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.

Dr. Nan Hee Kim is a Professor of Endocrinology at Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. Her research focuses on diabetes and its complications, particularly diabetic kidney disease, with a strong interest in multi-omics approaches and precision medicine. She serves as a principal investigator of the Korean Genome and Epidemiology Study (KoGES), a large population-based cohort that has been followed for over 25 years. Her work integrates epidemiology and multimodal deep phenotyping to elucidate the mechanisms underlying diabetes and aging.

Dr. Jha, Senior Research Fellow at Monash’s School of Translational Medicine, leads research on therapeutic targets and biomarkers for diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiorenal-syndrome. A Monash PhD graduate, he has held prestigious fellowships (JDRF, NHMRC) and continues to drive translational advances to improve health outcomes in diabetes and renal disease.

Dr. Francis is a molecular biologist and clinical researcher at the NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre at the University of Sydney. His work integrates proteomic, transcriptomic, and genetic analyses to identify molecular biomarkers associated with vascular complications in Type 2 diabetes and uncover mechanistic links between metabolic dysfunction and vascular injury.

Ziqi V. Wang is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney in molecular biology. Their research focuses on hepatic fibrosis, investigating an enzyme as a potential biomarker and developing a diagnostic model. They are interested in translating molecular insights into practical tools for earlier and more accurate disease detection.

Dr. Yating Huang is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Endocrinology, Beijing Hospital, Peking University. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of diabetic wound healing. With multiple first-author publications in Q1 journals and a cumulative impact factor exceeding 36, her research focuses on molecular mechanisms underlying metabolic complications.

Minling Huang is a PhD candidate in Translation Medicine at Monash University, Australia. Her research focuses on identifying therapeutic targets for diabetic kidney disease, with particular emphasis on the role of cell division autoantigen 1 (CDA1) in disease progression using mouse models and transcriptomic approaches.

Dr Fotheringham is a passionate Early Career Researcher dedicated to furthering understanding of diabetes and its chronic complications and developing meaningful therapeutic targets. She is particularly interested in the understanding the interactions between metabolism, the kidney and the immune system that occur with diabetes and diabetic kidney disease.