Established in 2000, the EULAR Meritorious Service Award recognises rheumatologists who have brought honour and distinction to the field through personal, professional or community service activities that are conducted within the scope of scientific research, clinical science through their activities in EULAR, national or international organisations.
The EULAR Board selects the recipients and are listed at: eular.org/awards_meritorious_service.cfm
The EULAR Meritorious Award recipients are honoured at the Opening session at the annual European Congress of Rheumatology. The EULAR 2021 Virtual Congress Opening session, June 2, will be broadcasted virtually at: congress.eular.org/eular_tv.cfm.
About the 2021 EULAR Meritorious Service Award recipients
Maxime Dougados, MD, is a rheumatologist. He has been the head of the department of Rheumatology at Cochin Hospital in Paris from 1995 to 2018, he is professor of rheumatology at the University of Paris. He is a clinical researcher working as a member of the INSERM unit 1153 focused on biostatistics and clinical epidemiology. He has been involved in the field of osteoarthritis and thereafter in the field of rheumatoid arthritis and currently mainly in the field of spondyloarthritis He has published more than 1000 articles and he is a member of the editorial board of several journals such as Annals of Rheumatic Diseases. Within EULAR, he started to work within the standing committee of clinical affairs in which he has proposed the procedures to elaborate the different EULAR recommendations. He has also acted as the EULAR/ACR liaison person facilitating the conduct of different initiatives such as the ACR/EULAR criteria for rheumatoid arthritis. During his EULAR presidency, he has promoted the creation and the development of FOREUM ( the European Foundation for Research in Rheumatology.
Prof. Josef Smolen, Editor-in-Chief of the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, is professor of Internal Medicine and chairman of the Division of Rheumatology and Department of Medicine 3 at the Medical University of Vienna. He is also head of the 2nd Department of Medicine - Centre of Rheumatic Diseases at Hietzing Hospital, Vienna.
Served as president of the EULAR from 2003-2005, as president of the Austrian Society of Rheumatology from 2005-2007 and as president of the Austrian Society of Immunology 2007-2009. Since 2003 he is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and since 2007 of the German Academy of Sciences. He became fellow of the Royal Society of Physicians in 2008 and Honorary Doctor of the University of Lund in 2010.
His main research activities include clinical trials and outcomes research, in addition to laboratory?based research in the fields of experimental arthritis, autoimmunity, in vivo imaging, proinflammatory cytokines, and cellular immunology. He is editorial board member of several professional journals and editor of textbooks and handbooks in the field of rheumatology.
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