ESA Invited Speakers

Plenary Speakers

Ralph De Fronzo - University of Pennsylvania Health System, USA Ralph A. DeFronzo, MD, is Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Diabetes Division at the University of Texas Health Science Center and the Audie L. Murphy Memorial VA Hospital in San Antonio, Texas.  Dr. DeFronzo is a graduate of Yale University (BS) and Harvard Medical School (MD) and did his training in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.  He completed fellowships in endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health and Baltimore City Hospitals and in Nephrology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  Subsequently, he joined the faculty at the Yale University School of Medicine (1975-88) as an Assistant/Associate Professor. His major interests focus on the pathogenesis and treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus and the central role of insulin resistance in the metabolic-cardiovascular cluster of disorders known collectively as the Insulin Resistance Syndrome.  Using the euglycemic insulin clamp technique in combination with radioisotope turnover methodology, limb catheterization, indirect calorimetry, and muscle biopsy, he has helped to define the biochemical and molecular disturbances responsible for insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes mellitus. For his work in this area, Dr. DeFronzo received the prestigious Lilly Award (1987) by the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the Banting Lectureship (1988) by the Canadian Diabetes Association, the Novartis Award (2003) for outstanding clinical investigation world wide and many other national and international awards.  He also is the recipient of the ADA’s Albert Renold Award (2002) for lifetime commitment to the training of young diabetes investigators.  Dr. DeFronzo received the Banting Award from the ADA (2008) and the Claude Bernard Award from the EASD (2008).  These represent the highest scientific achievement awards given by the American and European Diabetes Associations, respectively.  In 2008 Dr. DeFronzo also received the Italian Diabetes Mentor Prize and the Philip Bondy Lecture at Yale.  With more than 500 articles published in peer-reviewed medical journals, Dr. DeFronzo is a distinguished clinician, teacher, and investigator who has been an invited speaker at major national and international conferences on diabetes mellitus.

Stafford Lightman - Univeristy of Bristol, UK Stafford Lightman is Professor of Medicine at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom and is Director of the Henry Wellcome Laboratories for Integrative Neuroscience and Endocrinology.  He started his scientific career working on catecholamines and opioid peptides with Leslie Iversen at the University of Cambridge and provided some of the first data linking opioid peptides with the regulation of neurohypophysial function.  At this time he also performed some of the first studies demonstrating the importance of brain stem catecholamine pathways in the regulation of hypothalamic activity.  On moving to what is now Imperial College in London, he started to develop his studies on the role of the brain in the regulation of the stress response.  He demonstrated the shift from CRH to arginine vasopressin in the control of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis during chronic stress, demonstrated and characterised the development of stress hyporesponsiveness during lactation in both rats and man and developed models of immunological activation of the stress response.  More recently he has developed the concept of the importance of digital signalling inherent in the pulsatile release of glucocorticoid hormones and has been able to demonstrate the specificity of mineralocorticoid receptor and glucocorticoid receptor responsiveness to rapid changes in levels of circulating glucorticoids. Stafford Lightman was the founder Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neuroendocrinology, a founder Fellow of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, the founder Chairman of the Pituitary Foundation and a Council Member of the Physiological Society.  He sits on several Research Councils, Wellcome Trust and European Research Committees and has Chaired the European Union Committee Review of Tertiary Education in East Africa.  Professor Lightman also has a major interest in inter-relationships between art and neuroscience and is a frequent speaker on both radio and television in the United Kingdom.

Symposia Speakers

SRB Invited Speakers

Plenary Speakers

Symposia Speakers