Heikki Irjala is a Professor of Otorhinolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Turku, Turku, Finland. He has completed a fellowship in head and neck surgery and is currently working in reconstructive head and neck surgery and traumatology. He completed his PhD in 2002 on “Immunotherapeutic Approach to Cancer of the Head and Neck” and has since continued both translational and clinical research.

LF finished her clinical education at Linköping University Hospital in Sweden, and presented her PhD-thesis in 2010. She fulfilled a postdoc at Stanford university 2011-2013 and progressed to associate professor in 2017. Her clinical work and research focuses on head and neck cancer patients and currently she is the main supervisor of 5 PhD-students in the field. LF was also the president of the Swedish Otorhinolaryngological association 2021-2026.

Michiel WM van den Brekel, MD PhD, graduated “cum laude” from the Medical Faculty of the University of Leuven (Belgium) in 1987. He did his Ph.D. cum laude at the Free University and wrote a thesis on “Imaging and Histophathology of Neck Node Metastases”. He was the first to study the value of ultrasound guided aspiration cytology in neck nodes. After his Otolaryngology-residency at the Free University in Amsterdam he did a Head and Neck Fellowship at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and the University of Toronto, Mount Sinai Hospital. From 1997 until 2000 he worked as a head and neck surgeon at the Free University Hospital and since 2000 in the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam where he was chairman from 2009 until 2023. In 2011 he was appointed as Professor at the University of Amsterdam. His clinical research focuses on translational medicine,  rehabilitation as well as imaging of head and neck cancer patients. He (co-)authored over 350 peer-reviewed papers and chapters.

Seiichi Yoshimoto, MD, PhD, graduated from the University of Tokyo in 1991 and completed his residency in otolaryngology at the same institution. In 1995, he joined the Department of Head and Neck Surgery at the Cancer Institute Hospital of the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research (JFCR), and in 2001 he completed a clinical fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh. Since 2008, he has been affiliated with the National Cancer Center Hospital in Tokyo, where he was appointed Vice Director in 2021. In 2024, he assumed the presidency of the Japan Society for Head and Neck Cancer and currently serves on the Executive Committee of IFHNOS. He has authored 120 English-language papers, 121 Japanese-language papers, and 11 textbooks. His clinical and academic interests include sentinel node biopsy, head and neck sarcoma, open conservation surgery, skull base and upper mediastinal surgery, salvage surgery after chemoradiotherapy, surgical education, cancer registries, and terminal care for patients with head and neck cancer.