Jo Nijs is full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Brussels, Belgium), physiotherapist/manual therapist at the University Hospital Brussels, holder of 2 Chairs (one in oncological physiotherapy and one in rehabilitation physiotherapy) funded by the Berekuyl Academy, the Netherlands, and Visiting Professor at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden). Jo runs the Pain in Motion international and interdisciplinary research group (www.paininmotion.be). The primary aim of his research is improving care for patients with chronic pain. Twenty years ago, he pioneered in studying central sensitization in a wide variety of pain conditions, including osteoarthritis, cancer, back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, and fibromyalgia. This led to developing and testing innovative interventions (e.g., cognition-targeted exercise therapy, sleep interventions) for various chronic pain conditions, and continued efforts to unravel the chronic pain pathophysiology with a focus on epigenetic mechanisms. His work contributed substantially to the paradigm shift from a from a tissue- and disease-based pain management approach towards multimodal lifestyle interventions for chronic pain. At the age of 48, he has (co-)authored >330 peer reviewed publications (including first author papers in The Lancet and The Lancet Rheumatology (2x), and senior author papers in JAMA Neurology and JAMA Network Open), obtained >€19 million grant income, supervised 29 PhD’s to completion and served 390 times as an invited speaker at meetings in 31 countries (including 43 keynotes). He trained 4k clinicians in >100 courses held in 14 countries spread over 4 continents. His work has been cited >14k times (h-index: 66), with 34 citations per article (ISI Web of Knowledge). Jo is ranked 2nd in the world among chronic pain researchers (1st in Europe), and 3rd in the world among musculoskeletal pain researchers (expertscape.com), received the 2017 Excellence in Research Award from the JOSPT (USA), and the 2020 honorary Francqui Collen Chair awarded by the University of Hasselt, Belgium. Website: https://researchportal.vub.be/en/persons/jo-nijs