Speakers

We are happy to present leading experts from around the world in the field of brown adipose tissue and metabolism research. On this site, you can find all confirmed speakers.

Shingo Kajimura

Shingo Kajimura is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and an Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His research focuses on understanding the molecular basis of bioenergetics in health and disease, with an emphasis on brown adipose tissue as a model system for studying mitochondrial biology and energy balance.

Zach Gerhart-Hines

Zach Gerhart-Hines is an Associate Professor at the Center for Basic Metabolic Research at the University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on how adipocytes integrate cues from the circadian clock, environmental temperature, and hormonal and neuronal signals to shape systemic energy homeostasis. By understanding these processes in the context of obesity and type 2 diabetes, his team aspires to develop novel strategies to counteract metabolic disorders.

Yu-Hua Tseng

Dr. Yu-Hua Tseng is a Professor at Harvard Medical School and a Senior Investigator at the Joslin Diabetes Center. a Principal Faculty of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. The Tseng lab investigates metabolic communications centered on adipose tissue, including inter-organ crosstalk via bioactive lipids, cell-cell communication within the thermogenic adipose niche, and intracellular signaling and gene regulation, aiming to develop innovative treatments for metabolic disorders.

Aaron Cypess

Dr. Cypess is the Chief of the Translational Physiology Section at the NIDDK, National Institutes of Health. His group studies the roles of BAT and WAT in human physiology through both clinical trials and in vitro models. They use noninvasive imaging, particularly PET/CT, to quantify BAT and WAT metabolic activity. In parallel, they are developing pharmacological interventions such as β3-adrenregic receptor agonists to utilize BAT to treat obesity-related metabolic disease.

Natalie Krahmer

Adipocytes exhibit distinct physiological roles: white adipocytes serve as energy reservoirs, storing triglycerides, while brown adipocytes metabolize lipids to generate heat during cold exposure. Despite their physiological importance, the organelle-level differences and dynamics driving these cellular specializations remain incompletely understood. To address this, the Krahmer lab (Helmholtz Center Munich, Germany) developed C-COMPASS, a neural network-powered tool that integrates organelle proteomics and lipidomics to map the spatial distribution of proteins and lipids within cells.

Alexander Pfeifer

The Pfeifer lab (University Hospital Bonn, Germany) studies molecular pharmacology and cellular signaling in the context of metabolism. Their work focusses on adipose tissue and skeletal muscle that are both of major importance for energy homeostasis. Specifically, they are investigating NO/cGMP and GPCR/cAMP signaling pathways to identify novel regulators of thermogenic adipose tissue. The overarching goal is to develop novel approaches for harnessing the powers of thermogenic adipose tissue to treat metabolic diseases like obesity.

Shannon Reilly

Shannon Reilly, PhD, is an assistant professor at Weill Cornell Medicine studying how lipolysis impacts white adipocyte metabolism. Her research shows that fatty acids promote uncoupled respiration via the ATP/ADP carrier, distinct from UCP1 in brown adipocytes. This pathway contributes to energy expenditure and thermogenesis in vivo, redefining the role of white adipocytes in thermogenesis.

Hei Sook Sul

Prof. Sul's research (University of California Berkeley, USA) focuses on adipose tissue development and metabolism. Her group identifies and studies those factors involved in the development of white and brown adipose tissues for energy storage and dissipation/thermogenesis, respectively. They also identify and study those enzymes that regulate carbohydrate and fat metabolism in adipose tissues. Optimal balance and maintenance of adipose tissues and their metabolism may help to prevent obesity and diabetes.

Kirsi Virtanen

Kirsi Virtanen works as an Associate Professor of metabolic research at the University of Turku, at Turku PET Centre. Utilizing PET/CT imaging, she has investigated the metabolism of human brown adipose tissue in health and in obesity. She leads the "Human brown adipose tissue" (hBAT) research group in Turku, has pioneered fundamental publications on hBAT area, and supervised several PhD theses related to the topic.

Christian Wolfrum

The overarching goal of the lab (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) is to understand adipose tissue plasticity and heterogeneity on a cellular and molecular level and to delineate the mechanisms, which control adipose tissue formation and function, which ultimately impact metabolic control.

Dagmar Wachten

The lab of Dagmar Wachten (University Hospital Bonn, Germany) aims to understand how tissue ecosystems are maintained by cellular communication. Here, primary cilia, which function as a cellular antenna, play a key role. To this end, the group has developed spatially-resolved optogenetic tools and biosensors to manipulate and monitor signaling in primary cilia. In the adipose tissue, they investigate how primary cilia signaling regulates adipocyte progenitor cell fate and function and how primary dysfunction alters tissue homeostasis.

Jörg Heeren

The Heeren group (University Hospital Eppendorf-Hamburg, Germany) studies the organ-specific regulation of lipid and lipoprotein metabolism in the context of metabolic diseases. They are particularly interested in thermogenic adipose tissue, which they showed have profound metabolic effects on blood lipids and atherogenic lipoprotein levels. Their aim is to define the systemic and local cell type-specific mechanisms that control energy metabolism and adipose tissue homeostasis under conditions of adaptive thermogenesis.

Maria Chondronikola

Dr. Maria Chondronikola's research (University of Cambridge, UK) focuses on human nutrition, metabolism, and the physiological mechanisms influencing metabolic health. One of her primary research interests is understanding the physiological role in human brown adipose tissue and the thermogenic adipocytes in metabolic diseases.

Joanna Kalucka

Aarhus University, Denmark

Yongguo Li

Dr. Yongguo Li is a professor at University Hospital Bonn. The Li lab investigates the fundamental biological processes controlling energy homeostasis and metabolism in an integrative-systemic perspective, with a particular focus on thermogenic fat biology, aiming to efficiently harness the energy-consuming potential of thermogenic fat for therapeutic interventions.

Kirsty Spalding

Kirsty Spalding’s research focuses on properties of human adipose tissue, with particular attention to adipocyte biology. Understanding the cell biology and heterogeneity of adipocytes in human adipose tissue, with the ultimate aim of understanding their contribution to health and pathology, are a major focus of the group. Kirsty is a Professor of Adipocyte Biology at the department of Cell and Molecular Biology at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.

Martin Klingenspor

The Klingenspor lab at TU Munich (Germany) investigates metabolic and endocrine functions of adipose tissues for energy balance. They aim to elucidate the biochemical mechanisms of heat production and their contributions to adaptive thermogenesis.