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.

Mr. Hutt is a senior counsel in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling, LLP specializing in food and drug law. He graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School and obtained a Masters of Law degree in Food and Drug Law from NYU Law School. Mr. Hutt served as Chief Counsel for the Food and Drug Administration during 1971-1975. He is the co-author of the casebook used to teach food and drug law throughout the country and has published more than 175 book chapters and articles on food and drug law and health policy. Mr. Hutt has been a member of the Institute of Medicine since it was founded in 1971. He serves on academic, philanthropic, and venture capital advisory boards, and the boards of startup biotechnology companies. Mr. Hutt recently served on the Panel on the Administrative Restructuring of the National Institutes of Health and the Working Group to Review Regulatory Activities within the Division of AIDS of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the AERAS Global TB Vaccine Foundation.

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. Langer is the Kenneth J. Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Langer has over 800 articles. He also has over 500 issued or pending patents worldwide, one of which was cited as the outstanding patent in Massachusetts in 1988 and one of 20 outstanding patents in the United States. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 100 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies; a number of these companies were launched on the basis of these patent licenses. He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 - 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002. Dr. Langer has co-founded a number of companies including: AIR (Advanced Inhalation Research, Inc.; acquired by Alkermes), EnzyMed, Inc. (acquired by Albany Molecular), Enzytech, Inc. (merged with Alkermes), Focal, Inc. (acquired by Genzyme), MicroCHIPS, Momenta Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:MNTA), Pervasis Therapeutics, Sontra Medical Corporation (OTC:SONT), TransForm Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (acquired by Johnson & Johnson). Dr. Langer is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.

Dr. Maniatis is the Thomas H. Lee Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. He is a co-founder of the Genetics Institute and Acceleron. Dr. Maniatis is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

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. 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. Sharp is currently Institute Professor in the Center for Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over his 30-year career at MIT, he served as Director of the Center for Cancer Research, Head of the Department of Biology and Founding Director of the McGovern Institute. Dr. Sharp's landmark achievement was the discovery of RNA splicing in 1977. For this work, he shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Dr. Sharp has authored more than 300 scientific papers and is co-founder of Biogen Idec, Inc. and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. Dr. Sharp is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

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.