Dr. Juan Pablo Frías is Medical Director and Principal Investigator of Velocity Clinical Research (formerly National Research Institute) in Los Angeles, CA. He received his medical degree from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and completed his Fellowship in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Frías has held academic positions at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes) and the University of California San Diego School of Medicine, where he is currently on the clinical faculty. He has been involved in diabetes and metabolism-related research for over 25 years and has authored numerous publications in this field, including first author publications in New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, Diabetes, Diabetes Care, and Cell Metabolism.

Kristina Schoonjans, Laboratory of Metabolic Signaling, Institute of Bioengineering, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland Kristina Schoonjans is a Professor at the Institute of Bioengineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. She completed her doctoral and post-doctoral training in France at the Institut Pasteur in Lille and joined the Institute of Genetics and Molecular and Cellular Biology in Strasbourg as an INSERM Researcher with a focus on metabolism. She contributed in a significant fashion to identifying the molecular pathways by which enterohepatic nuclear receptors and membrane receptors control metabolic homeostasis. Most importantly she identified the bile acid-responsive membrane receptor TGR5 as a non-genomic pathway by which bile acids act as endocrine regulators of energy expenditure, glucose metabolism, and inflammation, for which she was awarded the Adolf Windaus prize.