Maria Teresa La Rovere is Clinical Cardiologist and Head of the Laboratory for Autonomic Nervous System Analysis at the Department of Cardiology of the Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri, IRCCS, Pavia, Italy. She is contract-teaching Professor at the School of Cardiology, University of Pavia, Italy. Her main research interests involve the pathophysiology of autonomic nervous system in ischemic heart disease and heart failure, the development of clinical tools for the study of autonomic nervous system, and the effects of pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions on autonomic balance. Her work has contributed to unravel the role of autonomic dysfunction in identifying post-myocardial infarction patients at high risk for sudden and non-sudden cardiac death. Furthermore, she is involved in the study of cardiorespiratory interactions and the pathophysiology of breathing abnormalities in heart failure. She serves as reviewer for several leading cardiology journals. She is (co)author of more than 200 peer-reviewed papers e 20 book chapters. Since COVID-19 outbreak, she has been actively involved in studying the relationships between cardiovascular comorbidities and outcome in patients infected with Sars-Cov-2 and is currently engaged in designing rehabilitation programs for COVID-19 survivors.

Dr Tiziana Bachetti is currently assistant to the Scientific Director at Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri, an Italian research and care hospital, where she is responsible for the management of scientific aspects related to institutional basic, translational, and clinical research projects. She received a Masters of Sciences degree in Pharmacy in 1987 and completed her post-graduate training in Molecular Pharmacology at University of Bologna, Italy, in 1991. Her first research interests were in the field of Neuropharmacology and Vascular Pharmacology. She was then a post-doc in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at University College London, UK (2007-2008). Through the years, she has developed a broad interest in Cardiovascular Science actively participating in projects spanning from basic to clinical science. The focus of her research has always been on elucidating pathophysiological mechanisms of disease to identify suitable drug targets with special reference to endothelial dysfunction, heart failure, immune activation in cardiovascular diseases, and genetic channellopathies associated with sudden cardiac death. She is (co)author of more than 80 publications (Orcid ID: 0000-0003-1612-5329) and has a Scopus H index of 22 (Scopus Author ID: 7004334375).

Given her long-standing interests in angiotensin-converting enzyme and endothelial function, she enthusiastically joined the GEN-COVID study to give her contribution, together with the group headed by Prof Alessandra Renieri, to understand the impact of host genome on COVID-19 clinical variability.