Organisers

Steffi Dreha-Kulaczewski, M.D. is a pediatric neurologist and assistant professor at the pediatrics department of the University Hospital Goettingen, Germany. She has a particular interest in childhood CSF disorders and works closely with the department’s pediatric neurosurgeons. Together, they run a weekly interdisciplinary outpatient clinic for children and adolescents who have to undergo neurosurgical interventions due to a broad spectrum of underlying pathologies, like, e.g., an occlusive hydrocephalus.

 

Friederike Knerlich-Lukoschus is an associate professor and the head of the division of pediatric neurosurgery at the University Medical Centre Göttingen (UMG) Germany. After completing her neurosurgical training at the University Medical Centre Göttingen and Schleswig-Holstein (UK-SH, Kiel), she worked as a senior consultant at the Department of Neurosurgery at UKSH in Kiel. She further specialized in pediatric neurosurgery and completed a one-year clinical fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital (University of British Columbia) in Vancouver, Canada, under the supervision of Professors Paul Steinbock and Doug Cochrane. Before going back to Göttingen, she worked as consultant at the Department of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital Sankt Augustin for four years. She is a member of the European Society of Pediatric neurosurgery (ESPN) Liaison Committee and the extended board of the German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC), acting as managing director of the German Neurosurgery Society Foundation for Neurosurgical Research. Her clinical focus lies on complex dysraphic lesions, congenital malformations, endoscopic procedures, craniosynostosis, pediatric tumor surgery, and complex hydrocephalus. She co-leads a basic research group on dysraphic spinal malformations in collaboration with Professor Janka Held-Feindt at the UK-SH in Kiel. She is part of the CSF-working group at the UMG (along with PD Dr. Steffi Dreha-Kulaczewski and PD Dr. Hans-Christoph Bock). She is further enrolled in a Master’s program in medical ethics at the University of Mainz, focusing on the best interests of children in the context of intercultural conflicts, end-of-life issues, and exceptional neurosurgical situations. She is a member of the clinical ethical committee at the UMG.

 

Claire Jones is Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering (Discipline of Biomedical Engineering), Adelaide University. She completed her PhD at University of British Columbia / ICORD (Vancouver, Canada), MSc at University of Leeds (UK), and BEng/BSc at University of Western Australia.  Dr Jones is a biomechanical engineer with a primary research focus on neurotrauma and orthopaedic trauma, contributing to fundamental understanding of injury mechanisms and injury sequelae, with applications to injury prevention and clinical translation. Her multidisciplinary research team collaborates closely with clinicians, neuroscientists, veterinary scientists, and medical imaging specialists. Dr Jones’ spinal injury research encompasses injury mechanisms of the spinal column and spinal cord, and the acute physiological and neurofluids response to spinal cord injury (SCI). She has developed several unique large animal models of SCI and neurofluids perturbation, and experimental (cadaver) models of complex spinal trauma. Dr Jones’ traumatic brain injury (TBI) research focuses on mechanically relevant large animal models to provide links between brain biomechanics and pathological outcomes, and her research with human participants has developed new understanding of lumbar and cervical spine mechanics with application to computational modelling for injury prevention.