Dr Carlos Aguilar-Salinas is recognized for his contributions as a researcher, professor and Clinician in the study of dyslipidemias and type 2 diabetes in Mexico. He is the founder of the Lipid Clinic and the current coordinator of the research committee at the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Medicas y Nutricion (INCMNSZ), Mexico City. His research covers the identification of the main susceptibility genes for type 2 diabetes and dyslipidemias in Mexican mestizos and epidemiological studies that have served to describe the burden of the disease caused by these disorders. He has published 246 articles in indexed journals (Nature, JAMA, Nature genetics, JCEM, among others) and has tutored 20 PhD students. In addition, Dr Aguilar-Salinas has played a leading role in the design and implementation of interventions against chronic diseases at regional and national level. He coordinated the position paper against diabetes presented by the Mexican National Academy of Medicine. Dr Aguilar-Salinas was the President of the Mexican Society of Nutrition and Endocrinology; collaboration with the Endocrine Society was started during his term. He has served as member of several committees and task forces of international societies (including the Endocrine Society) and research consortia (e.g. Global Alliance of Chronic Diseases and EULAC Health). Currently, he is a co-editor of the “Revista de la Asociación Latinomericana de Diabetes” and a member of the editorial boards of several prestigious journals.

Dr Peter Bennett trained in medicine in England, but spent most of his career in the United States where he is currently Scientist Emeritus at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). He conducted extensive research on the epidemiology and pathogenesis of diabetes mellitus and its complications among the Pima Indian population of Arizona. These investigations led to major advances in understanding the causes, pathogenesis and prevention of type 2 diabetes and its complications. His interests extend to other populations which led to investigations of diabetes and its prevention in other countries, most recently in China and Mexico. He is a participating investigator and has been a member of data safety and monitoring committees for several major clinical trials related to diabetes and its treatment. He has been a member of numerous ADA, WHO and IDF advisory groups on the classification, diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diabetes. 

He has received numerous awards including the Lilly, Kelly West, Banting, Rifkin and Albert Renold Awards from the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the Claude Bernard Award from the EASD, and the first Harold Hamm International Prize for Biomedical Research in Diabetes.

Professor Juliana Chan is Chair Professor of Medicine and Therapeutics, Director of Hong Kong Institute of Diabetes and Obesity and Director of Clinical Research Management Office at CUHK. She graduated from the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom with accreditation in endocrinology and clinical pharmacology, and has received training in psychiatry and epidemiology with special research interests in diabetes epidemiology, genetics, clinical trials and disease management. Since 1995, she has set up multiple cohorts, databases and biobanks including the Hong Kong Diabetes Registry to define the causes and consequences of diabetes in the Chinese population. Through these inter-linked programmes, the CUHK Diabetes Research Team is a member of the Global Diabetes Consortium, funded by the United States National Institutes of Health to discover the causal genes in diabetes. In 2007, she set up the web-based Joint Asia Diabetes Evaluation (JADE) Program to enable doctors to set up their own clinic registries for quality assurance; and the Asia Diabetes Database for conduct of collaborative research in a real-world setting.

Professor Philip Clarke re-joined HERC in August 2018 after previous appointments at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne in Australia. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA).  

His research interests include developing methods to value the benefits of improving access to health care, health inequalities and the use of simulation models in health economic evaluation. Philip has been involved in the development of the UKPDS Outcomes Model, a health economic simulation model for type 2 diabetes.

Professor Melanie Davies is Honorary Consultant Diabetologist at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust and Professor of Diabetes Medicine at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom. Her research work focuses on the cause of type 2 diabetes, its screening and prevention, and self-management, structured education and lifestyle including physical activity and sedentary behaviour and new therapies, including incretin-based therapies. 

Professor Davies is one of only a handful of NIHR Senior Investigators in diabetes in the United Kingdom. She is Director of the NIHR Leicester-Loughborough Diet, Lifestyle and Physical Activity Biomedical Research Unit. She is also Director of a Clinical Trial Unit and Principal Investigator on a number of large global studies in the field of diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease, including DESMOND, 4T, AT.LANTUS and ORIGIN. Professor Davies has also been an expert for the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) on a number of their guidelines groups. 

She has published over 400 original articles, including in high-impact journals such as the Lancet, BMJ and New England Journal of Medicine, and over 400 published abstracts and 10 book chapters, including as co-editor of the diabetes section in the Oxford Textbook of Endocrinology and Diabetes (2011). 

In the last 5 years, Professor Davies has been awarded over £38,000,000 of external reviewed grant funding. 

Professor Davies is based in the Diabetes Research Centre which is affiliated with the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Leicester. She is also the Co-Director of the Leicester Diabetes Centre, which has over 140 research staff, at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust.

Professor Björn Eliasson is Senior Consultant at Sahlgrenska University Hospital and Professor in Internal Medicine at the University of Gothenburg. He is Director of the Diabetes Centre at Sahlgrenska University Hospital as well as the regional obesity centre in the region of Western Sweden. Professor Eliasson is the former President of the Swedish Society for Diabetology and has been developing the national guidelines for diabetes care as well as the Swedish National Diabetes Register for more than 15 years. Based on this Register, he is also involved in clinical research and trials, and epidemiology.

Professor Majid Ezzati is Professor of Global Environmental Health at Imperial College London, and Director of Imperial College Wellcome Trust Centre on Global Health. He was a Global Health Leadership Fellow at the World Health Organization, where he led the Comparative Risk Assessment (CRA) study, which was the first consistent global analysis of behavioural, environmental, nutritional, psychosocial, and metabolic risk factors and formed the scientific core of World Health Report 2002: Reducing Risks, Promoting Healthy Life. He currently leads the NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC; www.ncdrisc.org), a worldwide scientific collaboration to strengthen the evidence on exposure and health effects of non-communicable disease risk factors. Professor Ezzati is Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre on NCD Surveillance and Epidemiology, and a fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.

Professor Juan José Gagliardino received his Doctor of Medicine at Facultad de Ciencias Médicas (FCM) from National University of La Plata (UNLP), and later becomes the Consultant Professor of Facultad de Ciencias Médicas (FCM) at National University of La Plata (UNLP). He is Director of Postgraduate Course of Prevention and Treatment of Diabetes and 0ther Cardiovascular Risk Factors (DIFAR) at FCM UNLP (Argentina) and Indiana University (USA). He has published more than 300 papers related to basic and clinical aspects of diabetes and cardiovascular risk factors in international journals and received many scientific awards. He is also Associate Editor of Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice and a member of the IDF-BRIDGES Executive Committee.

Edward W Gregg, PhD serves as Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Imperial College London. He joined Imperial College in 2019 accompanying a Royal Society Wolfson Fellowship. Prior to coming to Imperial College, he led a multi-disciplinary public health science unit in the Division of Diabetes Translation at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where he championed the role of epidemiology for public health decision-making through diverse disciplines, including population surveillance, effectiveness trials, natural experiments, and health impact modelling. He has particular interests in the factors driving recent trends in the diabetes epidemic and the impact of lifestyle interventions and related health policies on diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and ageing-related outcomes.

Professor Rury Holman trained in medicine at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and was appointed as the first Professor of Diabetic Medicine at the University of Oxford in 1998. He is Director of the University of Oxford Diabetes Trials Unit (which he instituted in 1985), Honorary Consultant Physician to the University of Oxford NHS Hospitals Trust, and founding Academic Chairman of the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism (OCDEM). Professor Holman is also Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, NIHR Senior Investigator, and Diabetes Theme Leader for the Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. He runs an active Translational Research Group undertaking academic-led early phase trials of novel therapeutic agents, new medical devices and complex interventions. He is also Joint Chair of EXSCEL and TECOS, and Chief Investigator of ACE and UKPDS. 

Professor Holman divides his time between clinical care of patients, teaching and his many research interests. He has designed and run many multicentre studies that focus primarily on the prevention, appropriate treatment and cardiovascular risk reduction in people with type 2 diabetes or non-diabetic hyperglycaemia. He has received 14 national and international awards and published over 300 peer-reviewed papers with 13 that have been cited more than 1,000 times.

Professor Alice Kong is Professor at the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, CUHK. She graduated from the CUHK and became a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine with accreditation in Advanced Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. Her research interests include obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes with particular focus on lifestyle factors and cardiovascular risk factors clustering in adults and adolescents. In collaboration with psychiatrists, pediatricians, nutritionists, hepatologists and islets biologists, she has been studying the epidemiology and underlying pathogenetic mechanisms of circadian rhythm, fatty liver, depression and cancer in relation to diabetes in Chinese populations.

Professor Naomi (Dinky) Levitt is Professor and Head of Diabetic Medicine and Endocrinology at the University of Cape Town and Director of the Chronic Disease Initiative for Africa (CDIA), a network of multidisciplinary researchers drawn from six universities in South Africa, the South African Medical Research Council, researchers from Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Harvard University, and representatives from South African Department of Health. She has participated in numerous national, regional and international diabetes activities. She has led multiple epidemiological and health system studies, and published over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals and written 12 book chapters.

Dr Andrea Luk is Associate Professor at the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, CUHK. She graduated from the University of Auckland, New Zealand and became a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine with accreditation in Advanced Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. Her research interests include diabetic kidney disease and young-onset diabetes through analyses of large databases and trials. Currently, she is leading an early phase clinical trial to study the effects of a new compound on the prevention of diabetes in high risk subjects with pre-diabetes and metabolic syndrome. 

Professor Ronald Ma is Professor at the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics at CUHK. He graduated from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom with accreditation in endocrinology. His research interests include genetics of diabetes and its complications, gestational diabetes and fetal origin of disease. Supported by the Research Grants Council, he is currently coordinating a theme-based research scheme and setting up the Hong Kong Diabetes BioBank to use multiomic methods to unravel the genetic regulation of cardiovascular-renal complications of diabetes in Chinese populations (TRANSCEND Consortium). 

Professor Margaret McGill was appointed Australia’s first paediatric diabetes educator in 1978. She received her Master of Science in Medicine in 2001. She has been Manager of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Diabetes Centre for more than two decades and is now the Associate Director. 

Professor McGill was elected Vice President of the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) in 2003 and was Senior Vice President from 2006-2009. She was Chair of the IDF Consultative Section on Diabetes Education (DECS) for nine years. During this time she made significant contributions to improving the status of diabetes education as a profession, and has worked extensively developing initiatives to assist in building the skills of physicians and health professionals working in diabetes care globally. She has convened more than 24 workshops throughout the world for physicians and health professionals from developing countries to assist in increasing their expertise in diabetes management. During this time she also developed the global strategy for education for the IDF. She continues to sit on a number of national and international committees. 

She has been an invited speaker on more than 50 occasions to international diabetes scientific meetings. Her clinical and research interests lie in the assessment and management of diabetic complications and the development of innovative models of care that promote the interdisciplinary diabetes team as well as integrating services across the hospital and primary care. She has published consistently on these topics and has published more than 32 articles in peer-reviewed journals and authored 11 book chapters. She co-leads the Health Professional Teaching Unit responsible for developing innovative methods and programs for medical and health professional education. 

She led the successful application for the RPA Diabetes Centre to become an International Diabetes Federation Centre of Excellence in Education for health professionals. The Centre joins an elite global network of 8 centres of excellence. She also led the successful application for the RPA Diabetes Centre to receive the prestigious award of National Association of Diabetes Centre’s Centre of Excellence, one of only four in Australia. 

In 2007, Professor McGill received the International Society for Paediatric and Adolescent Diabetes highest education award for her international contribution to paediatric diabetes. She received the title of Honorary Life Member of the Australian Diabetes Society in 2013. She was named in the 2011 Australia Day Honours List with the award of Order of Australia (AM) for her contribution to diabetes nationally and overseas.

Professor Guang Ning is Academician CEA, “Changjiang” Professor, "973" Project Chief Scientist, receiver of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and National High-level Personnel of Special Support. He is currently Head of the NSFC Innovation Research Group, Director of National Clinical Research Center for Metabolic Diseases, Director of The Key Laboratory for Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases of National Health and Family Planning Commission, Vice President of Ruijin Hospital North Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine and Director of Shanghai Institute of Endocrine and Metabolic Disease. 

He is Member of the Executive Committee of International Endocrine Society, Chair of Chinese Society for Clinical Endocrinologists and former President of Chinese Society for Endocrinology. He is Chief Editor of the Journal of Chinese Endocrinology and Metabolism, Co-Chief-Editor of the Journal of Diabetes, Member of the Advisory Board for Nature Reviews Endocrinology, Associated Editor for Journal of Endocrinology and Journal of Molecular Endocrinology. 

His research interests mainly focus on endocrine tumor and diabetes. He has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including Science, JAMA, Nat Cell Bio, Ann Intern Med, JACC, Nature Communication and Diabetes Care. He has been Chief Editor for five books and licensing nine patents. He was granted three times the National Science and Technology Progress Awards (2nd class).

Dr Graham Ogle is a paediatric endocrinologist. He is General Manager of the IDF Life for a Child Programme and Director of Health and Social Services at HOPE worldwide (Australia). 

At ADA’s 73rd Scientific Sessions Graham Ogle was presented with the Harold Rifkin Award for Distinguished International Service in the Cause of Diabetes for his role in establishing and strengthening diabetes services in many parts of the developing world.

Professor Brian Oldenburg is Behavioural Scientist and Population Health Researcher. He is Professor of Non-Communicable Disease Control and Director of the Centre for Health Equity in the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on how to improve the prevention and control of cardiometabolic disease and comorbid mental health conditions. He has also developed and evaluated new technologies and m-Health interventions to improve diabetes control and outcomes. In recent years, he has also been studying the spread of cardiometabolic disease in developing countries in Asia and Africa and how this can be addressed. He is currently Visiting Professor in Finland and China, including Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Dr Trevor Orchard, a physician epidemiologist, has served over 30 years as PI of the Pittsburgh Epidemiology of Diabetes Complications Study (EDC), which has been awarded MERIT status, and over 20 years as PI for the Pittsburgh DCCT/EDIC site. The EDC has published over 170 papers on type 1 diabetes complications. A major focus of the EDC Study has been renal complications, including the recent demonstration that all excess mortality is associated with micro (or worse) albuminuria. Dr Orchard, an experienced clinical trialist, has received continual NIH research funding as a PI since 1980. He currently serves on the DCCT/EDIC Publications and Analysis Committee, and chairs two writing groups (Haptoglobin and Mortality) and serves on multiple other writing groups for both DCCT/EDIC and Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS). He has considerable experience in the epidemiology of mortality and diabetes complications, and in mortality/morbidity classification, having also performed such activities for the Community Cardiovascular Surveillance Project, the Allegheny County IDDM registry, the Diabetes Epidemiology Research International Studies, and the DPPOS. In addition, Dr Orchard has trained 24 doctoral students, 33 master’s students and 9 post-doctoral fellows. Dr Orchard also taught the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Course for 20 years, and instructs clinical endocrine and cardiology fellows rotating through his Lipid Clinic. He also is the PI of the T32 Cardiovascular Epidemiology Training grant. Finally for the last 6 years Dr Orchard has been assisting the development of diabetes care in Rwanda, through a programme called Life for a Child which has also provided MPH students with the opportunity to conduct their practicum in Rwanda. Research interests are diabetes and cardiovascular epidemiology, with particular emphasis on type 1 diabetes and lipids, management of lipid disorders and diabetes prevention.

Dr Ambady Ramachandran is President of India Diabetes Research Foundation (IDRF) and Chairman of Dr A Ramachandran’s Diabetes Hospitals. He has contributed extensively for diabetes care and epidemiological research in India for more than three decades. 

He was qualified in Medicine at JIPMER, Pondicherry, India. His postgraduate medical qualifications include MD – General Medicine Madras Medical College, Chennai, Post- Doctoral Fellowship in Diabetes Endocrinology and Metabolism, University of Nebraska Medical Centre, USA, PhD at University of Madras, DSc at Dr MGR Medical University, and Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians, London and Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. IDRF has been established by Dr Ramachandran based on his extensive experience as a scientist and researcher in the field of diabetology. He has published more than 300 research papers till date. 

The Indian Diabetes Prevention Programme conducted by him has contributed significantly to the understanding of the preventive methodologies specifically effective in the Indian population. Series of urban and rural epidemiological studies taken up by Dr Ramachandran and his team have resulted in a wealth of knowledge on various aspects, the pathogenesis, risk factors and temporal changes in the prevalence of diabetes, pre-diabetes and cardiovascular risk factors in India. 

He was the recipient of the best investigator award by World India Diabetes Foundation (WIDF) based in US (2011). He was given the Lifetime Achievement Award for his research into diabetes prevention in India by South Asian Health Foundation (SAHF), UK (2011). He was awarded as Thomson Reuters Research Excellence–India Citation Award (2015) in Medicine. 

He is Visiting Professor in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom. He is also Regional Editor of Diabetic Medicine (UK) and serves on the Editorial Board for Diabetes Care (USA), Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, British Journal of Diabetes and Vascular Disease and Practical Diabetes International.

Dr Maria Inês Schmidt is endocrinologist and epidemiologist trained at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and at the University of North Carolina. She is Associate Professor at the School of Medicine of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Over the years, Dr Schmidt has collaborated with the Brazilian Ministry of Health in the surveillance of diabetes and its complications. Her research interests mainly focus on the epidemiology of type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. Ongoing major projects of Dr Schmidt are LINDA-Brasil, a randomized controlled trial for the prevention of diabetes in women with recent gestational diabetes, and ELSA- Brasil, a cohort study of Brazilian adults.

Professor Yutaka Seino graduated from Kyoto University and he began his career as Diabetes Specialist and committed himself to diabetes care and research. During his half-century dedication to diabetes societies, Professor Seino has contributed greatly to the improvement of diabetes care and education globally through his tremendous efforts in the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), especially the Western Pacific Region (WPR), and the Japan Association of Diabetes Education and Care (JADEC). He also succeeded in establishing the Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD) and its official journal, the Journal of Diabetes Investigation (JDI), to revitalize diabetes research and care in Asia. 

As a diabetes researcher, Professor Seino found that type 2 diabetes in Asians is characterized by impaired insulin secretion from pancreatic β cells rather than by insulin resistance as in Caucasians as early as 1975. This finding was at first more-or- less ignored but is now widely appreciated. 

Furthermore, Professor Seino contributed significantly to the understanding of the physiological function of incretin, which greatly helped in the development of incretin- based therapies used worldwide for the management of type 2 diabetes today. Based on these accomplishments, Professor Seino received the 11th Annual Novartis Prize in Diabetes 2009, International Excellence in Endocrinology Award of the Endocrine Society and International Diabetes Federation Regional Award in 2014, American Diabetes Association's 2016 Harold Rifkin Award for Distinguished International Service in the Cause of Diabetes. 

Professor Seino is currently President of the Kansai Electric Power Hospital, Director General of the Kansai Electric Power Medical Research Institute and Emeritus Professor of Kyoto University (Japan). Over the last quarter-century, Professor Seino has become one of the most impactful investigators in diabetes, with more than 500 publications and more than 10,000 citations.

Professor Jonathan Shaw underwent his clinical and research training in the United Kingdom, before moving to Australia. At Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, he runs a large research section focusing on epidemiology and clinical research in diabetes, and is also Consultant Physician in the diabetes services. He has authored over 300 peer- reviewed scientific papers and 35 book chapters. He is Chair of The National Diabetes Expert Advisory Group and former President of the International Diabetes Epidemiology Group. Professor Shaw was awarded the global Novartis Diabetes Award (for research) in 2006 and the International Diabetes Epidemiology Group Peter Bennett Award in 2011. In 2014, he was included in the Thomson Reuters The World’s Most In uential Scienti c Minds, which lists the 1% most highly cited scientists in the world since 2002. In 2015, he was awarded the inaugural Jeff Flack Diabetes Data Award from the Australian Diabetes Society for his outstanding contribution to Diabetes Data Collection in Australia.

Dr Wing-yee So is Honorary Clinical Associate Professor respectively at our Institute and at the Department of Medicine and Therapeutics of CUHK, and currently Chief Manager (Quality and Safety) at the Hospital Authority in Hong Kong. She graduated from the CUHK and became a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine with accreditation in Advanced Internal Medicine, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism. Apart from her leadership role in coordinating the delivery of chronic care in the public health care setting, her research interests include epidemiology and genetics of diabetes and its complications as well as disease management. 

Professor Nick Wareham is the Director of MRC Epidemiology Unit and co-Director of the Institute of Metabolic Science at the University of Cambridge. His principal research interests are the aetiology and prevention of obesity and diabetes and he leads the Aetiology of Diabetes and Related Metabolic Disorders Programme, and is Director of the University Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR). He qualified from St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School, London, and trained in epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London and the University of Cambridge, where he is now Professor of Epidemiology.

Dr Ping Zhang is Senior Health Economist and Team Leader at the Division of Diabetes Translation, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA Prior to coming to CDC, he was an Assistant Professor at Kansas State University. He received his Bachelor's degree in Agribusiness from Shandong Agricultural University, China in 1982 and Master’s degree in Economics from North Carolina State University in 1988 and PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics from Texas Tech University in 1991. Dr Zhang’s areas of research include economic burden of chronic diseases, cost-effectiveness analysis of health interventions, economic valuation of health risk reduction, health policy analysis, and health service research. Dr Zhang is one of the world-leading researchers in the area of diabetes health economics and has authored and co- authored more than 80 journal articles and book chapters. His work appears in many top professional journals such as Health Economics, Journal of American Medical Association, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, American Journal of Public Health, and Diabetes Care.