Director and Head, Nephrology and Kidney Transplant, Medanta-The Medicity
Gurgaon, India

Shyam Bihari Bansal, MD, DM, FISN,FASN, FRCP (London), Director and Head of Nephrology at Medanta Institute of Nephrology and Kidney Transplant. Honorary secretary of the Indian Society of Nephrology Chair, Local Organising Working Group, WCN 2025, Delhi Member, South Asian Regional Board of the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) Member Education Committee TTS Involved in over 3000 kidney transplants in the last 20 years. Published over 100 original articles in indexed Journals and written many book chapters First series Steroid Free and ABO incompatible Transplantation in India Published extensively on post-transplant infections, including Mucormycosis, histoplasmosis, leishmaniasis, Dengue, COVID, BKV Nephropathy, HIV, TB etc. Guest Editor of a supplement on Transplant Infectious Disease Guidelines for South Asia published in the Indian Journal of Transplantation, and a summary of these guidelines was published in Transplantation.

Head, Department of Nephrology and Transplantation
University Hospitals Leuven
Head, Nephrology Research Group
University of Leuven

Professor Dr Kuypers is Chair of the Department of Nephrology and Director of the Renal Transplantation Program at the University Hospitals Leuven. He is professor of Medicine and Head of the Laboratory of Nephrology (Nephrology Research Group), Department of Microbiology, Immunology and transplantation, at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He has an appointment as a specialist in Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Science.

Research activities: Clinical and translational research is focused on (personalized and precision) immunosuppressive therapy, clinical pharmacology of immunosuppressive drugs and renal allograft surveillance using protocol biopsies and (bio)markers of allograft status and chronic allograft dysfunction, including metabolomics signatures of under- and over-immunosuppression. Model-informed precision dosing of immunosuppressive drugs (incl. machine learning, AI) at the point-of-care. Introduction of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR-)T-cell therapy in clinical transplantation also belongs to the research portfolio. He participated in more than 80 clinical trials. Professor Kuypers is editorial member of several scientific journals and has (co-)authored more than 420 peer-reviewed scientific papers and has written several book chapters. His current h-index is 76 (Web of Science) and a total of 775 publications are registered in Lirias KU Leuven. He has given more than 100 Invited lectures at International scientific meetings on renal transplantation.

MD, PhD Former Medical Director of HILA, Belgian Red Cross-Flanders
Mechelen, Belgium

Marie-Paule Emonds obtained her MD in 1982, Clinical biology specialist in 1989. She obtained her PhD in 2000 at KULeuven on a thesis entitled “New developments in histocompatibility for renal transplantation”, with Prof Marc Waer as promotor and Prof. Frans Claas as co-promotor. Since 2000 parttime professor at KULeuven, department of microbiology and transplantation and involved in several research projects, the most important of which was the TEMPLATE study in collaboration with Prof. Maarten Naesens at KU Leuven. She is also holder of the ESHI diploma of transplantation immunologist. Employed at the Blood Service of Red-Cross Flanders since 1987 she held various positions at the blood service, including head of the UZ Leuven Bloodbank, medical director of the Blood Transfusion Center of Vlaams-Brabant – Limburg, Medical Director HILA and Director clinical counselling. Since 1988, involved in HLA, she was initially, as medical director, responsible for the Leuven HLA lab providing services for the University Hospitals Leuven and KU Leuven. In 2008, after realizing centralization of 3 Flemish HLA labs (Antwerp, Ghent and Leuven) she became medical director of the centralized HLA lab (HILA) in Mechelen. This laboratory, HILA, provides tissue typing services for organ transplantation, stem cell transplantation, bloodtransfusion and disease associations. HILA provides services for the whole region of Flanders and is therefore responsible for a population of approximately 7,000,000 inhabitants. Her lab obtained already in 1991 as pioneer in Europe the ASHI (American Society of Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics) accreditation. She was among the first EFI (European Federation of Immunogenetics) inspectors. She was Belgian Representative at the Eurotransplant Tissue Typing Advisory Committee for many years until the end of 2024. She collaborated in numerous research projects and co-authored high impact publications on Histocompatibility testing merely in renal and lung transplantation. She recently retired (December 31st, 2025).