Speakers

MD, Professor, Department of Medicine, Department of Genetics, Director, Institute for Aging Research, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA

Daniel Bessesen MD is Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado Denver where he serves as Associate Director of the Colorado Centre for Human Nutrition. He is also Chief of Endocrinology at Denver Health Medical Centre and is Director of Fellowship Training in Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes. He has conducted research for the past 15 years in dietary fat metabolism in both animal models of obesity and human subjects. Most recently he has been interested in the adaptive responses that occur in response to over and underfeeding and how these adaptive responses either protect from or promote weight gain. He also cares for overweight and obese patients and has co-authored 2 textbooks on the evaluation and treatment of obesity.

Dr. Susan Bonner-Weir is Senior Investigator, Joslin Diabetes Centre and Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. For over twenty-five years she has focused on the islets of Langerhans, with her current focus on generating a reliable source of new β cells. She has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers, numerous chapters and reviews. Dr. Bonner-Weir has served on numerous grant review panels (NIH, American Diabetes Association, JDRF, the Danish National Research Council and the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine) and editorial boards. With a series of rodent models she and her colleagues provided compelling evidence that adult pancreatic beta-cell mass increases in response to a metabolic need and have shown the mechanisms of this postnatal pancreatic growth include both neogenesis and replication. Her approaches for generating new beta cells range from regeneration animal models to in vitro differentiation from human/rodent adult pancreatic cells.

French Born: 1965

POSITIONS AND TRAINING

1992 Graduate PhD in hormonal and metabolic regulation
University of Paris VI, France
1993 - 1997 Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Laboratory of Dr. M.J. Charron
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, USA
1997 - 2001 Assistant Professor, Lausanne University
Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Lausanne, Switzerland
2001 - present Research Director Inserm: U858

OTHER PROFESSIONAL FUNCTIONS

Reviewer for international scientific journals: Diabetes, Journal of Clinical Investigation, American Journal of Physiology, Gastroenterology, British Journal of Nutrition, etc.

Member of the Editorial Board of Endocrinology since 2005

President of the European Club for the Study of GLP-1 since 2008

2003 - Present Co-Founder of Physiogenex SAS

President of the SAB
- High through put analysis and screening of molecular targets, pharmacological and nutritional agents for the treatment of metabolic diseases

AWARDS FOR PERSONAL EXPERTISES

2003 Appolinaire Bouchardat Award for Research in Diabetes

PhD, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, USA

Ralph A. DeFronzo, MD, is Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Diabetes Division at the University of Texas Health Science Centre and the Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Dr. DeFronzo is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and did his training in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He completed fellowships in endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health and Baltimore City Hospitals and in Nephrology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Subsequently, he joined the faculty at the Yale University School of Medicine (1975-88) as an Assistant/Associate Professor.

His major interests focus on the pathogenesis and treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus and the central role of insulin resistance in the metabolic-cardiovascular cluster of disorders known collectively as the Insulin Resistance Syndrome. Using the euglycemic insulin clamp technique in combination with radioisotope turnover methodology, limb catheterisation, indirect calorimetry, and muscle biopsy, he has helped to define the biochemical and molecular disturbances responsible for insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes mellitus.

For his work in this area, Dr. DeFronzo received the prestigious Lilly Award (1987) by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the Banting Lectureship (1988) by the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Novartis Award (2003) for outstanding clinical investigation world wide and many other national and international awards. He is also the recipient of the ADA’s Albert Renold Award (2002) for lifetime commitment to the training of young diabetes investigators. Dr. DeFronzo received the Banting Award from the ADA (2008) and the Claude Bernard Award from the EASD (2008). These represent the highest scientific achievement awards given by the American and European Diabetes Associations, respectively. In 2008 Dr. DeFronzo also received the Italian Diabetes Mentor Prize and the Philip Bondy Lecture at Yale. With more than 500 articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals, Dr. DeFronzo is a distinguished clinician, teacher, and investigator who has been an invited speaker at major national and international conferences on diabetes mellitus.

Dr Del Prato is Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the School of Medicine, University of Pisa and Chief of the Section of Diabetes, University of Pisa, Italy. He also holds the post of Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Texas, San Antonio Health Science Centre, Texas, USA. He graduated MD cum laude from the University of Padova and undertook post graduate specialisation in both Endocrinology and Internal Medicine.

Dr Del Prato's research interests have always been concerned with diabetes and in particular the physiopathology and therapy of type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance syndrome.

He is a member of many societies and associations including the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, the American Diabetes Association, the Mediterranean Group for the Study of Diabetes, the International Diabetes Federation. He acts as referee for all major journals. Furthermore, Dr. Del Prato has served on the Editorial Boards for Journal of Endocrinological Investigation, Diabetes, Nutrition and Metabolism and the European Journal of Clinical Investigation (Diabetes and Metabolism section) and, presently, for Acta Diabetologica, Diabetes & Vascular Disease Research, Journal of Endocrinology, Diabetes/Metabolism Research & Reviews and Diabetes et Metabolism, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Dr Del Prato has published over 300 articles on national and international journals and has been awarded several honours, including the Prize of the Italian Society of Diabetology for outstanding scientific activity.

Head, School of Graduate Entry Medicine and Health

Professor of Vascular Medicine, University of Nottingham

The Medical School, Royal Derby Hospital, Derby

Hon. Consultant Physician and Trust R&D Director, Derby Hospital Foundation Trust

Institutions
Department of Internal Medicine and CNR Institute of Clinical Physiology at the University of Pisa, Italy

Appointments
Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Pisa School of Medicine; Chief of the Metabolism Unit of the CNR (National Research Council) Institute of Clinical Physiology, Pisa; Clinical Professor of Medicine, Diabetes Division, University of Texas Health Science Centre at San Antonio, Texas, USA

Scientific activity
- Involved in over 400 publications in the fields of diabetes, metabolism, hypertension, obesity and cardiovascular risk factors
- Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Diabetologia, the official journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes
- Chairman of the European Group for the Study of Insulin Resistance (EGIR)
- Past-President, European Association for the Study of Diabetes 2004-2008

Dr. Ferrante received a BS in Physics from Yale and his MD and PhD degrees from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He completed his medical residency at New York Presbyterian Hospital and a research fellowship at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Centre. He is currently the Dorothy Silberberg Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and an investigator at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Centre. His research focuses on delineating the role of the immune system in metabolic function.

Age: 51
MEDICAL TITLES
Medical Doctor (1986) University Paris 6, St-Antoine Medical School, Paris, France
Medical Residency (1983-1989) Specialty in Endocrinology, Nutrition and Diabetology

SCIENTIFIC TITLES
DEA (Master Degree) of Nutrition (1985) University Paris 7, France
PhD (Doctorates Sciences, specialty: Human Biology, physiology and pathophysiology of human nutrition (1991) University Paris 7
Diplôme d'Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (Director of Research) of Paris 7 University (1995)

CLINICAL & RESEARCH POST-GRADUATION ACTIVITIES
Since 1995: Director of the CNRS research unit UMR8090 «Genomics and Molecular physiology of metabolic diseases» associated with Lille 2 University & Pasteur Institute in Lille
Since 2003: Professor and Chair of the section of Genomic Medicine, Division of Medicine, Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College, London, UK
Since 2006: Imperial College Faculty of Medicine Theme Leader in Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolic Medicine
Since 2005: Adjunct Professor of McGill University, Montreal, Québec, Canada

ADMINISTRATIVE & CONSORTIUM MANAGEMENT EXPERIENCE
Since 1998: Head of the Department of Human Genetics of the CNRS Institute of Biology-Lille
Since 2003: Chair of the section of Genomic Medicine and head of the Hammersmith campus Genome Centre, Imperial College London, UK

Dr. Gimble began studying the differentiation properties of bone marrow stromal cells, now know as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), in 1987 as a faculty member at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. In 1999, Dr. Gimble left academia to join Zen-Bio, a biotech company in the Research Triangle Park, NC, focusing on human adipose tissue derived cells, where he served as the Director of Tissue Engineering. In 2000, together with Carolyn Underwood and Drs. Yuan-Di Halvorsen and William Wilkison, he co-founded Artecel Sciences, a company whose mission was to develop tissue engineering products based on the use of human adipose-derived stem cells. After the sale of the company in 2003, Dr. Gimble joined the faculty of the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre where his research continues to focus on the characterisation of adipose and bone marrow derived stem cells for regenerative medicine. Additional studies focus on the circadian biology of adipose tissue and bone at the stem/stromal cell level.

Dr. Granneman received a PhD in Biopsychology from the University of Massachusetts and post doctoral training in Endocrinology (University of Rochester) and Neurobiology (University of Pittsburgh). He is presently Professor of Psychiatry and Pathology and Director of the Centre for Integrative Metabolic and Endocrine Research at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Dr. Granneman's research addresses the linkage between adipose tissue function and obesity-related disorders, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. His current work focuses on therapeutic remodeling of white adipose tissue, molecular mechanisms of fat mobilisation in adipose tissue and muscle and the identification and validation of novel obesity/diabetes drug targets.

John E. Hall is the Arthur C. Guyton Professor and Chairman of Physiology and Biophysics and Associate Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre. Dr. Hall's major research interests include cardiovascular and renal physiology, mechanisms of hypertension and obesity-induced cardiorenal disease. He has authored or co-authored over 500 publications and has written or edited 15 books, including the Textbook of Medical Physiology which he co-authored with late Arthur Guyton. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Hypertension and former Chief Editor of The American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

Dr. Hall previously served as President of the American Physiological Society, President of the Inter-American Society of Hypertension, Chair of the Committee of Scientific Councils of the American Heart Association (AHA) and Chair of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research. He also served on the executive committees of several international organisations including the International Society of Hypertension, the International Union of Physiological Sciences and the American Society of Hypertension.

Dr. Hall's awards include the Distinguished Achievement Award of the AHA, Council for High Blood Pressure Research, the Richard Bright Award of the American Society of Hypertension, the Novartis Award for Hypertension Research of the AHA, the Harry Goldblatt Award of the AHA, the Merck, Sharp and Dohme Distinguished Research Award from the International Society of Hypertension, the Lewis Dahl Award of the AHA, the Ernest Starling Award of the American Physiological Society and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Inter-American Society of Hypertension.

Department of Biomedical Sciences, The Panum Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

C. Ronald Kahn, MD is the preeminent investigator of insulin signal transduction and mechanisms of altered signalling in disease. He received his education at the University of Louisville. After training in internal medicine at Washington University, he moved to the National Institutes of Health where he rose to Head of the Section on Cellular and Molecular Physiology of NIDDK. In 1981, he became Research Director of the Joslin Diabetes Centre and in 1986 the Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. From 2000-2007, he served as President and Director of the Joslin Diabetes Centre.

Dr. Kahn has received numerous honours and awards, including the highest scientific awards of the American Diabetes Association, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, European Association for the Study of Diabetes, British Endocrine Society, International Diabetes Federation, and Endocrine Society. In 1999, Dr. Kahn was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

Steven E. Kahn, MB, ChB is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology, and Nutrition at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System and University of Washington in Seattle. Additionally, he is Associate Director of the Diabetes Endocrinology Research Centre at the University of Washington.

Dr. Kahn’s research interests include ß-cell function in normal subjects and the pathogenesis of hyperglycemia in patients with type 2 diabetes. He has also done extensive work on the role of islet amyloid in the pathogenesis of the islet lesion in type 2 diabetes.

Among his awards are the Herman Ostrum Memorial Award, the Dana Foundation Feasibility Award, the Novartis Award in Diabetes, the American Diabetes Association Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award, and the R.H. Williams–Rachmiel Levine Award. He has been elected to membership in the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Association of Physicians.

Dr. James Kirkland is the Noaber Foundation Professor of Aging Research and Director of the Mayo Clinic Robert and Arlene Kogod Centre on Aging. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Toronto and also trained at Johns Hopkins University, the National Institute on Aging, and Manchester University. His research focus is on aging and development of fat tissue, particularly on molecular mechanisms of fat cell progenitor dysfunction and metabolic disease with aging. He has over 125 publications. He is a specialist in Geriatric Medicine and Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Τraining:
PhD in Biochemistry, Mexico City, 1976
Postdoctoral training: University of Toronto, Toronto, and ETH, Zurich, 1976-79
Research Associate: Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, 1980

Positions:
Scientist, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, 1981-91
Senior Scientist, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, 1991-present
Assistant Professor, Paediatrics and Biochemistry, University of Toronto, 1981-85
Associate Professor, Paediatrics and Biochemistry, University of Toronto, 1986-91
Professor, Paediatrics, Biochemistry, Physiology, University of Toronto, 1992-present
Associate Chief of Research, Hospital for Sick Children, 1991-2008
Director, Research Training Centre, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, 1996-present
Editor-in-Chief, American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2007-present

Selected Distinctions:
Young Scientist Award, Canadian Diabetes Association (1990), Distinguished Scientist, Medical Research Council of Canada (1999-04), Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2000-present), Canada Research Chair in the Cell Biology of Insulin Action (2004-11), Advisory Panel to PEW Foundation (2005-10), Berson Award, American Physiological Society (2005)

Research Interests:
Regulation of glucose transport, insulin action and resistance, exercise, inflammation

Funding:
Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian Diabetes Association, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Banting and Best Diabetes Centre

Mentoring:
Directed 16 MSc students, 15 PhD students, 32 postdoctoral fellows

Publications:
196 original, peer-reviewed articles, 74 invited chapters and reviews

As a graduate student Dr. Kolonin has designed protein interactions assays and developed a highly cited approach to express peptide aptamers programmed to disrupt specific protein complexes in living animals. As a post-doctoral fellow and later as an instructor at Anderson Cancer Centre, Dr. Kolonin has advanced the technology of profiling vascular molecular diversity by screening combinatorial peptide libraries in live animals for systematic identification of tissue-specific clinically important surface markers by integrating molecular biology with bioinformatics. He has co-directed the seminal project aimed at molecular mapping of the vasculature in end-of-life cancer patients and successfully followed up this effort with a series of collaborative initiatives that have led to outlining the map of human cancer cell surface ligand-receptor pairs. Dr. Kolonin has pioneered an experimental obesity treatment through targeted ablation of adipose vasculature, which led to his current interest in the biology of adipose progenitor cells. The current focus of the Kolonin Laboratory is to characterize the role of adipose cells in cancer progression.

Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Endocrinology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Dr Carel le Roux graduated from the University of Pretoria. He obtained the Membership of the Royal College of Physicians and the Membership of the Royal College of Pathologists in the UK. Following his Wellcome Clinical Research Fellowship his PhD on appetite control resulted in him being awarded a Clinician Scientist Award by the Department of Health to further his research career as a Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. His continued research focuses on appetite control by using human and animal models of weight loss such as bariatric surgery. His work explores mechanisms involved in the gut brain axis.

MD, PhD, Professor of Cancer Biology, Professor of Medical Oncology, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Leader, Programme in Molecular Biology and Genetics of Cancer, Kimmel Cancer Centre, Thomas Jefferson University, USA

AB degree Summa Cum Laude and with Highest Honours in Chemistry and Mathematics, Kenyon College (1962)

PhD degree in Genetics, Rockefeller University (1966)

Following two years of postdoctoral research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, he joined the faculty of the MIT Department of Biology.

Promoted to Professor (1976)

Was appointed Founding Member of the new Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (1983)

Became Professor of Bioengineering in the new MIT Department of Bioengineering (1999)

Initially, his work focused on translational control of protein synthesis and on development of the cellular slime mould Dictyostelium discoideum. His research group was the first to clone and sequence mRNAs encoding a mammalian glucose transport protein, GLUT1, and then GLUT2 and the insulin- responsive GLUT4, an anion exchange protein, a transporter for free fatty acids, the hepatic asialoglycoprotein receptors, intestinal sucrose-isomaltase, the erythropoietin receptor, two subunits of the TGFß receptor, and several adipocyte- specific proteins including adiponectin (formerly Acrp30).

* Member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (1995-1999), the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science (1991-1999), the Board of Trustees of Kenyon College (1989-2007), the Board of Trustees of Children's Hospital, Boston
* Associate (Foreign) Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation
* Served as Chair of the National Academy Section on Cellular and Developmental Biology
* Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology
* Editor of Molecular and Cellular Biology (1981-1987)
* Emeritus Trustee of Kenyon College (currently)
* Chair of the Research Committee of the Board of Trustees of Children's Hospital, Boston
* Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Centre
* He endowed the Harvey F. Lodish Career Development Chair in the Sciences, which provides support over a three- year period for the research and teaching program of an outstanding junior faculty member.

PhD, Senior Researcher of Ramón y Cajal Programme, Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

PhD, Robert H. Wagner Distinguished Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Medicine, USA

Dr. Juris Meier is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at St. Josef-Hospital of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), Germany. He received his medical degree with honours from the Medical School at the RUB and has performed research fellowships at the Panum-Institute at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and UCLA School of Medicine, California, USA. Prof. Meier is a member of the German Diabetes Association, the European Association for the Study of Diabetes and the American Diabetes Association. He has received numerous national and international scientific awards, including a "Rising star lecture" from the European Diabetes Association (EASD).

Prof. Meier has authored and co-authored over 90 publications in peer-reviewed journals, as well as several book chapters. He currently serves as the Associate Editor of Regulatory Peptides and is a member of the Editorial board of Diabetes, in addition to his role as a reviewer for journals including Diabetologia, and the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Prof. Meier's research interests include the regulation of insulin secretion in vivo, the physiological actions and therapeutic applications of incretin hormones and the mechanisms of beta-cell death in patients with diabetes.

He is Assistant Professor of Nephrology at the University of La Laguna, Teaching and Research Coordinator of the Spanish Society of Nephrology, and Nephrology Staff member and Coordinator of the Nephrobiology and Cardiovascular Risk Section of the Research Unit at the University Hospital Nuestra Señora de Candelaria (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain). He is one of the national coordinators of the GEENDIAB (Spanish Study Group for Diabetic Nephropathy). Dr. Navarro is an International Fellow of the American Society of Nephrology since 2005. He has received research support from private and public entities, including Canary Foundation for Research and Health, Carlos III Health Institute and the Spanish Ministry of Health. He has over 60 peer-reviewed publications in high impact journals, including Nephrology Dialysis & Transplantation, American Journal of Kidney Diseases, Kidney International and the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, and has authored several book chapters. He serves on the editorial board and as a reviewer for several national and international nephrology and medical journals, as well as for the Spanish Ministry of Health.

PhD, Associate Professor, Friedman School of Nutrition, Obesity and Metabolism Laboratory, JMUSDA-HNRCA, Tufts University, USA

Dr. Michael J. Quon completed his undergraduate education in Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University in 1982. Subsequently, he obtained both a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (1987) as well as an MD (1988) from Northwestern University. After a residency in Internal Medicine at the University of Chicago (1988-90), Dr. Quon completed subspecialty training in Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (1990-93) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). During this time, Dr. Quon also received post-doctoral training in molecular biology in the laboratory of Dr. Simeon Taylor (1991-1995). From 1995-2001, Dr. Quon was an Investigator in the Hypertension-Endocrine Branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH where he established a productive independent laboratory that studied molecular mechanism of insulin action and insulin resistance as they relate to diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Quon also performed patient-oriented clinical studies to understand the physiology of glucose metabolism and the hemodynamic actions of insulin in humans. In addition, he used mathematical modelling at both the molecular and whole body level to gain additional insights into insulin action. In 2002, Dr. Quon was appointed as Chief of the Diabetes Unit in the National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine at NIH where he is continuing his laboratory and clinical studies on insulin action and insulin resistance. In particular, Dr. Quon is elucidating mechanisms for nutritional supplements and functional foods to either improve or impair metabolic and vascular actions of insulin using molecular, cellular, physiological, mathematical and clinical research approaches. Dr. Quon currently serves as Associate Editor for the American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is also a member of the Editorial Board for the Journal of Biological Chemistry, and is Co-editor-in-Chief of Current Drug Targets - Immune, Endocrine, and Metabolic Disorders. Dr. Quon received the NIH Director's Award for Mentoring in 2004 and he is the recipient of numerous Mentor and Research Awards from the American Diabetes Association. He is an elected Fellow of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research and the American Heart Association as well as a member of the American Diabetes Association Research Grant Review Panel. Dr. Quon has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers in leading medical and scientific journals.

Eric Ravussin, PhD is a Douglas L. Gordon Chair in Diabetes and Metabolism at Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. There, he is also the Director of the NIH-funded Clinical Nutrition Research Unit and Professor in Human Physiology. He received his PhD at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland in 1980. He then trained at University of Vermont before spending almost 14 years at the NIDDK intramural centre in Phoenix, Arizona. He then became Director of Endocrine Research at Eli Lilly in Indianapolis from 1998-2000. He joined the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre in 2000.

Dr. Ravussin is an active member of The Obesity Society, serving on the Council, programme committee and as a former President of the Society from 2006-2008.

Dr. Ravussin is an internationally recognised translational investigator in obesity and diabetes research. He has presented at many obesity or diabetes conferences around the world. Over the past 8 years, Dr Ravussin has also been awarded many grants from the National Institute on Aging. He is now presenting novel data on the impact of caloric restriction on human biomarkers of aging and longevity at meetings such as a 2008 Keystone Symposium on "Metabolic Pathways of Longevity" and the 2009 Biology of Aging Gordon Research Conference on the "Mechanisms of Aging: Key Effectors and Rationale Targets".

Dr. Gerald M. Reaven graduated from the University Of Chicago School Of Medicine in 1953. Following postgraduate clinical and research training, he joined the faculty of Stanford University School of Medicine in1961, where he remains as Professor of Medicine (Active Emeritus). Administrative roles at Stanford have included being Head of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolic Diseases and the Division of Gerontology. Prior to retirement, he was also Director of the General Clinical Research Centre (Stanford Medical Centre) and the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Centre (Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System). Dr. Reaven has published extensively in wide variety of different scientific areas and his contributions have received the highest awards for research from the Department of Veteran Affairs (William S. Middleton Award for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Research, 1987), the American Diabetes Association (Banting Award for Distinguished Scientific Achievement, 1988), the British Diabetes Association (Banting Memorial Lecture, 1990), the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (Claude Bernard Lecture, 1994) and the Endocrine Society (Fred Conrad Koch Award, 2006).

MD, PhD, Head, Obesity Research Unit, Helsinki University Central Hospital, Finland

Professor of Medicine and Cellular & Molecular Physiology, Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale School of Medicine, USA

David A. Sinclair is Director of the Paul F. Glenn Laboratories for the Biological Mechanisms of Aging at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Pathology, and a Senior Scholar of the Ellison Medical Foundation. He has a Bachelors of Science and a PhD in Molecular Genetics from the University of New South Wales, Sydney. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at MIT with Lenny Guarente where he discovered a cause of aging for yeast and genes that control the aging process. He was recruited to Harvard Medical School in 1999 and was promoted to Professor in 2008. In 2004 he co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to treat age-associated diseases such as diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, and cancer. In 2006, he co-founded Genocea Biosciences, a vaccine discovery and development company to prevent and treat infectious diseases in developed and developing countries. Dr. Sinclair has received awards including The Australian Commonwealth Prize, a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Award, a Leukemia Society Fellowship, a Ludwig Scholarship, a Harvard-Armenise Fellowship, an American Association for Aging Research Fellowship, and a Fellowship and Senior Scholarship from the Ellison Medical Foundation. He won the Genzyme Outstanding Achievement in Biomedical Science Award (2005) and a "Bio-Innovator award" (2006). Dr. Sinclair lives with his wife and three children in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.

Genome Research Institute, University of Cincinnati, USA

Eve Van Cauter, PhD is Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Research Laboratory on Sleep, Chronobiology and Neuroendocrinology. A native of Belgium, she obtained her MS in Physics (1970), MS in Actuarial Sciences (1972) and PhD in Biophysics (1977) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. Her initial research focus was the analysis and modelling of biological rhythms, including development of computer algorithms quantifying circadian and pulsatile variations of hormones and their relationship to sleep stages and other physiological variables. Interactions with endocrinologists at the University of Brussels led her to study the role of sleep for hormonal release, particularly hormones of the hypothalamo-pituitary axis and to conduct basic studies on the control of human rhythmicity in health and disease including mechanisms of adaptation to abrupt time shifts (jet lag) and conditions of abnormal circadian timing associated with mental illness. In 1982, Eve Van Cauter joined the Section of Endocrinology in the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago.

Current research in her laboratory includes the impact of decreases in sleep duration and quality on markers of health and the interaction of sleep loss with the aging process. Her recent work has identified sleep loss and poor sleep quality as novel risk factors for obesity and diabetes. It is widely considered that this work has opened up a new field of enquiry of high relevance to the current epidemic of obesity and diabetes and the increased prevalence of age-related chronic diseases. As of October 2008, her ground breaking article on the “Impact of a sleep debt on metabolic and endocrine function” (The Lancet, 354: 1435-1439, 1999) has been cited 478 times.

Eve Van Cauter has been the recipient of multiple NIH and other federal research grants. Since 1994, she has been leading a large multidisciplinary program project funded by the National Institute on Aging. This translational project has produced seminal findings ranging from epidemiology to clinical research in patient populations and genetic models with an outstanding team of investigators including, among others, Drs. J. Bass, D.S. Lauderdale, J.S. Takahashi, E. Tasali, F.W. Turek and P.C. Zee.

Eve Van Cauter has received the Robert Walleghem Prize for medical research (1985), the Hoechst Belgium Prize for research in biological psychiatry (1986), the Soroptimist Prize on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Belgian Soroptimist Association (1989), the Pharmacia & Upjohn International Award for Excellence in Published Clinical Research in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (1999), the Pfizer Lectureship in Sleep (2005), the 2007 Gerald D. Aurbach Award of the Endocrine Society and the 2007 Outstanding Research Award of the Sleep Research Society. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, and an Associate Editor of the journal Sleep. She is the author of over 200 publications.

Luc Van Gaal studied medicine at the University of Antwerp, where he graduated in 1978. He obtained a specialist degree in internal medicine and afterwards in endocrinology and metabolism in 1983. Since then, he has become responsible for the Metabolic Unit at the Antwerp University Hospital. In 1992 he became Professor of Medicine at Antwerp University and is currently head of the department of Endocrinology, Diabetology and Metabolism of the University Hospital.

Professor Van Gaal's main clinical and research interests are related to obesity, type 2 diabetes and lipid metabolism. He is a member of many scientific, national and international societies and a member of the Editorial Board of a series of scientific journals. He is board member of the Belgian Association for the Study of Obesity (BASO) and Past-President of the Belgian Diabetic Society. He is as a founding member also involved in the scientific activities of the Obesitas Forum (Belgium) and the International (IASO) SCOPE programme. He is the running secretary of the Belgian Endocrine Society. In 2000, he was the co-President of the 10th European Congress on Obesity, organised in Antwerp in May 2000.

He has published more than 220 papers in international medical journals, mainly in the areas of general endocrinology, obesity, diabetes and lipids and has contributed to a number of textbooks about obesity.

MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Physiology, University of California, USA

PhD, Lecturer, Department of Aging and Geriatric Research, Biology of Aging, College of Medicine, University of Florida, USA

Bruce Wolffenbuttel is since August 2002 Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism and Head of the Department of Endocrinology at the University Medical Centre Groningen in The Netherlands. He is also the Scientific Director of the LifeLines Cohort Study, a large population-based study examining gene-gene and gene-environment interactions in the development of chronic multifactorial diseases including diabetes, cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases.

Professor Wolffenbuttel earned his medical degree from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and subsequently worked 2 years as a research fellow at the Cardiovascular Research Department of the Thoraxcentre in the same institution. After his training in internal medicine in Rotterdam, he served as Associate Professor of Medicine and Endocrinology at the University Hospital, Maastricht University, The Netherlands, from 1988 to 2002.

His current research interests concern the genetic and biochemical factors and gene-environment interactions responsible for the development of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and the pathophysiology of long-term structural and functional micro- and macrovascular complications in both human and experimental diabetes. Main topics are the genomics and proteomics of diabetic complications with special attention towards biochemistry of advanced glycation end-product formation and lipoprotein modification, and dietary and pharmacological treatments to prevent the development, or delay the progression, of diabetes-related complications. Other interests include the pathology, imaging and treatment of especially adrenal, thyroid and pituitary tumours, and their effects on quality of life of patients. He also has a large outpatient clinic for rare (congenital) metabolic diseases.