Professor Josephine Forbes from Mater Research-UQ in Queensland, is the current President of the Australian Diabetes Society advocating and supporting better and more equitable health care and research funding for people with diabetes. Her translational research extends from bench to bedside for novel therapies to prevent type 1 diabetes and kidney disease in vulnerable groups including youth and those who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. These studies are in partnership with Health care entities such as Mater Health and Qld Children’s Hospital, Diabetes Across the Lifecourse Partnership and global industry/biotechnology companies. Josephine is part of the leadership group of the Australian Centre for Accelerating Diabetes Innovation (ACADI) and co-lead of their kidney disease program. She an editor board member for Kidney International and Diabetologia. She is also continually in the top 2% of scientists globally as published annually by Stanford University, has an H index of 67. She has received numerous prizes for her research including the Commonwealth Health Minister’s Award for Excellence in Health and Medical Research in Australia.

Ronald Ma is a clinician-scientist and a specialist in Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes. He completed his medical training at the University of Cambridge, UK and trained in Internal Medicine in London, followed by endocrinology fellowship training in Hong Kong. He then pursued a research fellowship in diabetic complications at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA. Dr Ma’s research focuses on the epidemiology and genetics of diabetes and its complications, gestational diabetes, polycystic ovary syndrome, and the developmental origins of diabetes. He is currently leading a multi-disciplinary project team to leverage on the Hong Kong Diabetes Register and accompanying biobank to identify novel molecular markers for diabetic complications, and is the principal investigator of the Hong Kong Diabetes Biobank. He has also initiated several mother-offspring cohorts to examine the long-term effects of gestational diabetes and PCOS, and multi-omic studies to identify novel biomarkers. He is also leading local initiatives to enhance local biobanking capacity in Hong Kong and related research. He has published over 450 research articles in international peer-reviewed journals (>35,000 citations, H-index 79). He received the Croucher Senior Medical Research Fellowship (2020) to further his research on Precision Medicine in Diabetes, and the Xiaoren Pan Distinguished Research Award for Epidemiology of Diabetes in Asia from the Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD). Dr Ma plays an active role in diabetes advocacy. He is a Past President of the International Diabetes Epidemiology Group, a Past President of Diabetes Hongkong, and member of the Executive Board, the Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD). He has served as a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Diabetes, the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) Pregnancy and NCD Committee, as well as council member of IADPSG. He has served as consultant for the WHO on childhood obesity, the International Diabetes Federation, as well as FIGO on NCD prevention. He serves on the Steering Committee for Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases for the Hong Kong Health Bureau. He led the workgroup on Type 1 Diabetes in Adults for the IDF Diabetes Atlas, and for biomarkers for diabetes complications in an international initiative on Precision Medicine in Diabetes. He currently serves as editorial board member of PLoS Medicine, Diabetologia, Diabetes, Obesity Reviews, Journal of Diabetes Investigation and Maternal-Fetal Medicine.