Ross E. Petty is a Canadian pediatric rheumatologist. He is a professor emeritus in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of British Columbia and a pediatric rheumatologist at BC Children's Hospital in Vancouver, Canada. He established Canada's first formal pediatric rheumatology program at the University of Manitoba in 1976, and three years later, he founded a similar program at the University of British Columbia. In 2006, he was appointed a member of the Order of Canada for his contribution within Canada and around the world to improving the lives of children and youth with rheumatic diseases. In 2012, he was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee medal. Petty has contributed more than 225 original research papers and book chapters in medical and scientific journals.
Dr. Ronald Laxer is an active staff physician in the Division of Rheumatology, and was an inaugural Division Head at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. He is internationally recognized in the field of autoinflammatory disease and has been a part of genetic discoveries of several new autoinflammatory diseases. In addition to co-editing the Textbook of Pediatric Rheumatology, he is a co-editor of the Textbook of Autoinflammation. His recent achievements include receiving the American College of Rheumatology Master Designation Award from the American College of Rheumatology and the CRA Master Award from the Canadian Rheumatology Association. In 2020, he was appointed to the Covid-19 Government of Canada Task Force addressing gaps related to care for children.
Lucy Wedderburn is Professor in Paediatric Rheumatology at UCL (Institute of Child Health), Director of Arthritis Research UK Centre for Adolescent Rheumatology at UCL, and UCL Hospitals/GOSH consultant. Her research interests are T cell immunology, immune regulation and muscle biology, with a major focus upon human T cell responses and immune regulation. In particular, the autoimmune conditions of childhood, including Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) and Juvenile Dermatomyositis (JDM); the mechanisms which allow survival and expansion of inflammatory T cells within the joint, the control of their production of cytokines and chemokines, and their contribution to disease. She trained in Cambridge and then London in Immunology and Rheumatology and then spent time training in science at the University of Stanford, USA, before returning to the University College London and Great Ormond Street Hospital on a Wellcome Trust Fellowship.