The UEG Rising Star Awards celebrate and support the most promising early-career clinical and research scientists in gastroenterology and digestive health, recognizing their high-quality work and fostering their development within the international UEG community. By highlighting the achievements of young gastroenterologists and giving them a platform to present at UEG Week and engage with peers and mentors, the initiative helps accelerate their research impact and career growth. We asked each of the winners what the award meant to them and to their career.
“Winning the UEG Award is a great honour and a meaningful opportunity for me. This award also reflects the collective effort of our team and international collaborations. I see this recognition as strong motivation to continue my research on improving care for pancreatic cancer patients, specifically by introducing and improving minimally invasive surgical techniques. I am very grateful to UEG for this award and for their continued support of early-career researchers.”
Jony van Hilst
Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
“I regard the UEG Rising Star Award as a valuable acknowledgment of the contributions made by scientists working to advance our understanding of complex and underexplored disease mechanisms. Receiving this award is particularly meaningful to me as it highlights pulmonary vascular complications of liver disease that have been a central focus of my research, including hepatopulmonary syndrome and portopulmonary hypertension. These conditions are frequently overlooked or under-recognized in clinical practice, despite their significant impact on patient outcomes. My work aims to improve their recognition, pathophysiological understanding, and clinical management, in an area that remains insufficiently studied. Recognition from the UEG community supports continued work in this field and broader awareness within gastroenterology and hepatology.”
Sarah Raevens
UZ Gent and Hepatology Research Unit, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
“I am honoured to receive this UEG rising star award and to follow in the footsteps of many individuals who I respect in the field and who themselves have made seminal contributions to improving patient care and bringing about change.
I would like to thank both the British Society of Gastroenterology and the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation for supporting my nomination for the UEG rising star award. I would also like to highlight the influence and contributions of so many people who have provided personal and professional support and inspiration throughout my career. In particular, the support and mentorship of Professor Miles Parkes, who himself has made a lifetime of contributions to the field, has been invaluable in helping to shape my clinical and academic development.
I especially feel fortunate to have worked with so many excellent people as part of the PROFILE trial, a project which has made a real difference in changing clinical practice and improving outcomes for patients around the world. Throughout the remainder of my career, I hope to maintain this focus on translation to impact and benefit for patients, with the central goal of helping to improve the lives of people living with IBD.”
Nurulamin Noor
University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals, Cambridge, UK
“Receiving the UEG Rising Star Award is a great honour and important recognition of the path that I am following as a physician-scientist in gastroenterology. For me, this award reflects a broader shift in our field: moving from reactive treatment towards prediction, prevention, and precision medicine in immune-mediated gastrointestinal diseases. My research focuses on integrating high-dimensional immune and multi-omics profiling to identify early disease signatures, often years before clinical onset. Being recognized by UEG reinforces the relevance of this approach and motivates me to further translate these discoveries into clinically actionable strategies. On a personal level, the award is incredibly encouraging at this stage of my career. For me, it highlights the value of interdisciplinary and international collaboration and inspires me to continue building research that bridges fundamental immunology and real-world patient care. I am incredibly grateful to my mentors, collaborators, and trainees who make this work possible.”
Arno Bourgonje
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, NY, USA
“The Rising Star Award means a great deal to me and is a tremendous honour. Both the recognition itself and the legacy of previous award recipients. Being part of a community of researchers who have inspired my own work is deeply meaningful. The award provides strong motivation to continue my research. My work focuses on environmental risk factors for inflammatory bowel disease and celiac disease, as well as the prognosis of these conditions. I primarily use large-scale datasets, often in close collaboration with other researchers. This award can help facilitate new collaborations within European gastroenterological research.”
Karl Mårild
Institute of Clinical Sciences, Sahlgrenska Academy and Queen Silvia Children’s Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden
The UEG Rising Star Award is highly relevant to my professional goals, as it would strengthen my ability to actively contribute within the UEG network of international collaboration. UEG brings together researchers from diverse disciplines, healthcare systems, and cultural backgrounds, creating an ideal environment to address shared clinical challenges beyond national boundaries. Participation in this network would allow me to exchange ideas with peers at different stages of their careers, and contribute my own experience to collaborative initiatives.
My research focuses on optimizing clinical decision-making in inflammatory bowel disease by ensuring the right treatment at the right time—carefully balancing the risks of under- and overtreatment and enabling timely preventive strategies. The Rising Star Award would support the exchange of knowledge and methodologies needed to refine this balance across different clinical settings.
By fostering international collaboration and multidisciplinary dialogue, the award would help translate research insights into more personalized and sustainable care strategies. Ultimately, it would enable me to contribute to a collective effort aimed at improving outcomes for IBD patients and creating a meaningful impact on society.
Annemarie de Vries
Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
“I am delighted to have been awarded the UEG Rising Star. The award provides the perfect platform to develop my research skills, publicise my work, and foster new research opportunities and collaborations. As a clinical researcher in neurogastroenterology, this recognition will help me to unlock my full potential and establish myself as an independent expert in the field.”
Chris Black
University of Leeds and Leeds Teaching Hospitals, Leeds, UK
“The UEG Rising Star Award is an inspiring and motivating recognition at a pivotal stage of my career. As I combine my gastroenterology residency with postdoctoral research, this award affirms my ambition to integrate high-quality clinical care with methodologically robust, practice-changing research.
My work focuses on improving the management of Barrett’s oesophagus and early upper GI cancer, with a strong emphasis on personalized decision-making and avoiding unnecessary interventions. Through national initiatives such as the Barrett Icebreaker project, I aim to challenge long-standing practices and promote care that truly benefits patients.
Being acknowledged by UEG is a tremendous honour. It encourages me to further strengthen international collaborations, mentor young researchers, and contribute to a future of gastroenterology that is evidence-driven, critical, and patient-centred. I am deeply grateful to my mentors, collaborators, and trainees and I see this award as both an encouragement and a responsibility to continue translating research into meaningful improvements in patient care.”
Sanne van Munster
Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
“Deeply aligned with UEG’s mission, I see this award as an opportunity to further my scientific career, foster stronger collaborations within the community, and inspire and mentor the next generation of gastroenterologists to engage with and contribute to UEG.”
Alberto Zanetto
University of Padua, Padua, Italy
“This recognition means a lot to me. UEG represents the strength of the European digestive health community: collaboration, mentorship and shared aim to improve patient care through science.”
Elisa Pose
Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
More content in digestive disorders.
Cite: Spotlighting excellence: Celebrating UEG’s rising stars in gastroenterology. touchIMMUNOLOGY. 4 February 2026.
Editor: Victoria Smith, Senior Content Editor.
This short article was developed by touchIMMUNOLOGY in collaboration with the United European Gastroenterology (UEG). Image: © 2025. UEG. The article is not affiliated with the UEG Week conference. Views expressed are the speaker’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Touch Medical Media.
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