Keynote Speakers

Meet the ECP 2025 Keynote Speakers

The ECP Scientific Committee has selected the following world-renowned experts to share their research with the pathology community:

Ruth Wodak, Austria

Keynote Details

Speaker Details

KNL-01 | Sunday, 7 September

12:15 - 13:00
“Let’s be clear!”: Navigating (mis)understandings in communication

Ruth Wodak is Emerita Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University, UK, and affiliated to the University of Vienna. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Excellence in Research in 1996, an Honorary Doctorate from University of Örebro in Sweden in 2010, and an Honorary Doctorate from Warwick University in 2020. She is past-President of the Societas Linguistica Europaea. 2011, she was awarded the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria, and 2018, the Lebenswerk Preis for her lifetime achievements, from the Austrian Ministry for Women’s Affairs. In June 2021, she was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for her lifetime achievements, in November 2022 she received the Paul Watzlawick Ehrenring of the Medical Society + City of Vienna. She is member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals and co-editor of the journals Discourse and Society and Critical Discourse Studies.

Her research interests focus on discourse studies; communication in organisations; gender studies; identity politics and the politics of the past; political communication and populism; crisis communication; and on ethnographic methods of sociolinguistic field work.

Ruth has published 12 monographs, 29 co-authored monographs, over 60 edited volumes and special issues of journals, and ca. 430 peer reviewed journal papers and book chapters. Her work has been translated into English, Italian, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Portuguese, German, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, Arabic, Russian, Czech, Bosnian, Greek, Slovenian, and Serbian.

Michael Trauner, Austria

Keynote Details

Speaker Details

KNL-02 | Monday, 8 September

12:15 - 13:00
Novel insights into the molecular pathogenesis of cholestasis: from riddle of the past to new therapeutic horizons

Michael Trauner, MD, received his medical education at the Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, Austria, where he also completed his clinical training in internal medicine and gastroenterology / hepatology. From 1994 to 1997 he was postdoctoral research fellow at Yale University’s Department of Internal Medicine and Liver Center in New Haven, USA. After returning to Graz, he established an internationally recognized research group in cholestatic and steatotic liver diseases, and founded the Liver Center, serving as professor of experimental and clinical hepatology from 2005-2010. Since 2010 he has been professor and chair gastroenterology and hepatology at the Medical University of Vienna. Dr. Trauner’s main research interests are the molecular mechanisms of bile acid transport and signaling in cholestatic and steatotic liver disease, the mechanisms of cell injury and fibrosis in these disorders, and the development of novel pharmacologic treatments for cholestatic and metabolic liver diseases. He has published more than 800 peer-reviewed scientific papers listed in Pubmed (higly cited researcher 2023 & 2024 / ISI Clarivate), 50 book chapters and has edited 3 books, he also holds 2 patents on the treatment of cholestatic and metabolic liver diseases.

Dr. Trauner is past president of the Austrian Society of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, as well as member of several national and international professional and scientific societies. He has served on several editorial boards and scientific committees, such as the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Governing Board and the United European Gastroenterology Council. He has also served as associate editor of Journal of Hepatology (2000 – 2009, and since 2020-ongoing) and Hepatology (2009-2021).

Sarah Coupland, UK

Keynote Details

Speaker Details

KNL-03 | Tuesday, 9 September

12:15 - 13:00 - ESP Symeonidis Lecture
Fuchs, Vienna and uveal melanoma: a story and city where ophthalmology and pathology intersect

Prof. Sarah Coupland is a Consultant Academic Histopathologist at the Liverpool University NHS Foundation Hospital Trust, UK, with expertise in Ophthalmic Pathology, Haematopathology, Molecular- and Digital Pathology, and Biobanking.

After undertaking her specialist Pathology training in Berlin, Prof. Coupland moved to the UK in 2005 and established the ‘Liverpool-Ocular-Oncology-Research-Group’ (www.loorg.org), a multidisciplinary team focussing on eye cancers, at the University of Liverpool (UoL). She was promoted to the ‘George Holt Chair of Pathology’ in 2013 and advocates academic pathology. She is also the University’s lead of Digital Pathology and has been involved in several multicentre DP- and AI-related projects.

Prof. Coupland is the current President of the “Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland”. She is also Registrar of the Royal College of Pathologists (RCPath). Prof. Coupland has been a long-term member of the European Society of Pathology, and was lead of the Ophthalmic Pathology Working Group Lead from 2013 to 2018.

She has published ~350 scientific articles (H-index:64), has written ~150 textbook Chapters, including some within the UICC/TNM Staging system for Ophthalmic Tumours, as well as the WHO ‘Blue’ Tumour Volumes (Eye, Haematopathology, Skin and Paediatric cancers).

She has won several awards for research and teaching, including the International Council of Ophthalmology's ‘Eye Pathology Award’ & the 2019 RCPath Excellence Award. She was included in the “Pathologist Power Lists” of 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023, and was also listed in the “Top 100 Influential Women in Ophthalmology” in 2021 and 2024. Prof Coupland was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists (FRCOphth) in 2023, for her significant contributions to Ophthalmic Pathology.

George J. Netto, USA

Keynote Details

Speaker Details

KNL-04 | Wednesday, 10 September

16:30 - 17:15 - Juan Rosai Lecture
Precision Pathology: The Future is Now

Dr. George Netto received his medical degree from Damascus University before residency in anatomic and clinical pathology at Baylor University Medical Center and fellowships in surgical pathology at the Washington University School of Medicine and urologic pathology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2005 he joined the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine faculty and served as Director of Surgical Pathology Molecular Diagnostics and Professor of Pathology, Urology, and Oncology. In 2016 he assumed the role of Professor and the Robert and Ruth Anderson Endowed Chair of Pathology at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

He currently serves as Simon Flexner Professor and Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Netto serves as a Standing Editor of the 6^th edition of the World Health Organization (WHO) Blue Book series and Associate Editor for Advances in Anatomic and Molecular Pathology. He is a member of the editorial boards of the journals of Human Pathology and Virchow Archives European Journal of Pathology. He has served as an expert Editor of the 5^th edition of the World Health Organization (WHO) Blue Book on the Classifications of Urinary and Male Genital Tumours, immediate past Editor in Chief for Modern Pathology. He has authored or co-authored more than 400 articles and chapters, including eight books in urologic and molecular pathology, and is the editor of a widely recognized textbook, Genomic Applications in Pathology, currently in its second edition.

Tradition Meets Future

Keynote Speakers

Meet the ECP 2025 Keynote Speakers

Ruth Wodak, Austria

Keynote Details

Speaker Details

Michael Trauner, Austria

Keynote Details

Speaker Details

Sarah Coupland, UK

Keynote Details

Speaker Details

George J. Netto, USA

Keynote Details

Speaker Details

FAQs