Volker Straub Professor of Neuromuscular Genetics Harold Macmillan Professor of Medicine Director, John Walton Muscular Dystrophy Research Centre, Co-director, MRC International Centre for Genomic Medicine in Neuromuscular Diseases Deputy Dean, Institute of Translational and Clinical Research, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK Volker was trained as a pediatric neurologist at the University of Düsseldorf and the University of Essen in Germany. He wrote his PhD thesis on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in Dr Kevin Campbell’s laboratory at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, USA. Volker has a long-standing interest in the pathogenesis of genetic muscle diseases, with research using zebrafish and mouse models. His current research also involves the application of magnetic resonance imaging, next generation sequencing and other –omics technologies for the characterization of primary neuromuscular disorders. One of Volker’s main interests in muscle diseases is around translational research. He was the co-founder of the EU FP6 funded network of excellence for genetic neuromuscular diseases, TREAT-NMD (www.treat-nmd.eu). He is the CI/ PI for a number of natural history and interventional trials in DMD, LGMD, Pompe disease, spinal muscular atrophy and other NMDs. He is the President of the World Muscle Society and an author on >300 peer-reviewed publications.