Our Speakers
Bruce Spiegelman, Ph.D.
Harvard University
Stanley J. Korsmeyer Professor
Dr. Bruce Spiegelman, Ph.D. received a B.S. from the College of William and Mary and his doctorate from Princeton University. His postdoctoral training was at MIT, and he was hired to join the faculty at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in 1982. Dr. Spiegelman was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and the National Academy of Medicine, and is a Foreign Associate of EMBO. The Spiegelman laboratory is centered on the molecular basis of energy homeostasis and tissue development, using adipogenesis and muscle as the primary model systems. This includes the biochemical mechanisms of metabolic diseases, especially obesity, insulin-resistant diabetes (type 2) and muscle diseases.
Mitchell A. Lazar, M.D., Ph.D.
University of Pennsylvania
Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor
Dr. Mitchell Lazar is the Willard and Rhoda Ware Professor of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases and Director of the Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism at the University of Pennsylvania. He received an SB degree in Chemistry from MIT and his Ph.D. from Stanford University. After training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and in Endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Drazan joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. He served for 24 years as Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, and is the Founding Director of Penn's Institute for Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism. Dr. Lazar’s groundbreaking research has focused on circadian rhythms and metabolism, and he has made fundamental contributions to the fields of endocrinology, diabetes, and chronobiology.
André C. Carpentier, M.D., FRCPC
Université de Sherbrooke
Professor
Dr. André Carpentier is the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Imaging of Diabetes and Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the Université de Sherbrooke. Additionally, he is the Scientific Director of the Sherbrooke University Hospital Research Center. His research areas include the investigation of metabolic dysfunctions of adipose tissues and postprandial fatty acid dysmetabolism in diabetes.
André Marette, Ph.D.
Laval University
Professor
Dr. André Marette is a Professor of Medicine and researcher at the Heart and Lung Institute Hospital Center and the Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods at Laval University. He holds a research chair on the pathogenesis of insulin resistance and cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Dr. Marette is an internationally renowned expert on the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease, and CVD. He has published over 320 papers, reviews, and book chapters. Moreover, he has received several awards including the prestigious Charles Best Award and Lectureship from the University of Toronto for his overall contribution to the advancement of scientific knowledge in the field of diabetes.
Camilla Schéele, Ph.D.
University of Copenhagen
Associate Professor
Dr. Camilla Scheele received her PhD at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. Her research concerns human brown fat, its potential to counteract obesity and type 2 diabetes, and its role in metabolism. Her research team characterized human supraclavicular brown fat and demonstrated, that progenitors can be isolated from adult humans and differentiated in vitro while maintaining features of brown fat. Moreover, using single-cell technology, they described a new cell type - SWAT cells, arising from the same progenitor cell as adipogenic cells, but with multipotent and secretory properties. Another topic she is researching is the identification of adipokines specifically secreted from brown fat, with the hypothesis that there are yet unknown brown adipokines with an important role in regulating human metabolism and brown fat development.
Carolyn Cummins , Ph.D.
University of Toronto
Associate Professor
Dr. Carolyn Cummins is currently an Associate Professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. She completed her undergraduate degree in chemistry at McGill University, Ph.D. in pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF, and postdoctoral training with David Mangelsdorf at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Her lab focuses on the study of nuclear hormone receptors in metabolic disease with a special focus on glucocorticoid-induced diabetes and obesity.
David Guertin, Ph.D.
Professor
University of Massachusetts
Dr. David Guertin was born to French-Canadian descendants. He completed his graduate studies at UMass Medical School and his post-doctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute. In 2009, he joined the Program in Molecular Medicine at UMass Medical School. This is where he became interested in nutrient sensing, metabolic signaling, and their interplay in health and disease. Moreover, he is fascinated by thermogenic adipocytes.
Evan Rosen, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Harvard University
Dr. Rosen did his undergraduate work at Cornell University and received an MD and a Ph.D in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Michigan. He completed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and his fellowship in Endocrinology and Metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital. After his post-doctoral fellowship at the Bruce Spiegelman lab, he started his research group at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is now the Chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Rosen’s lab works on molecular mechanisms related to obesity, adipocyte development, and the molecular basis of insulin sensitivity.
Gareth Lim, Ph.D
Associate Professor
Université de Montréal Hospital
Dr. Gareth Lim started his independent research group at the Université de Montréal Hospital Research Centre (CRCHUM) in 2016, and his research group is focused on understanding the metabolic contributions of scaffold proteins belonging to the 14-3-3 protein family. He is particularly interested in investigating how 14-3-3z regulates adipocyte development and function, in addition to deciphering its roles in pancreatic b-cell function and survival.
Jae Bum Kim, Ph.D.
Seoul National University
Professor
Dr. Jae Bum Kim is a Professor of Biological Sciences at Seoul National University and Director of the Center for Adipocyte Structure and Function. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he made significant contributions to the cloning ofADD1/SREBP1c, a key factor in lipid metabolism. After a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, he joined Seoul National University in 2000, where his research focuses on gene expression regulation, adipose tissue heterogeneity, immune responses, and insulin resistance, aiming to advance the understanding ofobesity and metabolic disorders
Jae Myoung Suh, Ph.D.
Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology
Associate Professor
Dr. Jae Myoung Suh is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, KAIST. He earned his Ph.D. in Genetics and Development from UT Southwestern and pursued postdoctoral research at UT Southwestern and the Salk Institute. His research focuses on adipose tissue biology, inter-organ communication, and mitochondrial function, with implications for metabolic diseases and aging
Joseph T. Bass, M.D., Ph.D.
Northwestern University
Professor
Dr.Joe Bass made the original discovery that disruption of the molecular clock causes obesity, metabolic syndrome, and hypoinsulinemic diabetes, providing the first genetic evidence that clock genes are essential for health. Most recently, his group has shown that the time when an animal eats regulates body weight and metabolic health independently of total calories consumed through the circadian control of adipose tissue thermogenesis. In addition to research, he is a clinician and chief of the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Molecular Medicine at Northwestern University.
Kristy Townsend, Ph.D
Ohio State University
Associate Professor
Kristy Townsend, PhD is an Associate Professor in The Ohio State University's Department of Neurological Surgery, where she leads the Neurobiology & Energy Balance Lab.The lab's research focus is nervous system control of metabolic health and disease, as it relates to obesity, diabetes, aging, and women's health. There is a specific emphasis in the lab on brain-adipose neural communication, the innervation of adipose tissues, including 'adipose neuropathy' which the lab first discovered, and potential diagnostic and treatment approaches for peripheral neuropathies
Li Ye, Ph.D
Scripps Research Institute
Professor
Dr. Li Ye is a Professor, Abide-Vividion Chair, and an HHMI Investigator in the Department of Neuroscience at the Scripps Research Institute. Dr. Ye received his B.S. from Tsinghua University and his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School, followed by a postdoc at Stanford University. The Ye lab combines neuroscience, molecular metabolism, and chemical biology to understand the nervous systems and somatic tissues as an integrated network while focusing on the energetics as a fundamental mechanism underlying their relationship and interactions, in normal physiology and diseaseconditions
Lori M. Zeltser, Ph.D
Columbia University
Professor
Dr. Lori Zeltseris a Professor of Medical Science and Pathology & Cell Biology at the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She is also the Co-Director of the Nutritional and Metabolic Biology PhD program at Columbia University. The Zeltser laboratory studies central and peripheral neural circuits regulating energy intake and expenditure. They developed new tools to investigate how the sympathetic nervous system regulates nutrient uptake in brown adipose tissue, and how this affects metabolism at both the local tissue and systemic levels
Mikael Rydén, M.D., Ph.D.
Karolinska Institute
Professor
Mikael Rydén is a professor in clinical and experimental adipose tissue research and heads the Center for Clinical Metabolic Research in Diabetes and the Endocrinology Unit at the Karolinska Institute. He is also a senior consultant in Endocrinology/Diabetology at the Karolinska University Hospital, in Stockholm, Sweden. His research focuses on the role of human adipose tissue in several different conditions and spans from advanced cell-and-molecular biology techniques in different cell culture models to clinical studies in man. He served as the Honorary Secretary of the EASD 2018-2022 and is also a member of the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute.
Paul Cohen,M.D., Ph.D.
Rockefeller University
Associate Professor
Dr. Paul Cohen is the Albert Resnick, MD Associate Professor, Head of theWeslie R.and William H. JanewayLaboratory of Molecular Metabolism, and Senior AttendingPhysician at the Rockefeller University. He is also a cardiologist at Memorial SloanKettering Cancer Center. His lab focuses on understanding the molecular links betweenobesity and associated diseases with a focus onthe biology of white and brown adiposetissues intype 2diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.
Rana K Gupta, Ph.D.
Duke University
Professor
Dr.RanaGupta is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at Duke University and section Chair of the Basic Sciences subgroup of the Duke Molecular Physiology Institute. His lab is focused on the developmental biology of adipose tissue, with the aim of understanding the mechanisms governing the establishment and maintenance of the adipocyte lineage and the identity and importance of distinct stromal cell populations contributing to adaptive and maladaptive adipose tissue remodeling in adulthood
Dr. Yu-Hua Tseng is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Investigator at the Joslin Diabetes Center. The Tseng lab investigates metabolic communications centered on adipose tissue, including inter-organ crosstalk via bioactive lipids, cell-cell communication within the thermogenic adipose niche, and intracellular signaling and gene regulation, aiming to develop innovative treatments for metabolic disorders
Zach Gerhart-Hines, Ph.D.
University of Copenhagen
Professor
Our research team is located at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research at the University of Copenhagen. Our focus is on interrogating peripheral and central mechanisms of homeostatic control. Ultimately, we strive to leverage these discoveries into the development of novel pharmacotherapies for treating obesity and type 2 diabetes. This approach has led to the establishment of three companies, EmbarkBiotech, Embark Laboratories, and Incipiam Pharma.
