ISSCD | DandD Committee

Prof Dolinsek is Head of the Pediatric Department at the University Medical Center Maribor, Slovenia. He has a teaching position at the Medical Faculty, Faculty of Health Sciences and Faculty of Agriculture and Bio-Systemic Studies at University of Maribor. Prof Dolinšek’s major clinical and research focus are gluten related disorders, especially celiac disease. He has spent valuable time in Tampere, Finland with the research group of Prof Markku Mäki, during which he learned various clinical and translational aspects about celiac disease. In 2003 he defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Ljubljana focusing on apoptotic processes in celiac disease.

He is a co-author of ESPGHAN guidelines on celiac disease diagnosis (2020), ESPGHAN position statement on celiac disease management (2022), Guidelines on diagnosis of Dermatitis herpetiformis (2021) and Salerno criteria for diagnosing Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (2015). He is an extremely active core member of the ESPGHAN Celiac Disease Special Interest Group and is the Coordinator of the European Project “Celiac disease in Focus”.

Professor of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Colorado, University of Colorado School of Medicine. Director of the Colorado Center for Celiac Disease, USA. Dr Liu is a pediatric gastroenterologist and director of the Colorado Center for Celiac Disease and part of NASPGHAN’s Celiac Disease special interest group. He is one of the founding members of the Society for the Study of Celiac Disease and inaugural council member.

His specific interest has been in celiac disease serology, mass screening and celiac disease epidemiology, particularly as it relates to type 1 diabetes. He is seeking to help expand collaboration in pediatric celiac disease in the US to other countries internationally through their collaborative groups within NASPGHAN and also through RAISE-CD.

Professor Makharia is based in the Department of Gastroenterology and Human Nutrition, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. Through a systematic review and meta-analysis, which has been highly cited, Dr Makharia and his team explored the global burden of celiac disease and found it to be 0.7%. He and his team conceptualised a pilot multinational Asian study including Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, China and India, which has shown prevalence of celiac disease to be 2.4% in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Through this study, it came to light that celiac disease is indeed emerging in Asia.

With the support of the ISSCD, Prof Makharia, along with his team organised the International Celiac Disease Symposium (ICDS) in India in 2017 which was a huge success. In spring 2024, Prof Makharia led and hosted the inaugural Asian Pacific Celiac Disease Symposium and he will constitute the Asia Pacific Society for the Study of Celiac Disease (APSSCD) within ISSCD. To aid improvement in patient care, he and his team have been working on developing a Celiac Care Mobile application. He has authored more than 359 papers (h-index 60) and is the recipient of research grants from various funding agencies worth more than USD 1,795,983.

Marie E. Robert, M.D. is Professor of Pathology, Medicine and Human and Translational Immunology at Yale University School of Medicine.

Dr. Robert is an internationally recognized gastrointestinal (GI) surgical pathologist with more than 30 years experience in clinical diagnosis, teaching and collaborative scientific endeavors across a wide spectrum of diseases, including inflammatory and neoplastic conditions of the GI tract at Yale University.  Dr. Robert served as the Director of the Yale Program in Gastrointestinal Pathology and is currently the GI Pathology Fellowship Director.  She is a past President of the Rodger C. Haggitt Gastrointestinal Pathology Society and has served on numerous national committees for the United States and Canadian Society of Pathologists and the College of American Pathologists.  Dr. Robert devotes the majority of her clinical and translational research effort in the field of celiac disease.  She recently served as the inaugural Chief Scientific Officer for the non-profit advocacy group Beyond Celiac and is the lead author on several pathology practice guidelines and scientific multi-institutional pathology studies in the diagnosis of celiac disease and refractory sprue, currently aimed at improving the quality of the pathology examination of duodenal biopsies.  She is actively working with clinical trialists and US based CROs to optimize histology interpretation of duodenal biopsies for clinical trials.  At Yale, Dr. Robert founded and co-leads the Celiac Disease Translational Research Group and was recently awarded the Yale Medicine Distinguished Clinical Career Award.  

Ketil Størdal (b. 1966) is a full professor in pediatrics at the University of Oslo, Norway. He is also working as a consultant pediatrician at Oslo University Hospital, after specialist training in general pediatrics and pediatric gastroenterology.   

His main research area is the epidemiology of autoimmune diseases in children, with special interest in celiac disease. Global child health is another field of interest after working with neonatal health and gastroenterology in low/middle-income countries. For several years he has been teaching at the University of Oslo, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and University of Botswana. Dr Størdal is also an emergency response unit delegate for the Red Cross.  

Prof Størdal is a member of ESPGHAN since 2004 and of the specialist interest group in celiac disease since 2017, currently as chair in the executive committee. He has served in the European Academy of Pediatrics as President of the Secondary and Tertiary Care Council, in the Choosing Wisely movement in EAP and in the Norwegian Medical Association, and is a past president of the Norwegian Paediatric Association.  

 She completed her residency in internal medicine at Mayo Clinic and her fellowship in gastroenterology at Indiana University where she was Chief Fellow before she was recruited to start her career at Cleveland Clinic.

 She works in the Celiac Disease Program and is actively involved in research on celiac disease and its diagnosis.  She holds a grant from the AGA (American Gastroenterological Association) that supports this important work.  She also participated in the International Society for the Study of Celiac Disease M-in-M program.  Dr. Jansson-Knodell is the recipient of the Rising Star research award in the Cleveland Clinic GI department, a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society, and winner of the Teacher of the Year award in 2023 selected by the GI fellows.

Carolina Ciacci, MD, PhD is Full Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Salerno, Italy, and Head of the Gastroenterology and Digestive Endoscopy Unit at the AOU San Giovanni di Dio e Ruggi d’Aragona Hospital in Salerno. She is Director of the Postgraduate School of Gastroenterology at the University of Salerno.

Her research focuses on celiac disease, gluten-related disorders, nutrition in gastrointestinal diseases, and inflammatory bowel diseases, with particular attention to patient-centered outcomes, quality of life, and the long-term management of chronic digestive conditions.

Prof. Ciacci has played a key role in advancing the understanding of the clinical presentation, natural history, and management of celiac disease in adults, contributing to international collaborative studies and guideline development. Her work has also addressed the impact of the gluten-free diet, nutritional aspects of chronic gastrointestinal disorders, and the intersection between immune-mediated diseases and gut health.

She has authored or co-authored more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific publications, with
over 17,000 citations and an h-index of approximately 69. She is included in the
Stanford/Elsevier list of the World’s Top 2% Scientists, reflecting her sustained scientific
impact in gastroenterology.

Prof. Ciacci is actively involved in international scientific organizations and collaborative
networks, contributing to education, research initiatives, and policy discussions in gastroenterology and digestive health. She currently is the Vice-President of the Ethical Committee Campania 2. She currently chairs the Gender and Diversity Task Force of United European Gastroenterology (UEG) and serves on several academic and scientific boards.

Dawn W. Adams, MD, MS, CNSC, is an adult gastroenterologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She earned her MD and MS in Nutrition Science at Case Western Reserve University and is a Certified Nutrition Support Clinician (CNSC). Dr. Adams is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and serves as Medical Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Human Nutrition.

Her work focuses on the nutritional consequences of gastrointestinal disease, with particular expertise in celiac disease and short bowel syndrome. In 2015, she founded and continues to direct the Vanderbilt Celiac Disease Clinic, a national leader in celiac disease care. She is President of the Society for the Study of Celiac Disease and oversees philanthropic initiatives to improve the diagnosis and management of celiac disease in Tennessee.

Dr. Adams’s research interests include improving the diagnosis of celiac disease through electronic health record–based prediction models and clinical decision-support tools. She also studies the psychology of dietary restriction in celiac disease and approaches to improve patient outcomes. She has served as an investigator on multiple clinical trials and is committed to finding treatment options for patients with celiac disease.