Fayokun is a multidisciplinary scientist, with a BSC in Biochemistry, Master’s in Chemical Sciences and Toxicology, and a PhD in Chemical Sciences.  She has several years work experience spanning the academic, government and industrial sectors and is well-versed in working on issues regarding tobacco regulation, at national, EU and global level.  She coordinates the activities of the Global Tobacco Regulators Forum, The WHO Tobacco Laboratory Network and the WHO Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation.

Rachel O’Donnell 

Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Marketing and Health at the University of Stirling, specialising in qualitative research. Her current areas of research interest include the design and delivery of interventions to support families to create a smoke-free home, alcohol licensing and availability, and no- and low-alcohol products. She is ISMH’s public involvement lead, actively working in partnership with members of the public to plan, manage, design and input to research projects we conduct, to maximise relevance to end users and increase research impact. 

She currently leads a CSO funded pilot RCT exploring the use of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) to create smoke-free homes. She also co-leads the Smoke-free Homes International Network (SHINE) – an initiative aimed to foster multidisciplinary collaborations on future smoke-free homes research, policy and practice internationally. 

She is a Senior Editor for the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research, the official journal of the Kettil Bruun Society for Social and Epidemiological Research on Alcohol (KBS). PhD, University of Newcastle, 2016; MRCOG, 2011; MBChB, University of Edinburgh, 2005. 

Elizaveta Lebedeva  

Elizaveta Lebedeva, MA Psychology (Dist), MPH (Dist). Elizaveta is a public health specialist. She holds two Master’s degrees – one in Psychology from the Moscow State University and the other in Public Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Elizaveta joined the WHO Regional Office for Europe in 2014, and since then provided technical support in the areas of NCD health policy development, NCD risk factors surveillance and health communications. Currently she works as a consultant in Tobacco control unit.

Francisca (Xisca) Sureda 

Xisca Sureda (BPharm, MPH, PhD) is an associate professor of Epidemiology and Public Health in the Department of Surgery, Medical and Social Science at Alcalá University. Lead Investigator of the Public Health and Epidemiology Research Group at the Alcalá University; adjunct researcher in the Tobacco Control Unit in the Catalan Institute of Oncology; and associate research at the City University of New York (CUNY). Dra. Sureda’s main areas of research include tobacco and alcohol epidemiology, urban health and social epidemiology. Her research lines have been focused on the evaluation of the impact of tobacco smoke free policies on people’s attitudes and behavioral changes, tobacco and alcohol consumption and second-hand smoke exposure and its determinants. She is the Principal Investigator of different funded research projects in Spain, and she has published more than 60 publications in international high impact journals. She is a member of the tobacco and alcohol working group in the Spanish Society of Epidemiology.

Ayaka Teshima

Ayaka is a predoctoral researcher. She is completing his doctoral studies in the Tobacco Control Unit, under the supervision of Prof. Fernandez and Dr. Martinez. She has an undergraduate degree in Nursing and a master’s degree in Public Health from Imperial College London. His main research interest is measuring the burden of smoking and evaluating tobacco control policies to contribute to reducing the burden of smoking at the population level. 

Rebecca Howell

Rebecca Howell is an early career researcher at the Institute for Social Marketing and Health at the University of Stirling. She works across the field of commercial determinants of health with a focus on alcohol and tobacco-centred projects. Her recent work involves looking at how Nicotine Replacement Therapies can be used to create smoke-free homes for the benefit of children’s health. Rebecca also works extensively with Public and Patient Involvement and has a keen interest in how co-production with lay advisors can benefit research. She has an MA in Psychology. 

Nerea Mouriño Castro

Nerea Mouriño Castro is a registered nurse with extensive experience in the UK (2013-2018). After returning to Galicia with a scholarship for academic excellence, she completed a master’s degree followed by a PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Santiago de Compostela. Her doctoral thesis, which received the Cum Laude distinction with international mention, investigated the effects of pre- and postnatal exposure to secondhand tobacco smoke on adolescents’ body composition and cardiometabolic health. During her PhD studies, she worked as an intensive care nurse at the University of A Coruña. Since September 2024, she has held a full-time position at the University of A Coruña, where she is responsible for teaching Clinical Nursing I and II. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she has continued her work as a collaborative researcher with the Epidemiology, Public Health, and Health Services Evaluation Group (ESPASS), focusing on a range of topics, including tobacco smoke exposure and the use of psychoactive substances.

Sophie Braznell

Sophie Braznell is a Research Associate (coordination) in the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, UK. She previously studied human biology and forensic science and worked in the Health and Social Care public sector, including a secondment at the UK Department of Health and Social Care. In 2023, Sophie completed her PhD on tobacco industry approaches to harm reduction science and whether these approaches help or hinder public health. Sophie has acquired extensive knowledge on heated tobacco products and tobacco industry science.

Roberto Valiente 

Roberto Valiente is a health geographer specialized in tobacco control and health inequalities. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Geography and Spatial Planning from the University of Castilla-La Mancha, and a Master’s and Ph.D. in Geographic Information Technologies from the University of Alcalá, with over eight years of experience applying geographic methodologies to study tobacco environments. His research examines tobacco availability, accessibility, and promotion in the space, as well as public exposure to secondhand smoke and environmental litter from cigarette butts, using advanced spatial analysis and programming tools. Roberto has contributed to numerous projects evaluating policies to limit the presence of tobacco in the space and their influence on smoking prevalence and public health outcomes. With international experience, including a three-year postdoctoral position at the University of Edinburgh, he currently serves as an Assistant Professor in Preventive Medicine and Public Health at the University of Alcalá.