Guilherme Macedo, CINTESIS researcher and professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto (FMUP), is the president-elect of the World Gastroenterology Organisation of (WGO). The specialist was nominated for the position during the WGO World Congress in Istanbul in October and he will be in office from 2021 to 2023.
“It is a source of great satisfaction, but also of great responsibility for all that needs to be done. I am also carrying the flag of the institutions I represent, namely the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Porto and CINTESIS,” he says.
For Guilherme Macedo, this position is “a recognition of the prestige of FMUP and the path taken”. A path that put “Portugal on the radar” and which gave Portuguese Gastroenterology “great visibility”.
His objectives are to “consolidate WGO’s position as a global knowledge and training hub for gastroenterologists in order to improve the digestive health of the world’s population”. In this sense, he defends a “symbiosis” between the educational, research and assistance aspects.
WGO is a federation of Gastroenterology scientific societies, representing more than 50,000 specialists from around the world. Its mission is to safeguard and promote digestive health.
Besides being an integrated researcher at CINTESIS, Guilherme Macedo is a guest professor at FMUP, director of the Gastroenterology Service of the University Hospital Center of São João (CHUSJ), certified as “European Center for Gastroenterology and Hepatology Training”, and vice president of Portuguese Society of Gastroenterology.
He was the chair of the Portuguese Association for the Study of the Liver and of the Portuguese Society of Digestive Endoscopy. In 2015, he was given the International Leadership Award by the American College of Gastroenterology. He launched the WGO project Train The Trainers (TTT). He has published about 350 scientific articles in indexed journals. As a researcher, his main research areas of interest are the development of endoscopic technology and liver health.