Saltiel Life Sciences Symposium 2026: Speaker Bios and Poster Session

Amber Alhadeff is an associate professor at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, where her lab investigates gut-brain communication. The Alhadeff lab employs a combination of modern neuroscience tools — with a focus on in vivo approaches — to understand the neural circuits underlying feeding behavior, and how they relate to diseases such as obesity. Her awards and honors include receiving the NIH Director's New Innovator Award and being named a Pew Biomedical Scholar and a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow.

Daniel Drucker is a clinician scientist at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute whose laboratory studies the translational biology of gut hormones. His lab's discoveries have resulted in 33 issued U.S. patents and led to the development of new drug classes for diabetes and obesity. The impact of his work has been recognized with numerous international awards, including the Manpei Suzuki International Prize for Diabetes Research, the Rolf Luft Award from the Karolinska Institute, and election into the Royal Society (London) and the National Academy of Sciences.

Timo Müller is the director of the Institute of Diabetes and Obesity at Helmholtz Munich and a professor of energy and glucose metabolism at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Müller studied animal physiology at Philipps University Marburg, Germany, and received his Ph.D. in 2009 from the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Following his doctoral studies, he joined the Metabolic Disease Institute at the University of Cincinnati, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2011, he returned to Germany to lead the Molecular Pharmacology Group at the Institute of Diabetes and Obesity at Helmholtz Munich. 

Müller’s research focuses on the development and evaluation of novel unimolecular pharmacotherapies for the treatment of metabolic syndrome, particularly obesity and diabetes. He is part of an international team of scientists that pioneered the concept of GLP-1–based dual and triple agonists for treating obesity and diabetes. He has published more than 200 scientific papers, including articles in Cell, Nature, Cell Metabolism, Nature Medicine and Nature Metabolism.

Martin Myers, Jr., is the Marilyn H. Vincent Professor of Diabetes Research at the University of Michigan and a nationally recognized leader in diabetes science. Myers received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, and both his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University before launching his independent research career at the Joslin Diabetes Center/Harvard Medical School. 

Since joining the University of Michigan faculty in 2004, Myers has led pioneering research on how brain circuits regulate metabolism, blood glucose, and body weight — and how new diabetes medicines exert their effects in the brain. Myers previously served as the director of the Michigan Diabetes Research Center and as the editor-in-chief of Diabetes, and now directs the Elizabeth Weiser Caswell Diabetes Institute at the University of Michigan. He has been honored by numerous organizations for his scientific contributions, including Outstanding Scientific Achievement Awards from The Obesity Society and from the American Diabetes Association, the Ernst Oppenheimer Award from the Endocrine Society and Basic Research Awards from University of Michigan. 

Tune H. Pers is an associate professor and computational genomicist at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR), University of Copenhagen. His research integrates human obesity genetics with hypothalamic single-cell biology and spatial transcriptomics to understand the mechanisms underlying cardiometabolic disease. 

Pers has developed computational frameworks, including DEPICT and CELLEX and CELLECT, to bridge GWAS findings with functional genomics. His work spans obesity genetics, hypothalamic neurobiology and variant-to-function discovery pipelines, with active collaborations across leading research institutions. He has contributed to major publications in Nature Metabolism and other high-impact journals, focusing on how genetic variants influence brain circuits controlling energy balance and feeding behavior.

Randy Seeley is the Henry K. Ransom Endowed Professor of Surgery, Internal Medicine and Nutrition at the University of Michigan School of Medicine. He also serves as the director of the NIH-funded Michigan Nutrition Obesity Research Center (MNORC). His scientific work has focused on the gut-brain axis and its role in regulating energy balance and metabolism, emphasizing new treatment strategies for obesity and diabetes. 

Seeley has received numerous awards including the 2009 Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award from the American Diabetes Association. He has published over 400 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited more than 47,000 times and a Scopus h-index of 109.

Kevin W. Williams is an associate professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where he directs a research program in the Center for Hypothalamic Research and Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute. His lab investigates how neural circuits and signaling mechanisms in the brain regulate feeding behavior, energy expenditure, and glucose metabolism. He is the recipient of Novo Nordisk's Helmholz Young Investigator Diabetes Award, the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior's Hoebel Prize for Creativity and the Obesity Society's Xavier Pi-Sunyer Award, among other honors.