Dr. Alt is the Charles A. Janeway Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics at Harvard Medical School, the Director of the CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He obtained his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University, where he worked with Robert Schimke. Dr. Alt did postdoctoral work with David Baltimore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His honors include election to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the European Molecular Biology Organization, and he won the 2004 Clowes Memorial Award from the American Association of Cancer Research.

Dr. Imai is an Associate Professor in the departments of Developmental Biology and Medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine. His laboratory is devoted to studying the roles of mammalian SIRT1 and NAMPT-mediated NAD biosynthesis in the systemic regulation of metabolism and aging in mammals. Based on his research, he has recently proposed a novel concept of a systemic regulatory network for mammalian aging, named “NAD World.”

Dr. Imai received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo, Japan, where he studied cellular aging-associated transcriptional regulation in human fibroblasts and proposed his “Heterochromatin Island Hypothesis of Aging.” He then joined the laboratory of Leonard Guarente, Ph.D., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his fellowship. During his postdoctoral period, he made a phenomenal discovery of the NAD-dependent protein deacetylase activity of yeast and mammalian Sir2 proteins and published his landmark paper in the journal Nature in 2000. Dr. Imai has received many prestigious awards for his works, including the American Society for Cell Biology/Glenn Foundation Award, the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar Award in Aging, the American Diabetes Association Innovation Award, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Innovation Award, the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, the WUSM 2008 Distinguished Investigator Award, the Longer Life Foundation Pilot & Feasibility Award, and the Ellison Medical Foundation Senior Scholar in Aging Award.

Dr. Kahn is the Mary K. Iacocca Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and was formerly the President of the Joslin Diabetes Center. He also has served as Research Director of Joslin for more than 17 years. During his tenure, the Joslin Diabetes Center research program has grown from $2 million to over $25 million, with a staff of over 220 people. Dr. Kahn has received numerous honors and awards, including the highest scientific awards of the American Diabetes Association, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, International Diabetes Federation, the American Federation of Clinical Research, and the Endocrine Society of the U.S. In 1999, Dr. Kahn received two prestigious national honors — election to membership in the National Academy of Sciences and election to the Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Milbrandt is a Professor of Pathology and Immunology, as well as a Professor of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. His laboratory studies the molecular events involved in the development of the vertebrate nervous system. Dr.Milbrandt received his M.D. at the Washington University School of Medicine and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Puigserver is Assistant Professor of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Prior to Dana Farber, Dr. Puigserver was an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. Puigserver was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Bruce Spiegelman at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute.

Dr. Ravussin is the Chief of the Division of Health and Performance Enhancement and the Douglas L. Gordon Chair in Diabetes and Metabolism at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. Dr. Ravussin leads the CALERIE trial team and is recognized internationally as a clinical investigator in the field of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus. His research now focuses on the genetic and molecular basis of obesity and its co-morbidities. Dr. Ravussin's studies are aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms that determine the inter-individual variability in energy expenditure, fat oxidation and in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system. He also concentrates on the relationship between physiology and gene expression in response to diet and physical training. Dr.Ravussin received a Ph.D. from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

Dr. Sassone-Corsi is a Distinguished Professor and the Chair of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to this, he was Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Strasbourg, France. His honors include the EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organization) Gold Medal, the Prix Charles-Léopold Mayer de l’Académie des Sciences, Paris, and the Edwin B. Astwood Award of The Endocrine Society. He is also an ISI Highly Cited recipient. His research focuses on the mechanisms of gene expression, including chromatin remodeling, circadian rhythms and germ cells.

Dr. Sauve is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and is a Faculty Member in the Tri-Institutional (Rockefeller-Sloan-Cornell) Chemical Biology Training Program. His laboratory studies the NAD dependent deacetylases (sirtuins), including SIRT1, the ADP-ribosyl-cyclases (CD38) and the poly-ADP-ribosylpolymerases (PARPs). Dr. Sauve's laboratory is focused on the biochemical mechanisms of ADP-ribosyltransferases and the design and synthesis of small molecules that modulate these enzymes. His laboratory is also developing chemical approaches to study NAD metabolism in cells and tissues. Dr. Sauve received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Princeton University.

Dr. Tsai is the Picower Professor of Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. She received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas under the direction of Bradford Ozanne. Dr. Tsai then joined Ed Harlow's laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Massachusetts General Hospital for postdoctoral training.

Dr. Verdin is Associate Director and Senior Investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology and a Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). One focus area in Dr. Verdin’s laboratory is the role of protein acetylation in biological processes, particularly in modulating the immune response. Specifically, his laboratory studies histone deacetylase enzymes (HDACs) that remove acetyl groups from histones and non-histone proteins. Acetylation is a ubiquitous modification affecting a rapidly growing number of cellular proteins and biological processes. Dr. Verdin’s group has demonstrated that two members of the human sirtuin family of HDACs, SirT2 and SirT3, deacetylate non-histone substrates, including tubulin and mitochondrial proteins.

Dr. Wolberger is Professor of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher. Dr. Wolberger's lab uses x-ray crystallography and other biophysical approaches to study the structure and behavior of protein complexes and is the world leader in the structural biology of sirtuin deacetylases.