Malte Spielmann is professor of human genetics at the University of Lübeck and head of the institute of human genetics. Previously, he was group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for molecular genetics in Berlin. Malte Spielmann studied medicine Witten/Herdecke, Bochum and Boston. Afterwards he joined the Institute of Medical and Human Genetics at the Charité in Berlin where he also became group leader. Funded by the german research foundation he worked at the University of Washington in Seattle. Since October 2019 he was funded by the Heisenberg program of the german research foundation. His work is focussing on the role of non-coding mutations and structural variants as the cause of human disease. His group is applying the latest high-throughput technologies during mouse embryonic development such as single cell sequencing..

Rubén Nogueiras Pozo is an Associate Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela. He did his doctoral thesis at the Department of Physiology at the USC under the direction of Prof. Carlos Diéguez, followed by postdoctoral stays in Germany, Switzerland and the USA. In 2009, he returned to the Spanish R&D system through the Ramón y Cajal Programme. His research is focused on the study of molecular mechanisms involved in obesity and its associated diseases such as type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and Alzheimer's disease. In particular, he is interested in deciphering how alterations in glucose homeostasis, insulin sensitivity and lipid metabolism cause direct metabolic dysfunctions. His latest publications Over his successful scientific career Prof. Dr. Noguerias published over 200 papers and received numerous awards the latest being the European Journal of Endocrinology Award in 2021.

Debra J. Skene is a Professor of Neuroendocrinology in the Chronobiology Department at the University of Surrey, Guildford, England. Skene received her Bachelor of Pharmacy, Master of Science, and Ph.D. in South Africa and has over 25 years of research experience studying the human circadian timing system and has authored over 190 refereed research publications. Her main research focus is on the mammalian circadian rhythm and the consequences of disturbing the circadian system. She is also interested in finding their potential treatments for people who suffer from circadian misalignment. Skene and her team of researchers tackle these questions using animal models, clinical trials, and most recently,liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Most notably, Skene is credited for her evidence of a novel photopigment in humans, later discovered to be melanopsin. She was also involved in discovering links between human PER3 genotype and an extremely shifted sleep schedules categorized as extreme diurnal preference. Her current research focuses on understanding clocks, sleep, and metabolism in people with dysfunctional circadian rhythms such as shift workers, blind people and the elderly.

Christin Krause is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Henriette Kirchner at the University of Lübeck. She graduated at the university of Lübeck in molecular life science and informatics. Her doctoral studies involved epigenetic regulation of the hepatic insulin signaling in obese patients with the main emphasis on the role of microRNAs and DNA methylation using whole-genome bisulfite sequencing data. Now, she is studying microRNA interactions in the hepatic lipid and glucose metabolism utilizing OMIC-data and performing cluster- and network analysis.

Charna Dibner is an Associate Professor in Medicine Dept. Endocrinology, Diabetology and Nutrition Division of the University of Geneva. She completed her PhD in Medical Sciences in 2002 under the supervision of Professor Dale Frank in the Department of Biochemistry at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology. She completed her postdoctoral studies in the Department of Molecular Biology at University of Geneva, with Professor Ueli Schibler, worldwide leading expert in circadian rhythms. Since 2009 she leads her research group at the University of Geneva where she is affiliated to the Department of Cell Physiology and Metabolism, Diabetes Center of the Faculty of Medicine, and Geneva Genomics Center (iGe3). Her main research focus is to identify the molecular basis of circadian rhythmicity in rodent and human peripheral tissues in physiological, and in obesity/type 2 diabetes conditions. Her group succeeded in setting up the experimental system for long-term recording of circadian reporter oscillations in human primary cultured cells from different tissue types.

Michael Symonds is a Professor in Developmental Physiology at The University of Nottingham, United Kingdom. He received his PhD in 1987 from the University of Reading, Berkshire, England. His Research interest and expertise lie in Brown adipose tissue and its role in energy balance, obesity, environmental influences on energy balance and nutrition in pregnancy and early life. His research on environmental impacts on health and disease has been supported by a substantial number of funding bodies including the United Kingdom Medical Research Council, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, The National Institute for Health Research etc. He was a lead applicant of an European Union FP6 Integrated Project in Early Nutritional Programming which was the largest project of its kind in the Scientific world. He has trained more than 30 PhD students, published ~ 300 full peer-reviewed scientific publications, and ~100 reviews in highly respectable journals including Nature Reviews Endocrinology, Diabetologia, Journal of Pediatrics, Hypertension and Endocrinology etc. and given ~100 invited conference presentations at international meetings.

Rebecca Ölkrug is a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Jens Mittag at the University of Lübeck. She received her diploma in biology at the Phillips-University Marburg. During her PhD, in cooperation with the MNMU in South Africa, Dr. Ölkrug studied the evolutionary role of the brown adipose tissue in mammals and the capacity of UCP-1 mediated non-shivering thermoregulation and its protective effects against ROS production. Becoming an expert in the field of thermoregulation and metabolism, she committed her post-doctoral research on how manipulations of the maternal thermogenesis and metabolism are passed on to the fetus. Notably, Dr. Ölkrug was awarded with several grants, including the DFG research grant for funding her own position and the ‘Juniorförderung’ for young scientist from the University of Lübeck.

Miguel López is an Associate Professor of Physiology and leader of the CiMUS NeurObesity and research group at the University of Santiago de Compostela. His main research interest lies in the hypothalamic regulation of energy balance. Particularly, López has been investigating the lipid metabolism/AMPK and its interference with the food intake regulation, discovering a new molecular mechanism by which a class of lipids, the ceramides, modulate the ER stress within the hypothalamus and have an impact on the body weight.The NeurObesity group also focuses on hypothalamic neuropeptides, with a particular interest in orexins.

Virginie Rappeneau is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Behavioural Biology at the University of Osnabrück. During her PhD degree in France, she further investigated the neurobiological mechanisms linking emotional behaviors and cocaine-related behaviors. Her findings contribute to a better understanding of the sex differences in the association of abuse and affective disorders. During her first postdoctoral research stay at the Meharry Medical College in Nashville (USA), she further examined how sex differences in the glutamatergic system, involving astrocytes, associate emotional behaviors, and cocaine-related behaviors. Currently she is using a mouse model of depression to understand how individual differences contribute to stress derived emotional behavior and mitochondria driven energy metabolism after high-fat diet exposure. This research is relevant for understanding human anxiety and depression, with a focus on the interaction between affective disorders and other medical conditions such as drug addiction and metabolic diseases.

Jan Wenzel  is a group leader at Institute of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Lübeck, Germany. His institute’s  research deals with the pharmacology of the brain at the interface with the immune system, metabolism and circulation. He is leading the project ‘Cerebral Perfusion and Metabolism’ in the institute. His group is interested in the regulation of cerebral blood flow at the blood brain barrier (BBB) and in the distinct roles of the involved cells types. They also study intercellular connections, especially in those that involve endothelial cells, and in the effects of endothelial dysfunction on related brain functions. For their research, they are using state-of-the-art technologies like two-photon microscopy, tissue-specific knockout animal models, and virus-mediated gene transfer.

Sonja Schriever  is the deputy head of the research unit “Neurology of Diabetes” at the Helmholtz Institute in Munich. Her current research focus lies in the relationship between the CNS and the development of obesity and type 2 diabetes from a gene-environment interaction point of view. In recent publications her group was able to show a connection between hypothalamic Jnk signaling, insulin sensitivity, and systemic glucose tolerance. Using genome-wide association studies as a starting point, she was able to pinpoint DUSP8 as a type 2 diabetes risk gene.