Douglas Vaughan, MD, is Irving S. Cutter Professor and Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL. He received his MD degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas and completed his internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital/Veterans Administration Medical Center, also in Dallas. He completed his fellowship in Cardiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, and has been elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. 

Prof Robert Medcalf is a NHMRC Principal Research Fellow working at the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases at Monash University. His major research focus has been on the role of the fibrinolytic system not only in its capacity to remove blood clots, but also its broader effects in removing misfolded proteins, the immune response and its other roles in the brain. For the latter, he has had a strong interest on how tissue type plasminogen activator (t-PA) modulates blood brain barrier permeability and the relationship of this in traumatic brain injury and in the use of thrombolytic agents in ischemic stroke.

Prof Medcalf was the recipient of the 2016 ISFP Prize and was also Associate Editor of J Thromb Haemost from 2008-2014 and will be Congress President of the ISTH congress being held in Melbourne in 2019.