Richard F. Hamman, M.D., DrPH.
Dr. Hamman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is an epidemiologist who works in the area of insulin resistance, obesity, and diabetes in youth and adults. He has been the director of the San Luis Valley Diabetes study, which was a prospective population based study of environmental factors that predispose to the development of diabetes in Hispanic and non-Hispanic white persons. He was also the study chair for the Insulin Resistance in Atherosclerosis Study (IRAS) which has demonstrated a relationship between insulin resistance and the progression of vascular disease. More recently he has been involved in interventional translational research in several studies including the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) and DPP Outcomes study (DPPOS), where he serves as study Vice-chair. He also helped developed the economic measurement portion and main design issues for the Look Ahead Trial, a study of weight loss and progression of atherosclerosis among adults with type 2 diabetes. He is also a major co-investigator on the SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth study, a national registry and follow-up study of youth aged 0-19 with diabetes.
Virginia Englert, MS, RD
Virginia grew up in eastern South Dakota, where she received her education in Dietetics and Health Promotion. She moved to Colorado in 2002 to pursue her Master’s degree in Nutrition and Exercise Science at Colorado State University. After graduating, she began working for a worksite health promotion program at Poudre Valley Health System. In this position, she did nutrition and weight management education for PVHS employees. In December 2004, she began working as the coordinator for CanDo - the Coalition for Activity and Nutrition to Defeat Obesity. CanDo is a community-based coalition aiming to improve the health of the Fort Collins community through healthy eating, active living, and obesity prevention strategies.
Michael Pagliassotti , PhD
Michael Pagliassotti is a professor and Lillian Fountain Smith Endowed Chair in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at Colorado State University. His doctoral degree is from the University of Southern California and his postdoctoral training was pursued at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics. Dr. Pagliassotti’s research interests focus on liver impairments that are associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes. Current funded projects include nutrient effects on insulin action in the liver, mechanisms of disease progression in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and the role of the endoplasmic reticulum as a nutrient sensing organelle. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Nutrition and Metabolism: Clinical and Experimental and is a member of the Integrative Physiology of Obesity and Diabetes study section for NIH.