AuPS 2015 Hobart - Invited Lectures

Professor Stefan Bröer

Australian National University, Australia

Amino acid transport - translating basic discovery into improving health

Stefan studied Biochemistry at the University of Tuebingen/Germany from 1981 to 1986. He completed his Masters in 1987 and moved to the Research Center in Juelich where he worked on amino acid producing bacteria during his PhD. He was awarded his PhD in 1991 and moved to the University of Illinois in Chicago as a research fellow of the German Science Foundation. In 1993 he was appointed as Junior Lecturer at the University of Tuebingen in the Institute of Physiological Chemistry. In 1998 Stefan was promoted to Senior Lecturer and moved to the Institute of Physiology at the University of Tuebingen. In 2000 Stefan moved to ANU as a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006 and to full Professor in 2008. Stefan was treasurer and council member of the Australian Physiological Society from 2005-2009.

Professor Bret Goodpaster

Translational Research Institute for Metabolism and Diabetes, USA

The impact of exercise on insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes

Bret Goodpaster, Ph.D. is the Director of the Exercise Metabolism Core and Senior Investigator at the TRI and Professor at the Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute at Lake Nona. Dr. Goodpaster studies the role of exercise on energy metabolism in aging, obesity and diabetes. In his role at the TRI, he will help decipher biological mechanisms underlying the health benefits of exercise that can be translated back into new and better treatments for these conditions.

Dr. Goodpaster’s primary research is in the pathophysiology of human obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes. He has received a number of awards and honors for his work, including the Nathan Shock Award from the National Institute of Aging in 2008, awarded to the most outstanding investigator in the US in the field of Aging. He is particularly well known for “the athlete’s paradox” which has shifted the paradigm in Type 2 diabetes research to investigate, how and why does fat accumulation in muscle cause insulin resistance in some subjects but not others? And which are the good fats and which are the bad fats?