The Center for Sensory-Motor Interaction (SMI) and Center for Pain and Neuroplasticity is an interdisciplinary, internationally recognized translational pain research unit employs 100 researchers from all over the world (50% are international researchers).
The research focuses on: 1) forward and backward translational experimental and clinical pain research, 2) human diagnostic pain biomarkers, and 3) mechanism-based clinical proof-of-concept in pain management and anaesthesiolgy. In recent years the focus has also included itch and parallel neuroplastic mechanisms.
Dr. Arendt-Nielsen’s publication record includes 1,016 peer reviewed journal papers (H-index 80) and he has delivered over 460 keynote lectures at international meetings and seminars. He has also been a visiting professor in Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, USA, and Italy and has built a substantial network of international collaborations with universities and hospitals in 15 different countries, as well as the biomedical/ pharmaceutical industry (20 international companies).
Has served on the council of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), president of the IASP Global Year Against Musculoskeletal Pain 2010, president of the IASP Global Year Against Joint Pain 2016, chair for IASP’s Special Interest Group (SIG) on Musculoskeletal Pain, head of the IASP Grant Committee, and Editor-in-Chief of IASP Press. Dr. Arendt-Nielsen is the current immediate Past-president of IASP (period 2020-22).
In 2007 he was knighted by the Danish Queen for his contribution to science.

Alessandra Bergadano graduated from the University of Torino, Italy in 1990 and Bern, Switzerland in 2003. She achieved her PhD degree and venia docendi in comparative models of nociception, pain diagnosis and analgesia from the Universities of Aalborg, Denmark and Bern, Switzerland. She is European specialist in both veterinary anesthesia and analgesia and laboratory animal medicine.
Dr. Bergadano has worked with small and large animals to include nonhuman primates in private practice, industry and academia as clinical patients, experimental animals or both. Since over 15 years she is fully dedicated to lab animal medicine and as of Jan 2018 she heads the Central Animal Facilities, DBMR, University of Bern, Switzerland.
She has authored and co-authored over 30 peer reviewed papers. Her current work is focused on developing the “culture of care” in Switzerland.
Currently she is board member of the exam ECLAM committee, serves as ad hoc Consultant for AAALAC International and is member of the Ethic committee of the Swiss academies.

Michele Curatolo is professor for Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, where he holds an endowed professorship in medical education and research.

Michele Curatolo received his M.D. at the University of Messina in Italy and continued his career in Switzerland. He received a Ph.D. in Biomedical Science and Engineering at the University of Aalborg in Denmark. In 2014, Dr. Curatolo also received an honorary doctorate from the University of Aalborg.

Prof. Curatolo has been the chief of the Division of Pain Therapy in the Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Therapy at the University of Bern, as well as acting chair of the department. He has served in a variety of leading roles in academic and political institutions. Editorial responsibilities include roles as section editor for the European Journal of Pain, associate editor of Pain and editorial board member of the Scandinavian Journal of Pain.

Prof. Curatolo’s research focuses mainly on measuring nociceptive processes to understand mechanisms of human pain states and predict outcomes.

Professor Lampert graduated as a medical doctor from the Universities of Jena and Strasbourg in France followed by residencies in internal medicine and physiology at the University of Tübingen in Germany. She has extensive experience as a researcher in physiology including a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research at Yale University, New Haven, USA.
In 2012, she was awarded First Prize for Pain Research in the category „basic science“ by the German Society for the Study of Pain (DGSS).
Angelika Lampert’s research focuses on voltage-gated sodium channels and their translational aspects in pain and cardiac disease. In recent years she applied detailed electrophysiological studies on iPS-cell derived sensory neurons, allowing to identify the contribution of sodium channel sub-classes to neuronal excitability.

Dr Suter is currently working at the Pain Center of the Department of Anesthesiology at the CHUV. He shares his time between the outpatient chronic pain clinic, the postoperative care in the hospital and basic research on neuroinflammation.

Clinically, Dr Suter trained in the Department of Anesthesiology of both Lausanne and Zurich University Hospital, Switzerland and in the Care Hospital, in Hyderabad, India. He obtained the Federal Diploma of Medicine in 1999, his MD in 2003, the Swiss Diploma of Anesthesiology (FMH) in 2005 and the European Diploma one year later. He is Privat-Dozent at the University of Lausanne since 2013, and MER since 2016.
Dr Suter is member of the Pain subcommittee of the European Society of Anaesthesiology and of the committee of the Swiss Pain Society (SPS) Chapter of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), for which he participates in the publication of the Swiss guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of neuropathic pain published in 2011.

His basic research activities targets the mechanisms of development and maintenance of neuropathic pain and more specifically neuroinflammation and sodium channels. After developing a long term blockade of peripheral input to the spinal cord he applied this technique to observe its effect on neuroimmune changes in the spinal cord. From 2007 to 2008, he joined Professor Ru-Rong Ji’s lab at the Harvard Medical School, in Boston, USA. There, Dr Suter could deepen its interest in intracellular pathways and glial activation in the spinal cord and showed that peripheral excitability triggers microglial reactivity after injury.

Bridget Waller is Professor of Evolution and Social Behaviour and leads the Evolution and Social Interaction Research Group at Nottingham Trent University.
The overarching focus of her work is the evolution of social communication, and she is interested in how communication facilitates social interaction. She has particular expertise in human and non-human facial expression and uses species-specific modifications of FACS (Facial Action Coding System: www.animalfacs.com) to make anatomically based, systematic comparisons between species. She is also interested in the link between facial behaviour and emotion, and how/whether animals use facial expression to communicate internal states.

She has a PhD in Psychology (University of Portsmouth, UK), MSc in Evolutionary Psychology (University of Liverpool) and BSc Zoology (Royal Holloway University of London). She has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers and received funding from national and international funders including the EU, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust and British Psychological Society. Currently, she is working on European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant FACEDIFF ‘Individual differences in facial expressivity: Social function, facial anatomy and evolutionary origins’ which focuses on humans and rhesus macaques. Her work is highly interdisciplinary and combines anatomical, behavioural and cognitive approaches.

Dr. Hoby graduated as a veterinarian from the University of Bern in 2002. Following his studies, he worked in a mixed practice in the Bernese Oberland for one year. He went on to complete his dissertation at the Centre for Fish and Wildlife Health (FIWI) Bern and the National Park Hohe Tauern, Austria fron 2003-2005 and continued on as a Postdoc at the FIWI until 2007. From 2008-2017 he practiced as a zoo veterinarian at the Zoologischer Garten Basel and during this time became board certified in 2017 by the European College of Zoo Medicine (ESZM) in zoo health management and completed extra education in phytotherapy (2010-2014) and animal experimentation (LTK I+II, 2012).

Since 2018 he is the zoo veterinarian of the Tierpark Bern and has wide ranging experience in the medical management of free-living mammals, reptiles, fish, amphibians and birds in this scientifically guided zoo. He is responsible for research programs in the zoo and involved in different breeding programs of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria. He also has experience in enclosure design and development, personnel management and training, is in charge of animal welfare issues and involved in public education and press relations.

Professor Berna Renella is a specialist in internal medicine, trained in psychosomatic medicine, clinical hypnosis, and interventional pain management (Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA) with a PhD in cognitive neuroscience of pain (University of Oxford, UK).
Since 2019, she is the head of the Center for Integrative and Complementary medicine at Lausanne University Hospital (CEMIC). CEMIC is the first academic integrative medicine center in French speaking Europe. It promotes the clinical practice, research and teaching of integrative medicine, which aims to combine evidence-based complementary and conventional treatments within a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual model. The clinical applications of integrative medicine at Lausanne University Hospital are mostly in pain management and oncology, but other areas are being progressively invested, such as anesthesiology, neurology, and obstetrics.
Professor Berna Renella’s current research efforts are mainly directed towards the neuroscientific mechanisms of non-pharmacological pain management (e.g. hypnosis, meditation, mental imagery) and the implementation of complementary medicine in an academic setting.

Professor Berna Renella is a member of the committee of the Swiss Pain Society (SPS) and the Swiss councilor to the European Pain Federation (EFIC) (local/regional chapters of the International Association for the Study of Pain IASP).

After graduating in 1996, Sandra Wenger worked for one year at Singapore's Jurong BirdPark. This was followed by a 15-month internship in "small animal medicine" and 3-year residency in "veterinary anaesthesia", at the University of Bern, Switzerland. After finishing her MSc in Wild Animal Health in London in 2005, Sandra Wenger was employed for 10 months by the zoo in Bristol, and the rabbit referral clinic of the University of Bristol. She then spent nine interesting and fulfilling years at the Zurich zoo, and the Clinic for zoo animals, exotic pets and wildlife, University of Zurich, first as a resident and then as a senior lecturer. Sandra Wenger is a diplomate of the American College of Zoo Medicine (2012) and the European College of Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia (2002). Since July 2017, she divides her time between two small animal practices, specialising in exotic pets and anaesthesia.

Urs Eichenberger received his MD at the University of Bern, Switzerland and completed his specialist training as a physician anaesthesiologist at Bern University. In 2009 he received his PD degree from the University of Bern. He has been the chief of the Division of Pain Therapy in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Pain Therapy at the University of Bern and head of the Department of Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care and Pain Therapy at Hirslanden Clinic St. Anna in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Since 2016 he is head of the Department of Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care and Pain Therapy at Balgrist University Hospital in Zurich and he received a titular professorship in Anesthesiology in 2017 from the University of Zurich.

He is currently co-president of the Swiss Society for Anaesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine (SSAPM) and serves as editor for the journal Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (RAPM). In 2019, he received the ESRA Spain distinguished service award in recognition for outstanding clinical, educational and scientific achievements in anaesthesiology and for contributions to the increased knowledge and practice of regional anaesthesia.

Prof. Eichenberger's research focuses mainly on ultrasound-guided regional anaesthesia and interventional pain therapy.

Daniela Casoni graduated cum laude with honours at the University of Bologna in 2001. At the same University, she achieved her PhD degree in critical care of small animals in 2005. After 5 years as clinical instructor and research fellow, she moved to the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 and then to University of Bern in 2011, where she completed her residency program in Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia and her post-doc in experimental chronic pain. She continued her academic career at the University of Helsinki as a clinical lecturer in anaesthesia, analgesia and critical care (2016-2017). Daniela returned to Bern in January 2018 as head of the Experimental Surgery Facility. Her current work is mainly focused on granting a high standard of care to animals undergoing experimental surgeries. Her scientific contribution is focused on evaluating intraoperative nociception and peri-operative pain in animal models. She is a member of the FELASA group for implementing guidelines regarding large animals anaesthesia and analgesia and a consulting anaesthesiologist for researchers at the University of Bern and Zürich as well as member of the AVA Ethical commission.

Hanns Ulrich Zeilhofer studied medicine at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg. In 1990, he received his MD before he trained in electrophysiology at the Max Planck-Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and in molecular biology at the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Zurich. He received his habilitation in Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg in 1997, and board certifications in Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Clinical Pharmacology. In 2001, he was appointed as Associate Professor of Molecular Neuropharmacology at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, before he became Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Zurich and ETH Zürich.

His research focuses on the neurons and circuits that process and modulate nociception and pain at the level of the spinal cord. His group has a special interest in the contribution of inhibitory neurons and neurotransmitters in these processes. The lab uses a multidisciplinary approach including electrophysiological, anatomical, and behavioural methods often in combination with virus-based tracing techniques, optogenetic and chemogenetic techniques.

Thomas Nevian studied physics and biophysics in Heidelberg, Germany, St. Andrews, UK and at the Cornell University, USA. He performed his PhD work with Prof. Dr. Bert Sakmann at the Max-Planck-Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, investigating the calcium dynamics in dendrites of cortical neurons. After his dissertation in 2003 and two further years as post-doc in Heidelberg, he became a group leader in the Department of Physiology at the University of Bern. In 2010 he received a Research-Professorship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. In 2012 he was appointed Tenure-Track-Assistant Professor and 2014 Full Professor of Physiology at the University of Bern and Co-Director of the department. His research in Neuroscience was awarded with the Pfizer Research Prize twice (2008, 2016) and the Theodor-Kocher-Prize as best young researcher of the University of Bern (2012). In 2015 he received an ERC-Consolidator grant to study the neuronal networks involved in pain processing in the cerebral cortex.
Thomas Nevian investigates the fundamental mechanisms of signal processing in the brain using state-of-the-art microscopy and electrophysiology techniques. His research group investigates the biophysics of neurons, principles of memory formation and the development of chronic pain.

Yves Moens graduated as a Doctor in Veterinary Medicine in Belgium (University of Ghent) in 1973 and was an assistant at the surgical clinic. From 1980 to 1989 he was appointed Professor of veterinary surgery at the Veterinary Faculty of Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo) on behalf of the Belgium International Inter-University Cooperation. In 1989, he joined the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Utrecht (the Netherlands) and defended with success his PhD on horse anaesthesia and lung ventilation. From 1996 until 2003 he worked as Associate Professor in Veterinary Anaesthesia at the Vetsuisse Veterinary Faculty, campus Bern (Switzerland), and was granted the Habilitation (PhD) in 2003 for research on monitoring of gas exchange during equine anaesthesia. From 2003 to 2015 Yves Moens was full Professor and Director of the Clinic of Anaesthesiology and perioperative intensive care and Director of the emergency clinic at the Veterinary University of Vienna. From 2015 to 2020 he was Director of the Veterinary Nurse and Technician school at the Campus of the Veterinary University of Vienna.

Yves Moens was an invited specialist, founding member, and president of the ECVAA (European College of Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia) and holder of the ECVAA Morpheus Award. He is also former president and Honorary Member of the Association of Veterinary Anaesthetists and also Honorary member of the European College of Emergency and Critical care.