Approximately 40 Meet the Professor sessions will provide ACR Convergence 2026 attendees with a range of opportunities to explore clinical case studies with world-renowned experts.
Each of the one-hour sessions will identify challenging features in the diagnosis and management of a particular rheumatic disease and initiate discussions of how to overcome these challenges through timely, individualized, evidence-based treatment plans—all in a small-group format, said Adam Kilian, MD, FACP, FACR.
“Meet the Professor sessions are a conversational classroom experience of less than 30 people. Each gathering is led by someone who was invited because they are both an internationally recognized expert and an exceptional educator. They will walk their group through three or four complex, real-world, real-patient cases and then lead interactive discussions,” explained Dr. Kilian, who heads up the Meet the Professor sessions in his role as a member of the Annual Meeting Planning Committee (AMPC).
The Meet the Professor sessions cover approximately 20 different themes, ranging from antiphospholipid syndrome to vasculitis mimics. Most themes are scheduled to repeat at different times to accommodate attendees’ schedules.
“These are all key topics, highly relevant to professionals at all levels,” Dr. Kilian said. “Each session is an opportunity to hear and learn directly from an international expert who will review some of their actual patient cases. The educational value of these case studies is high—and perhaps highest when the disease state is one you see less often—but the discussions are pertinent to every rheumatologist and even experts leave with their thinking sharpened.”
Dr. Kilian added that the personalized insights from the expert presenters greatly enhance the learning experience.
“In rheumatology, there’s a lot of science, but also a lot of art in what we do,” he said. “We deal with grey zones. In these cases, it is always helpful to hear how an expert in the field has approached a similar situation.”
Dr. Kilian, who joins the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School as an Associate Professor of Medicine this fall after serving as the Rheumatology Fellowship Program Director at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, says that he and his fellow committee members have modeled the Meet the Professor sessions on the best and most effective type of active-learning modules that have proven successful in fellowship programs around the country.
“This type of active learning leads to a much richer understanding of the material and a greater retention,” Dr. Kilian said. “We want attendees to have a connection with one another and with the presenter. We want to offer something that engages them by calling on them to reason through the case studies and discuss them with one another.”
Since these sessions take place at ACR Convergence, they benefit from the conference’s global, cross-institutional pollination of ideas and experiences, Dr. Kilian said. In that sense, the highly focused, small-scale Meet the Professor sessions are an ideal complement to the larger ACR Convergence experience with its can’t-miss presentations of cutting-edge research and clinical applications.
“ACR Convergence brings in people from around the world—it’s a massive conference with numerous opportunities for encountering new ideas, research, and connections,” Dr. Kilian said. “And within this conference, we have the opportunity to present these types of small-group sessions because we know some learning is best done in more intimate settings that allow for active, case-based discussions rooted in evidence-based medicine.”
A full schedule of the Meet the Professor sessions is available online. Pre-registration is required to attend a session and can be completed online with the “Optional Add-On Sessions” step during the general registration for ACR Convergence 2026. ACR and ARP members can attend for $90 per session. Nonmembers can attend for $140 per session. Attendance for each course will be capped to maintain an intimate learning environment.
JOIN US IN ORLANDO
If you haven’t registered for ACR Convergence 2026, register today to participate in this year’s premier rheumatology experience, November 6–11 in Orlando, Florida. All registered participants receive on-demand access to scientific sessions after the meeting through October 31, 2027.
