Assistant Professor Sofie Gevaert has been a cardiologist since 2000, with both clinical and research interests focused on acute cardiac disease in women and cardiac complications in cancer patients. She serves as Associate Professor at Ghent University and Ghent University Hospital, where she became Head of the Department of Cardiology in 2024. At UZ Ghent, she actively participates in several multidisciplinary heart teams, including the Pregnancy Heart Team. She contributed as a task force member to the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Guidelines on Cardio-Oncology (2022) and the ESC Consensus Statement on Mental Health and Cardiovascular Disease (2025). Currently, she is the Secretary of the Acute Cardiovascular Care Association of the European Society of Cardiology and serves on the ESC Congress Planning Committee.

Short biography of Francesca Macera, MD

Specialized in Internal Medicine, since 2006 she is employed as a cardiologist.

Her fields of expertise are advanced heart failure, heart transplantation, mechanical circulatory support and pulmonary hypertension.

She developed particular interest in risk stratification and management of pregnancy in women with cardiac disease. To that regard, she is first author or co-author of papers on cardio-obstetrics and on pregnancy in heart transplant recipients. She is member of the Pregnancy Committee of the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) for the 2024-2026 biennium.

I am a full-time cardiologist at Cliniques universitaires St Luc, Brussels and  Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain.  My clinical interests are Heart Failure and Heart Transplantation. With a research focus on heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.