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In his keynote presentation, Professor Anthony C. Hackney will explain the phenomenon of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). 

Dr. Hackney is a Professor of Exercise Physiology & Nutrition at the University of North Carolina (USA) with over 35 years of service. His research focuses on how stress (physical, environmental, emotional) affects the hormonal responses of the endocrine system, especially the dysfunctions and dysregulations that develop from stress exposure(s), which can ultimately compromise physiological responses and adaptations. Dr. Hackney has over 300 peer-reviewed research papers, 40 book chapters, seven books, and has given over 200 national and international scientific conference presentations. He was a member of IOC commission which developed the 2023 REDs consensus statement and is a multiple Fulbright Scholar award recipient.

In her presentation, Professor Anna Melin will focus on the potential negative impact of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports (REDs) on performance.

Anna Melin is a Professor in Sport Science at the Linnaeus University in Sweden. After 15 years of clinical work as a certified sports dietitian within Danish elite sports she defended her thesis Energy availability and reproductive function in female endurance athletes in 2015 at University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses of the impact of dietary and training behaviors as well as energy availability on health and performance. She has published 45 peer-reviewed research papers and has given more than 100 national and international conference presentations. She was a member of the IOC commission which developed the 2018 and 2023 REDs consensus statement. She is the founder and leader of the European College of Sport Science REDs Special Interest Group.

In her presentation, Associate Professor Dionne A. Noordhof will explore the involvement of female sex steroids in sport science research.

Dr. Dionne A. Noordhof is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Elite Sports Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She has extensive experience in researching elite sport performance including female athletes exercise physiology, and sports nutrition. Associate Professor Noordhof has published over 50 peer-reviewed research papers and has completed the IOC Diploma in Sports Nutrition. 

Dr. Atul Shahaji Deshmukh will talk about sex differences in skeletal muscle on Thursday and on organ crosstalk in exercise on Friday.

He is currently an associate professor and group leader at the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF) Center for Basic Metabolic Research. He is also an associate member of NNF Center for Protein Research. He carried out his doctoral studies at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden (under Prof. Juleen Zierath) and his postdoctoral training at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany (under Prof. Matthias Mann). His laboratory combines state-of-the-art proteomics technology to investigate how diet and physical activity alters protein dynamics and how they relate to metabolism. 

Dr. Tommy Lundberg will talk about sex differences in sports and transgender women in the female category of sport.

Dr. Tommy Lundberg is a recognized expert in the field of eligibility criteria for sex-restricted sporting events. Dr. Lundberg is a researcher in the Division of Clinical Physiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, where he studies the response of skeletal muscle to exercise. As part of this work, he also studies the effects of cross-sex hormone therapy in transgender people undergoing gender-affirming treatment. Dr. Lundberg has written popular reviews on the sex differences in sports and  effects of testosterone suppression in transgender women, conducted research on this topic, and advised sports organizations and legal teams on the topic of transgender inclusion in sports.

Katja Mjøsund (MD, PhD) is a Finnish specialist physician in sports and exercise medicine. She is the Head Physician at the National Olympic Training Centre Helsinki and also serves as national team physician in several sports.

Dr. Mjøsund has a research background in muscle cell energy metabolism and currently her involvement in research, through Paavo Nurmi Centre/University of Turku and though Finnish Institute of High Performance Sport KIHU, spans over a spectrum of elite athlete’s health -related issues, such as respiratory infections in athletes and relative energy deficiency in sports, REDs.

In addition to clinical sports medicine, Dr. Mjøsund has a profound interest in safeguarding the athlete’s health, fairness and a level playing field at an organizational level as well. Currently, she is a member of the WADA TUE Expert Advisory Group since 2015 and also serves as a member of the International Testing Agency (ITA) TUE committee. She is a member of the Medical Advisory Group of the International Biathlon Union (IBU). As a board member of the Olympic Committee of Finland, she is commited to promoting athletes’ health, fairness and transparency within the realm of governance.

Dr. Mjøsund is a former elite endurance athlete, and in her leisure time she enjoys playing sports, especially competitive endurance sports such as orienteering and xc skiing as well as all mountain activities.

Exposure to low energy availability can be considered as a part of an athlete’s career – but when does exposure to low energy availability become problematic? In her talk, Dr. Paulina Wasserfurth will give an overview of current knowledge on low energy availability and how to manage it in athletes.

Dr. Paulina Wasserfurth is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Health and Sport Sciences at the Technical University of Munich. Her research focuses on the physiology and psychology of energy deficiency and energy surplus. Currently, she investigates physiological and psychological indicators of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs). Aside from her work as a researcher, Dr. Wasserfurth is an experienced Sports Nutritionist who has worked with athletes from recreational to the elite level.

Prof. Cheung is directing the Environmental Ergonomics Lab (EEL) and is interested in the effects of environmental stress (heat, cold air and water, hydration, altitude) on human physiology and performance. This research spans fundamental investigations into the mechanisms of human physiology, while at the same time being applied towards making work and recreation in extreme settings safer and more productive. His team has worked with many partners (military, firefighters, miners, search & rescue, elite athletes, clothing manufacturers), from improving survival models, to clothing/equipment research & development, to developing hydration and heat adaptation policies.

Esa works as an expert of sports physiology at the Finnish Institute of High Performance Sport KIHU in Jyväskylä. During his career he has worked in many varying research and development projects, but the last few years his work has been mainly supporting high level athletes and coaches. In his PhD thesis Esa discussed the effects of physical and psychological stress on heart rate variability. Esa has been able to use this knowledge with athletes up to the Olympic level, assessing and monitoring stress and recovery of athletes. Esa has spent a considerable amount of time testing and developing testing methods for endurance performance. From 2018 onwards Esa has increased his focus on environmental exposures, when the Finnish Olympic team was preparing for the Tokyo Olympic games in 2020 with the hot and humid environment in mind. This information and knowledge will most likely become increasingly important as similarly hot competition environments are expected in the future.

Dr Julie Greeves is the Principal Physiologist for the British Army, and has spent over 20 years researching the health and performance of service personnel for Defence. Julie’s specialist interests are female physiology and bone biology. She was appointed research lead for the Women in Ground Close Combat Review in 2015; an innovative six-year Defence physiology research programme delivering the evidence-base for the safe and effective through career employment of women in physically arduous roles. She holds honorary Chair positions at the School of Medicine UEA, and UCL, is Chair of the NATO 203 Panel on optimising menstrual health of servicewomen, actively supervises PhD students, and has published over 120 original papers in peer reviewed journals.

Assoc. professor Milan Sedliak is head of the Department of Biological and Medical Sciences of the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia. His research team is primarily dealing with skeletal muscle tissue and its adaptation to various types of exercise trainings with special focus on circadian rhythms. Health and performance aspects of physical activity are studied on various types of population ranging from young athletes, healthy seniors, master athletes to patients with hypogonadism and neurodegenerative diseases.

Juha Peltonen is the director of Helsinki Clinic for Sports and Exercise Medicine and a visiting scholar and docent of exercise physiology at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on the acute and chronic exercise responses of the circulatory and respiratory systems, the effects of training and partial pressure of oxygen on these systems, and altitude training. Juha acts as an expert of altitude training for many sport teams and individual athletes. His own sports background is from competitive rowing where he placed 12th at the world championship level and 2nd at the Nordic Championships. After his sporting career Juha worked as the head coach of the Finnish national rowing team.

Dr. Haapala is a paediatric sports and exercise medicine researcher and a Senior Lecturer of Sports and Exercise Medicine at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, Ģ��ֱ��. He also works in the Institute of Biomedicine, University of Eastern Finland. His research interests include topics related to health and well being in paediatric age-group. His main interest are in the relationships between physical activity, dietary factors, sleep, fitness, fatness, metabolic syndrome, brain health and mental health among children and adolescents.

Dr. Jari Karppinen completed his PhD at the Ģ��ֱ�� in the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, where he investigated how menopause influences metabolism both at rest and during exercise. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Obesity Research Unit at the University of Helsinki. His research interest lies in understanding how energy metabolism adapts to various stimuli, from the molecular to the whole-body level. Outside of his research, Jari is a licensed physical therapist with extensive background as a trainer and educator in the health and fitness industry.

Lykke Sylow is an Associate Professor and group leader of the Molecular Metabolism in Cancer & Aging Group at the University of Copenhagen. With over 15 years of experience in muscle metabolism research, her focus is on understanding the molecular regulation of skeletal muscle adaptations in response to exercise. She aims to utilize her research on exercise adaptations to harness the positive effects of exercise on aging, diabetes, and cancer.

In his keynote presentation, Professor George Brooks will explain the fundamentals of lactate production and utilization in exercise. 

The research emphasis in the Exercise Physiology Laboratory led by Dr. Brooks is in the area of metabolic adjustments to exercise. In recent years, they have developed a working hypothesis called the "Lactate Shuttle”. Research on the Lactate Shuttle is to elucidate the pathways and controls of lactic acid formation and removal before, during and after exercise. This work involves studies on humans and animals, indirect calorimetry, isotope tracer technology, classic arterial-venous difference measurements, lactate and glucose clamp technology and muscle biopsies. The knowledge from exercise studies is currently applied also to many disease conditions in which lactate plays an important role.

Ida is originally from Finland and completed her PhD in 2020 at Australian Catholic University. Over the past 4 years, Ida’s research has explored the prevalence, symptoms and assessment of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (REDs) in Canadian and international high-performance athletes. This work has contributed to the new REDs Clinical Assessment Tool version 2 (REDs CAT2) which was recently published by the International Olympic Committee expert group, along with several other REDs themed publications. Ida has also had the privilege to be a member of Own the Podium sponsored working group on REDs in Canada, the IOC REDs consensus group and the Wu Tsai Female Athlete Program.

Dr. Georgie Bruinvels is a researcher and applied physiologist. She is an Honorary Associate Professor at University College London. Both her applied and research focus is on better understanding female physiology and in particular establishing how the hormonal fluctuations throughout the menstrual cycle impact physiological, physical and psychological readiness. Georgie works across a wide range of both team and individual sports including both National and women’s professional teams and individual athletes and through her work she has four primary aims; improving education, increasing participation; helping to support performance; and ultimately increasing research in this spac

Dr. Tom is a Senior Physiologist for the British Army and has spent 9 years researching health and performance of service personnel for Defence. Tom was one of the lead authors on the British Army’s 2024 report on Optimising the Health and Performance of Women in Ground Close Combat roles after an 8 year research programme. Tom’s research interests are in musculoskeletal biology and female health and he has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers in these fields and reviewed for 25 journals. Tom is also an Honorary Associate Professor at the UCL Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, Department of Targeted Intervention.