Professor Stephen N Davis, MD, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, USA

Professor Davis is currently Rudolph Kampmeier Professor in the Departments of Medicine and Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and Chief of the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Professor Davis is widely recognized for his outstanding contributions to the physiology of counterregulatory responses to hypoglycemia. His major research achievements include the demonstration that insulin has a direct and potent effect on the response of the sympathetic nervous system to hypoglycemia and that prior hypoglycemia in a normal individual causes a subsequent impairment of the usual counterregulatory response. Professor Davis has defined the role of cortisol in this phenomenon and has also demonstrated significant gender differences in hypoglycemia counterregulatory responses.

 

 

Professor Harriet Wallberg-Henriksson, MD, PhD, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Professor Wallberg-Henriksson is Professor of Physiology at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and General Secretary (since 2001) at the Scientific Council for Medicine of the Swedish Research Council, Sweden. Professor Wallberg-Henriksson is recognized for her pioneering work on the molecular mechanisms of glucose transport in skeletal muscle as stimulated by insulin or by physical exercise. She has made major contributions to our understanding of insulin resistance in skeletal muscle, of the role of hyperglycemia in the autoregulation of glucose transport in muscle tissue and of the effects of physical training on insulin sensitivity in muscle. Professor Wallberg-Henriksson has successfully combined basic laboratory research using animal models with clinical studies in normal subjects and patients with diabetes to elucidate the mechanisms by which insulin and exercise regulate glucose transport and metabolism in skeletal muscle.