Professor Ulf Ekelund
Ulf Ekelund is professor in Sports Medicine with a special focus on Physical Activity and Population Health at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. He is co-directing the Oslo Research Centre for Physical Activity and Population Health (ORC-PAPH) and directing a WHO collaborating Centre on physical activity and population health. Ekelund holds a secondary position as senior researcher at the Norwegian Public Health Institute. Before moving to the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in 2012, Ekelund lead a research program in physical activity epidemiology at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, UK.
Ekelund has lead work packages in several EU funded research projects such as the InterAct and DEDIPAC projects. He currently serves as work package leader on an EU funded Horizon 2023 project on obesity prevention (OBCT). Other major international projects include the 2012, 2016, and 2021 Lancet series on physical activity and global health and The International Children’s Accelerometer Database (ICAD). Ekelund is currently leading an International Adult Accelerometer consortium examining the detailed dose-response associations between device-measured physical activity and sedentary time with health outcomes. Ekelund served on the 2020 WHO expert committee for developing new global recommendations for physical activity and sedentary behaviours for public health. He is currently member of WHO expert group on physical activity surveillance in adults and in youth. Ekelund has published more than 500 peer-reviewed papers including landmark papers in The Lancet, The BMJ and JAMA. He has been listed as highly cited researcher by Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science) seven times during the last eight years.
Associate Professor Jennifer D. Roberts
Jennifer D. Roberts is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). She is Chair of the Nature and Health Alliance, an interdisciplinary network advancing awareness of the health benefits of nature engagement. Roberts is Founder and Director of the Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) Laboratory and Co-Founder and Co-Director of NatureRx@UMD, an initiative that integrates campus greenspaces with recognition of the ancestral lands of the Piscataway People and the historical legacies of slavery at UMD.
Roberts is an “active living, health equity, and truth-telling” scholar whose work examines how built and natural environments, and the inequities embedded within them, shape physical activity, health, and wellbeing. Her research uses spatial analysis and geographic information systems to investigate social and environmental drivers of active living, including projects such as the Built Environment and Active Play (BEAP) and Physical Environment and Active Transportation (PEAT) studies. She is the Executive Founding Director of the Wekesa Earth Center, a multidisciplinary initiative promoting equity, reconciliation, and healing in nature. Roberts is a former JPB Environmental Health Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and currently serves as Consortium Site Principal Investigator on a $3.4 million National Institute of Nursing Research–funded study evaluating the health impacts of the 11th Street Bridge Park project in Washington, DC.
Professor Catherine Woods
Catherine B. Woods is a full professor and Director of the Physical Activity for Health Research Centre (PAfH) at the Health Research Institute, University of Limerick (UL), Ireland. PAfH’s mission is to conduct excellent research across its six thematic areas -measurement, biomedicine, interventions and policy, exercise as medicine and active mobility (www.ul.ie/ehs/pafh). PAfH’s Principal Investigators, research staff and postgraduates work collectively to build capacity, to enhance PAfH’s international reputation for research excellence and in collaboration with other researchers, policymakers and practitioners we strive to deliver real world impact.
Catherine’s expertise is in physical activity (PA) policy, intervention development and effective implementation. She has presented her work through peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations and has accrued competitively awarded €16 million research funding from (inter)national grant agencies. As Deputy Chair of the Policy Evaluation Network (www.jpi-pen.eu), she co-led a consortium of 28 research institutes across Europe to find systematic ways of evaluating and monitoring policy impact on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and food. As Chair of the ERA4Health (EU funded) IMPAQT study, she continues this research across six EU countries (www.ul.ie/research/impaqt). Catherine has advised the WHO HEPA Physical Activity Focal Points in Europe. With Colin O’Hehir from the Department of Health, Ireland, she co-Chairs the Irish Physical Activity Collaboration (www.i-parc.ie), which is instrumental in bringing researchers, policymakers and practitioners together to use a cross-sectoral approaches to address the inactivity pandemic across the island of Ireland. In 2025, as Chair of Healthy UL, a campus-wide initiative to promote health and wellbeing for UL staff, students and wider community she led on the development and publication of the ‘Limerick Framework for Action: Advancing the Global Health Promoting Campuses Agenda’ (Healthy UL | University of Limerick).
Associate Professor Deborah Salvo
Dr. Salvo works at the intersection of physical activity and spatial epidemiology, with profound commitment to documenting, understanding, and resolving disparities in access to health-promoting and environmentally sustainable urban environments for all. She specializes in conducting studies assessing and leveraging the role of place (physical, social, and policy context) on physical activity and other health-related behaviors, with the goal of promoting physical activity and health equity. Dr. Salvo has a special interest in Latino/Latin American populations, both in United States and across Latin America. Dr. Salvo’s work also strongly focuses on building research capacity for physical activity and public health in low- and middle-income countries. She founded the Latin American Society of Physical Activity and Health Research (SLIAFS) in 2021, co-founded and co-directed the Global Observatory of Healthy and Sustainable Cities in 2021, and serves as the President-Elect of the International Society of Physical Activity and Health (ISPAH) for the 2024-2026 term.