Pierantonio Laveneziana gained his medical degree in 2002 and his doctorate in 2012. Since then, he has worked under leaders in the field at the following prominent research laboratories: P. Palange at Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy G. Scano at the University of Florence, Florence, Italy D. O’Donnell at Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada U. Jorde at Columbia University, New York, NY, USA M. Humbert at the National Center for Pulmonary Hypertension, Kremlin Bicêtre, Paris, France and T. Similowski and C. Straus at Sorbonne Université and the University Hospital ‘Pitié-Salpêtrière’. He was the recipient of an Investigator Award from the 5th World Symposium on Pulmonary Hypertension (2013), and a Marie Curie Actions - International Re-integration Grant (2010–2012). From 2014 to 2015, he was Associate Professor of Respiratory Medicine (2014–2015) at the Sorbonne Université and University Hospital ‘Pitié-Salpêtrière’. Pierantonio Laveneziana has served as the Secretary (2011–2014) and Chair (2014–2017) of the Clinical Respiratory Physiology, Exercise and Functional Imaging Group of the European Respiratory Society (ERS). He is currently Secretary of the Clinical Physiology and Sleep Assembly at the ERS. He has acted as both a director and member of several ERS Task Forces. Pierantonio Laveneziana’s research focuses on the pathophysiology, mechanisms and language of dyspnoea as well as the ventilatory, respiratory mechanics and gas exchange responses to exercise and activity limitation in healthy subjects and patients with asthma, COPD, ILD, chronic heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, congenital central hypoventilation syndrome, unexplained dyspnoea and obesity. He is the author of more than 100 papers on these subjects. He is an Associate Editor of the European Respiratory Review and a member of the Editorial Boards of the European Respiratory Journal, the Journal of COPD and more than 20 other peer-reviewed journals. J. Alberto Neder J. Alberto Neder is currently Professor of Medicine at Queen’s University (Kingston, ON, Canada) and is a staff respirologist at the Kingston Health Sciences Centre (KHSC Kingston, ON, Canada). He is the Director of the KHSC’s Laboratory of Clinical Exercise Physiology and the Laboratory of Pulmonary Function Tests. J. Alberto Neder has a PhD in Clinical Physiology, which was complemented by post-doctoral experiences at the University of London (London, UK) under B.J. Whipp, and the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, UK), under S.A. Ward. https://doi.org/10.1183/2312508X.10017818 vii