Dr Vincent Poitout received his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from the École Nationale Vétérinaire d’Alfort and his PhD degree from the Université Paris 6. He completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota. He was an INSERM scientist at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Paris, France and then Principal Scientist at the Pacific Northwest Research Institute and Affiliate Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA, before joining the University of Montreal in 2005. Dr Poitout is currently Professor of Medicine at the University of Montréal and Director of Research at the Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM). Dr Poitout is the former Chair of the National Research Council of Diabetes Canada and of the American Diabetes Association’s Grant Review Panel, and a former member of the Board of Directors of the American Diabetes Association. He has been a member of the Editorial Boards of Diabetes and The Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Associate Editor for Diabetologia. Dr Poitout’s research is funded by the US National Institutes of Health, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Diabetes Canada. Dr Poitout received several awards including the Albert Renold Fellowship from the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, the 2003 Thomas R. Lee Career Development Award from the American Diabetes Association, and the 2009 Young Scientist Award from the Canadian Diabetes Association. He held the Canada Research Chair in Diabetes and Pancreatic Beta-cell Function from 2006 to 2020. Dr Poitout is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences.

Professor Trevor Biden is an Emeritus Research Fellow the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, Australia. After an Honours degree in Biochemistry at the University of Sydney, he undertook a PhD in pancreatic beta cell biology in London. This was followed by post-doctoral studies with Professor Claes Wollheim at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He has made major contributions to fields spanning: the signalling mechanisms underpinning insulin secretion, insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes; lipid-induced dysfunction in pancreatic islets; and more recently the functional interactions between beta cells and macrophages.

Professor Jenny Gunton is the Director of the Centre for Diabetes and Obesity Research at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research (WIMR) and is Chair of Medicine at Westmead Hospital, University of Sydney. Jenny received her PhD from the University of Sydney and completed her post-doctoral fellowship in Ron Kahn’s lab at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School. Jenny’s research interests include diabetes, obesity, and vitamin D. She is particularly interested in the intersection of transcription factors and their regulation by nutrients including iron and Vitamin D.

Dr Nicholas leads the Epigenetics in Diabetes research group at the University of Adelaide. She completed post-doctoral training at Lund University Diabetes Centre where her research focused on understanding mitochondrial regulation of beta-cell function. Following this, Dr Nicholas was awarded an NHMRC C J Martin Fellowship to undertake research at the University of Cambridge where she studied the impact of maternal obesity on offspring beta-cell function. Dr Nicholas’ research group is focused on defining the epigenetic determinants of pancreatic beta-cell dysfunction in offspring exposed to maternal obesity and hyperglycaemia and how this is driving an intergenerational cycle of diabetes.