Professor Mark Febbraio is a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia Investigator and the Head of the Cellular and Molecular Metabolism Laboratory at the Baker Heart & Diabetes Institute, Melbourne Australia. He is the Founder and Chief Scientist of Celesta Therapeutics and a Founder of Calmodulus Therapeutics. His research is focussed on understanding mechanisms associated with exercise, obesity, type 2 diabetes and cancer and his aim is to develop novel drugs to treat lifestyle related diseases. He has authored over >300 peer reviewed papers in leading journals and has >60,000 career citations. Throughout his career, he has won many prestigious awards including the Australian Physiological Society (AuPS) AK McIntyre Prize (1999), the Kellion Award for the Australian Diabetes Society (2017), The Eureka Scientific Prize (2020), The GSK Award for Research Excellence (2020), The Endocrinology Society UK International Medal (2021) the Kirsten and Freddy Johansen Rigshospitalet International Award, Denmark (2022), The AuPS Invited Lecture and Medal (2024) and the International Biochemistry of Exercise Honour Award (2026).

Professor Andrews received his PhD in New Zealand at the University of Otago in 2003 and undertook postdoctoral training at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA (2004-2008). He moved Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in 2009 and established his own laboratory. Professor Andrews is internationally recognised for his work on the neuroendocrine control of energy homeostasis and feeding behaviour. He is the currently Deputy Head of the Metabolism, Diabetes and Obesity Program within the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, the former Editor-in-Chief for Endocrinology (2024-2025), the president of Hypothalamic Neuroscience and Neuroendocrinology Australasia (HNNA), and a council member on the International Neuroendocrine Federation. Professor Andrews uses preclinical animal models to study how the brain controls food intake and associated behaviours. This includes the role of homeostatic and hedonic systems, and how they interact to influence both the need and the desire to eat. His lab is particularly interested in why and how the brain promotes the overconsumption of highly palatable energy dense foods and how this contributes to obesity. His group uses modern neuroscience techniques such as in vivo calcium imaging, optogenetics and chemogenetics to probe the physiological and behavioural function of neural circuits responding to hunger and regulating appetite. He has primarily focused on the hormone ghrelin, as a key hormonal signal of hunger, and AgRP neurons, as key hunger-sensing, neurons. His current work focuses on how these hunger-sensing systems control food intake and related behaviours such as reward, motivation, mood, memory and cognition.

A/Prof Rose is Head of the Nutrient Metabolism and Signalling Laboratory within the Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology as part of the Biomedicine Discovery Institute Metabolism, Diabetes and Obesity Program. His lab adopts an integrated systems approach to further the understanding of adaptive/maladaptive metabolism and the molecular mechanisms involved therein, with the eventual aim to discover new therapies for diseases with a metabolic basis such as obesity, diabetes, and perhaps cancer. Their particular interest lies in the complex interaction between nutrients, hormones, and signalling pathways which connect these to ultimately coordinate systemic metabolic control.

Dr Magda Montgomery is the Head of the ‘Metabolic Tissue Crosstalk Laboratory’ in the Department of Anatomy and Physiology (University of Melbourne), previous fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC, 2014-2022), and leads one of four major programs in the School of Biomedical Sciences, the Metabolism Program. Dr Montgomery leads an innovative research program aimed at understanding how defects in lipid metabolism and the endocrine function of metabolic tissues drive progression of metabolic liver disease and type 2 diabetes. Dr Montgomery received her PhD at the University of Wollongong in 2011, and her postdoctoral training at the Garvan Institute in Sydney, at the University of New South Wales (Sydney), and at Monash University (Melbourne). Dr Montgomery published 60+ papers in high-impact peer-reviewed journals (Nature, Nature Communications, Science Translational Medicine) and is the Editor-in-Chief for a new metabolism journal with the Nature Portfolio (npj Metabolic Health and Disease).

Professor David Komander FAA FRS is an NHMRC Investigator and leads the Ubiquitin Signalling Division at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on how ubiquitin signalling regulates cellular processes and human disease and has been instrumental in shaping current understanding of the ‘ubiquitin code’, particularly in inflammation and mitochondrial quality control. The lab’s most recent technological advance led to the discovery of glycogen ubiquitination, which is dynamically regulated in liver during fasting, suggesting unappreciated control of metabolism through the ubiquitin system (Nature 2026).

Stewart is a research fellow at the University of Sydney and works with Professor David James in the Charles Perkins Centre's Metabolic Cybernetics Laboratory. His research seeks to understand the mechanisms metabolic disease by leveraging natural genetic variation, 'omics, and systems biology approaches.