Vincent Cottin Vincent Cottin is Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Coordinator of the National Reference Centre for Rare Pulmonary Diseases at the Louis Pradel Hospital (Bron, France) and the Claude Bernard University Lyon (Lyon, France). The Centre has pioneered clinical care and research in patients with rare and so-called orphan lung diseases for many years, and set up the OrphaLung network (coordinated by Vincent Cottin) of 21 expert centres throughout France. The Centre was recently recognised as the institute of its kind in France to be part of the European Reference Network for ILD (ERN-LUNG, ILD). Vincent Cottin’s research interests include rare “orphan” pulmonary diseases including IIPs and especially IPF, as well as CTD-associated ILD. More specifically, he has contributed to characterising and individualising the syndrome of combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema, and of IPAF. He is an investigator and member of the steering committees and data safety monitoring boards of many clinical trials on IPF, and is conducting personal research on combined pulmonary fibrosis and emphysema. Vincent Cottin served as elected Head of the ERS Clinical Assembly from 2009 to 2012. He was Chief Editor of the European Respiratory Review from 2013 to 2015, and is currently Section Editor of the European Respiratory Journal and Associate Editor of European Respiratory Review and of Respiration. He recently edited a book on orphan lung diseases and is preparing a second edition. He is an appointed Fellow of the European Respiratory Society and has been awarded the European Respiratory Society Gold Medal of IPF. Paolo Spagnolo Paolo Spagnolo is Associate Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Director of the Residency Program in Respiratory Medicine at the University of Padua (Padua, Italy). He received his undergraduate training and his MD and completed his residency in respiratory medicine at the University Hospital of Bari (Bari, Italy). In 2002, he joined the Interstitial Lung Disease Unit of the Royal Brompton Hospital (London, UK), initially as clinical research fellow under the supervision of Professor Ron du Bois, and subsequently as Honorary Consultant. In 2008, he completed his PhD at Imperial College London (London, UK) under the supervision of Professor Ron du Bois and Professor Ken Welsh, with a thesis on “Genetic predisposition to clinical phenotypes of https://doi.org/10.1183/2312508X.10033319 vii