Tadej Battelino completed his medical degree at the University of Ljubljana in 1990. He completed a Masters degree, and later a PhD focusing on glucose metabolism in neonatal endotoxic shock in 1996. He completed his clinical fellowship at Loyola University of Chicago, and his postdoctoral fellowship at INSERM, Paris. Tadej Battelino is currently Consultant and Head of Department of Pediatric and Adolescent Endocrinology, UMC Ljubljana, Head, Chair of Paediatrics, and Professor of Paediatrics at Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana. He is PI on several research projects in the field of paediatric endocrinology and metabolism and was awarded the Slovene national award for research in 2014, and Gold medal for research at the University of Ljubljana in 2017. Professor Battelino is on the editorial boards for the journals Paediatric Diabetes,Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolismand was Editor for the European Journal of Endocrinologyfrom 2009 to 2015. He has authored or co-authored over 200 manuscripts in international peer-reviewed journals and participated chapters to several books. Tadej Battelino is a member of numerous professional associations including the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology and the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes, for which he served as President for the 35thAnnual Congress. He served on the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) council and is co-organizer of eleven annual meetings of the ATTD (Advanced Technologies and Treatment of Diabetes). Professor Battelino is a regular member of the Slovene Medical Academy and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Jenny Couper is a paediatric endocrinologist and head of paediatrics, University of Adelaide. She has lead the Environmental Determinants of Islet Autoimmunity (ENDIA) nation-wide consortium since 2012. Over 10 years this consortium has reached full recruitment of 1500 babies. She is a steering member of two related initiatives in the prevention of type 1 diabetes space: the JDRFA Australian Population Screening program pilot for type 1 diabetes and the JDRFA Australasian Immune trials Collaborative. She was elected a member of the International Society of Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes (ISPAD) Advisory Council in 2020.

Professor Len Harrison is a NHMRC Leadership Investigator, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne. At Royal Melbourne Hospital, he was endocrinologist and Director, Endocrine Laboratory, 1981-87, and Director of Immunology, 1987-2012. His research career, with 600 publications, has centered on immune regulation, applied to type 1 diabetes (T1D) pathogenesis and prevention. He pioneered studies of pre-clinical T1D in Australia, identified (pro)insulin as a driver of autoimmune beta cell destruction and led trials of a nasal insulin vaccine for T1D prevention. Len was Secretary and President, Australian Diabetes Society, and President of the Immunology of Diabetes Society.

Helen Thomas is head of the Immunology and Diabetes Unit at St Vincent’s Institute in Melbourne. Her research is focused on prevention of type 1 diabetes. She aims to protect pancreatic beta cells from being destroyed by the immune system. Her work is being applied to humans through the transplantation of human islets from organ donors to reverse diabetes and in testing JAK inhibitors to inhibit autoimmunity in type 1 diabetes. She is Scientific Director of Effica Biolabs, a contract research organisation that collaborates with industry to test immune modulatory drugs in pre-clinical models of type 1 diabetes.