Speakers

Dr Ivar M. Austevoll has been consultant spine surgeon at the Orthopedic department of Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen, Norway since 2004.
He graduated from the University of Bergen in 1996 and completed his PhD there in 2020. Currently, he receives governmental funding for 50% post-doctorial research.

Dr. Austevoll is Principal investigator of the NORDSTEN-DS trial and has been a member of the Advisory Board of the Norwegian Registry for Spine Surgery since 2011. 

Mark Bilsky is an Attending Neurosurgeon at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Neurological Surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He holds the William E. Snee Endowed Chair in Neurosurgical Spine Oncology and is Chief of the MSKCC Multi-disciplinary Spine Tumor Service. Dr. Bilsky’s clinical practice and research efforts are focused on the multi-modality treatment of both metastatic and primary malignant and benign spine and spinal cord tumors. This effort has led to the development of the NOMS decision framework which provides a platform to integrate evidence-based medicine and new technologies into treatment paradigms for spine tumors. Dr. Bilsky is one of the leading voices on the rational integration of stereotactic radiosurgery and the development of minimally invasive surgical techniques leading to over 250 publications and 500 invited lectureships worldwide.

Mark Kotter is a neurosurgeon, clinician-scientist, and biotech entrepreneur at the University of Cambridge. His clinical work focuses on complex spinal and spinal cord disorders, particularly degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM). He founded and co-leads the international AO Spine RECODE-DCM initiative, uniting more than 400 researchers across 60 countries to establish global research priorities and standards for DCM.

In parallel, his laboratory at Cambridge explores stem cell programming, regeneration, and ageing biology — work that has led to the creation of several biotech companies, including bit.bio, clock.bio, which together have raised over 300 million USD.

Through his commitment of clinical excellence, translational research, and entrepreneurship, Kotter aims to bridge the gap between biological discovery and surgical innovation, redefining how spinal cord disorders are understood and treated for the benefit of patients.

Daniel Rückert is Alexander-von-Humboldt-Professor for AI in Medicine and Healthcare at the University Hospital of the Technical University of Munich, where he is also the director of the Institute for AI and Informatics in Medicine. Furthermore, he is Professor of Visual Information Processing at the Department of Computing at Imperial College London.

He has contributed to over 500 publications, and has supervised over 50 PhD students and more than 40 Post-Docs. He is a Fellow of the MICCAI Society (2014), a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2015), a Fellow of the IEEE (2015), a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2019), a Fellow of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems ELLIS (2021), a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2021) and a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2023). In 2024 he received the Enduring Impact Award of the MICCAI Society for his pioneering work in the field of biomedical image reconstruction and image analysis. Daniel Rückert was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize in 2025,  the most important research award in Germany, which is awarded by the German Research Foundation and is endowed with 2.5 million Euro.