Ana Arbeláez, MD, MSCI

Biography

Dr. Ana María Arbeláez received her medical degree from Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. She then completed a pediatric internship and residency at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, and a pediatric endocrinology fellowship at Washington University. Currently, she is an associate professor of pediatrics, the chief of pediatric endocrinology and the co-director for the TL1 Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Clinical Research Training program at Washington University.

Her work has been supported by numerous foundations and NIH R01 awards. She also has led a multidisciplinary team of national and international investigators funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to determine the effects of malnutrition, a state of chronic glucose deprivation in the developing brain.

Dr. Arbeláez also has won multiple awards, including the Best Doctors in America® honor five years running. She also was elected into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

Affiliation

• Associate Professor of Pediatrics,
  Chief of Pediatric Endocrinology and
  Co-Director for the TL1 Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Clinical Research Training Program
  Washington University
  St. Louis, Missouri

Robert Eckel, MD

Biography

Dr. Robert H. Eckel is a Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and the former Charles A Boettcher II Endowed Chair in Atherosclerosis at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is Professor of Medicine Emeritus with appointments in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes and the Division of Cardiology at UC Denver.

Dr. Eckel is Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Colorado Anschtuz Medical Campus and past Director of the Lipid Clinic at the University of Colorado Hospital.

Prior to August 2014, Dr. Eckel directed the Clinical Translational Research Center Network, a component of the Colorado Clinical Translational Sciences Institute, and served as Program Director of the Adult General Clinical Research Center for 15 years.

From 2018-2019, he served as interim Vice Chancellor of Research at the University of Colorado Anschtuz Medical Campus. He has previously served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institutes of Health and is a past president of the American Heart Association and current president of Medicine and Science of the American Diabetes Association.

For over three decades, his NIH-funded translational research has focused on the pathophysiology and treatment of lipid disorders, insulin action, nutrition, obesity, and Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and how these metabolic disorders relate to cardiovascular disease. More recently, his laboratory has been directed to the role of lipid and lipoprotein metabolism in neurodegenerative diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease.

His team has used molecular and biochemical tools, tissue culture, calorimetry, dietary perturbations and euglycemic clamps to study energy intake, energy expenditure, and insulin action on the biological impact of lipoprotein lipid partitioning in humans and genetically modified mice with tissue-specific over-expression or deletion of lipid-related genes, typically lipoprotein lipase.

Affiliation

• Interim Vice Chancellor of Research
  Professor Emeritus, Medicine, Endocrinology, Metabolism and
  Diabetes, and Cardiology
  UC Denver
  Aurora, Colorado

Maureen Gannon, PhD

Biography

Maureen Gannon received her B.S. in Biology from Molloy College in Rockville Centre, NY and her M.S. in Biology from Adelphi University in Garden City, NY. She received her Ph.D. in Cell Biology and Anatomy from Cornell University in 1995.

Dr. Gannon is currently Professor in the Department of Medicine and Associate Dean for Faculty Development at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Her laboratory focuses on the regulation of beta cell mass during development and postnatally in response to physiological and pathological stimuli. Her research has been funded by JDRF, NIH, ADA, and the VA.

Dr. Gannon is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS fellow since 2015), the American Diabetes Association, the American Physiological Society, the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, the Endocrine Society and the Society for Developmental Biology.

Affiliation

• Professor
  Department of Medicine
  Associate Dean, Faculty Development
  Vanderbilt University Medical Center
  Nashville, Tennessee

Emil Unanue, MD

Biography

Dr. Emil Unanue graduated from medical school at the University of Havana, Cuba. He completed training at Presbyterian University Hospital in Pittsburgh, at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, Calif., and at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, London. He later became Mallinckrodt Professor of Immunopathology at Harvard University Medical Center. He is currently a Paul and Ellen Lacy Professor of Pathology & Immunology and Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine.

Dr. Unanue has won multiple awards, including the Gerold Grodsky Basic Science Award from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, and the Albert Lasker Basic Research Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Science.

His research examines the biochemistry and biology of antigen presentation, particularly how lymphocytes recognize protein antigens. His recent research focuses on the cellular and molecular basis of diabetic autoimmunity.

Affiliation

• Paul and Ellen Lacy Professor of
  Pathology & Immunology and Medicine
  Washington University School of Medicine
  St. Louis, Missouri