Sharma S. Prabhakar is a distinguished nephrologist currently at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, where he is a tenured professor in the Departments of Medicine and Cell Physiology and Molecular Biophysics, and the Chief of Nephrology Division and Vice Chairman, Department of Medicine. He is an established researcher examining pathophysiologic mechanisms of diabetic nephropathy and of insulin resistance in vitro and animal models.Dr. Prabhakar has over 100 publications including original articles, reviews, book chapters and published abstracts in prestigious journals, such as the American Journal of Physiology, Journal of American Society of Nephrology, and Kidney International. In recognition of his excellence in practice of medicine, Dr. Prabhakar was awarded an endowed chair by the University Medical Center. He is active in several professional societies and organizations and is the current President of American Federation for Medical Research.

Professional interests include research and also educating physicians and general community in hypertension, diabetes and kidney disease.

Charles W. Heiling is a Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Florida, USA

Roles for glucose transporters in diabetic kidney disease and in the progression of chronic glomerular disease.

Ralph Abraham is the Clinical Director of London Medical, which he founded as The London Diabetes & Lipid Centre in 1991. Starting his career as a biochemist at Oxford, he did a PhD in Biochemistry at Imperial College on insulin resistance in obese mice, a subject that is all too relevant in the management of diabetes today. Abraham was trained at the Hammersmith Hospital and Kings College Hospital in gastroenterology and hepatology before specialising in Endocrinology and Diabetes at St Mary\'s Hospital and St Bartholomew\'s Hospital, leaving the NHS in 1986. Dr. Abraham works in full time private practice with a successful and recognised expertise in diabetes, endocrinology, lipid disorders and obesity management.

ADVANCED DIABETES CARE INCLUDING THE USE OF SENSORS AND PUMPS
PREVENTION OF HEART ATTACKS AND STROKES
HORMONE PROBLEMS, ESPECIALLY THE PITUITARY AND ADRENAL GLANDS
OBESITY, CHOLESTEROL DISORDERS

Zhengyuan Xia is an Assistant Professor and Honorary Associate Professor in Department of Anesthesiology, and Research Centre of Heart, Brian, Hormone and Healthy Aging, University of Hong Kong. He has received PhD in Pharmacology & Therapeutics from University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada in 2004, and completed postdoctoral training respectively in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UBC, and Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics, University of Calgary 2004-2007. He received his M.B. (medical doctoral program) and Master of Medicine degrees respectively in 1984 and 1991 from China, and worked as an anesthetist before starting PhD study in 2001. He has published more than 58 articles [PubMed: “zhengyuan xia or zheng-yuan xia”] in internationally reputed journals. He is a frequent reviewer for reputed journals like Biochemical Pharmacology, PLOS One, and Anesthesiology, and for grants agencies like NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation of China) and CIHR (Canadian Institute of Health Research).

My overall research interest is the protection of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI), particularly, of diabetic hearts.

John S.D. Chan has completed his Ph.D, at the University of Manitoba (Canada) and research training in Canada and the USA including National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Harvard Medical School (Boston). He is the Professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal and the Director of the Laboratory of Molecular Nephrology and Endocrinology at the Research Centre of Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CRCHUM)-Hotel Dieu Hospital. He has published more than 110 papers in reputed journals and is the Editor of the eBook, “Diabetic Nephropathy”, ISBN 978-953-51-0543-5 (Open Access) (http://www.intechopen.com).

The role of intrarenal RAS and ROS in the pathogenesis of diabetic nephropathy, with special emphasis on renal angiotensinogen gene expression and intrarenal ROS generation on tubular apoptosis in diabetes. Transgenic mice specifically overexpressing angiotensinogen and catalase in the kidney will be used to study the molecular mechanism(s) of intrarenal RAS and ROS action on the induction of tubular fibrosis and apoptosis in diabetes. Gene chip microarrays will be used to identify the unique genes that are differentially expressed in diabetic kidneys. The physiological role(s) of these unique genes will be studied in vitro and in vivo.

Dr. Bakris is a Professor of Medicine and director of the ASH Comprehensive Hypertension Center at the University of Chicago Medicine. He completed training in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine where he also completed a research fellowship in Physiology and Biophysics. He then completed fellowships in Nephrology and Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Chicago Medicine. Dr. Bakris has published over 600 articles and book chapters in the areas of diabetic kidney disease, hypertension and progression of nephropathy. He is the current Editor of Am J Nephrology, the Hypertension, Section Editor of Up-to-Date and an Assoc. Ed of Diabetes Care and Nephrology, Dialysis & Transplant. He has served on many national guideline committees including, JNC 6 and 7. He is the past-President of the American Society of Hypertension (ASH) (2010-2012).

Refractory/complicated hypertension
Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring (ABPM) interpretation
Diabetic kidney disease
Vascular disease in people with diabetes or kidney disease

Louise Larose has obtained her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Montreal in 1992 and completed her postdoctoral training at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto in 1995. As an Associate Professor from McGill University in Montreal, she has received the prestigious Chercheur National award from the FRSQ. Her work on the role of the adaptor proteins Nck in molecular mechanisms regulating plasma membrane receptor tyrosine kinases signaling and more recently the unfolded protein response has been published in reputed journals. She is serving as editorial board member, as well as ad hoc reviewer for important journals and panel members of several Canadian funding agencies.

1. Insulin resistance and pancreatic β-cell function. Previous findings from our laboratory involved the adaptor proteins Nck in signaling initiated in response to stress imposed to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Using Nck knock out mice, we recently established that Nck plays an important role in ER stress mediated insulin resistance induced by obesity. In the same study, we also noticed pancreatic β-cells defect in Nck knock out mice. Our main goals are to delineate the fine mechanisms by which Nck regulates insulin sensitivity of peripheral tissues, but also pancreatic β-cell homeostasis. 2. Cancer progression. Our most recent data strongly argue that increased expression of Nck-2 in primary cancer cell lines that are poorly metastatic may be determinant for these cells to adopt an aggressive metastatic phenotype. Our goal is to identify the mechanisms by which higher levels of Nck-2 promote migration in cancer cells and metastasis in live animals. 3. Phosphorylation network. We wish to determine the impact of phosphorylation on Nck adaptor function and localization. This includes to identify protein kinases which phosphorylate Nck, to determine in which cell conditions Nck become phosphorylated, to map the phosphorylation sites on Nck, to generate phosphospecific antibodies against these sites and to analyze in cells the behavior of Nck mutants that are no longer phosphorylated on specific sites.

Sudhakar Akul Yakkanti is a Founder Director of Cell Signaling Tumor and Retinal Angiogenesis Laboratory, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE, USA. He is a Clinical Professor of Creighton University and Nebraska Medical Center. He did his postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School Boston, USA (2003). He has received P.hD (2001), M.Phill (1997) and M.Sc (1995) degrees in life sciences from University of Hyderabad and B.Sc in Biology from SK University (1993) from India. He was received Presidents fellowship, GATE and CSIR fellowships from government of India. He received Mahindra & Mahindra Travel Award and YCS Award from FAMRI. He received Bio-Bio Young Scientist Award from OMICS and RO1 grant award from NIH/NCI. He is serving as AIBS/NIH-Grant reviewer. He has published more than 40 research articles including Science, JCI, Cancer Cell, PNAS, Blood ect. He is serving as an Editor-In Chief, Editor, Associate editor and Editorial board member of 13 reputed journals and serving as reviewer of 26 scientific journals.

Research and educating physicians and general community in hypertension, diabetes and kidney disease.

Professor Mehmet Akif Buyukbese has an MD degree from Istanbul University, Istanbul Faculty of Medicine and has completed internal medicine residency program at Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul, Turkey in 1999 where he started focusing on diabetes subject. He founded internal medicine department at KSU Medical School in 2000 and served as a head for 6 years. Board certified in internal medicine (2002, Turkey)He had several diabetes management and research observership experiences in the US such as Albert Einstein College of Medicine, University of Yeshiva, Bronx, NY (2 months), MD Anderson, Univ TX Houston Diabetes and Endocrinology Program (3 months) and Indian Medical Health Center, NIH, Diabetes Outpatient Clinic (Phoenix), worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in UK

Diabetes, Type 2 Diabetes, Hypertension, Cholesterol, Diabetes Mellitus and Complications, Blood Pressure, Diabetes research, Diabetics, Diabetes mellitus, wound healing process, Hypertension Management, Diabetes Management, and Metabolic Syndome

Dr. Patrick Nelson is an Assistant Professor in Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics in the  University of Michigan, USA

Clinical Informatics
Databases and Computing
Modeling Immunological and Infectious Disease Systems
Statistical Applications
Systemic Modeling and Systems Biology

Weidong Han was born in 1969 in Shanxi province, China. In 1990, he obtained his BS degree in clinical medicine from Changzhi Medical College. He obtained his master degree in clinical hematology in 1998 from Shanxi Medical College. In 2001, he obtained his Ph.D degree in clinical hematology from Chinese PLA Postgraduate Medical School. Subsequently, he worked in Institute of Basic Medicine, Chinese PLA General Hospital. In 2006, he was promoted to associate professor of tumor biology and cell biology. In 2003, he did postdoctoral work at the University College London. Now, he is the director of department of molecular and cellular biology, Director of Clinical Translational Ward, the General Hospital of PLA. Since 2001, he focused on research of hormone-related cancers. He has published over 20 articles. Now, he established a medical translational ward in General Hospital of PLA for clinical research.

Hormone related cancer, Cellular reprogramming, Clinical translation

Dr. Morello’s research program involves exploring both clinical outcomes in diabetes patients and educational outcomes in student pharmacists who attend her diabetes educational programs. Dr. Morello maintains a clinical practice at the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health System where she is Director of the Diabetes Intense Medical Management Clinic. She is currently studying the effect of pharmacist-run diabetes medication management services on the 1) metabolic, 2) quality of life, 3) patient satisfaction and 4) adherence rate outcomes in diabetes patients.

Assistant Professor Vance Matthews is the head of the “Laboratory for Metabolic Dysfunction” at the Western Australia Institute for Medical Research. Since completing his PhD in 2002, he has completed successful post-doctoral positions in Germany, Western Australia and Melbourne. He has published over 36 manuscripts which have been published in premier journals including Journal of Biological Chemistry, Blood, Hepatology, Journal of Clinical Investigation, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Diabetes and Diabetologia. He regularly reviews for many peer review journals and he is a member of the “World Journal of Gastroenterology” editorial board.

Joseph Fomusi Ndisang is an Associate Professor in the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine, Department of Physiology. He received postdoctoral training in Physiology at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine from 200-2005. He received a PhD in Pharmacology & Toxicology from the University of Florence, Italy, 2000. He received a Doctor of Pharmacy degree from University of Florence, Italy in 1995. He has received several distinguished awards and distinctions including: Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA) in 2011; Fellow of the International College of Angiology (FICA) in 2007; Young Investigator Award by International College of Angiology (2007); Young Investigator Award by the American Society of Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics- Division for Drug Discovery, Development & Regulatory Affairs (2005); Young Investigator Award by the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine (2005) He has published 36 manuscripts, 57 abstracts, 2 book chapters, 1 book and has served peer-reviewer for may highly reputed journals and funding agencies in United States, United kingdom and Canada and has also served as external PhD examiner in Canada and internationally .

His research is mainly focused on investigation the role of the heme oxygenase system in hypertension, diabetes (types-1 and -2), and obesity.