Keynote Speakers Jose C. Florez, M.D., Ph.D. is the Chief of the Diabetes Unit at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and an Institute Member at the Broad Institute. He and his group have contributed to the performance and analysis of high-throughput genomic studies in type 2 diabetes and related traits and complications, in international consortia such as MAGIC, GENIE, DIAGRAM, T2D-GENES, AMP-T2D and SIGMA. He leads the genetic research efforts of the Diabetes Prevention Program, and is the Principal Investigator of the Study to Understand the Genetics of the Acute Response to Metformin and Glipizide in Humans (SUGAR-MGH). In addition to his research and teaching duties, he is clinically active in the MGH Diabetes Center, the Endocrine inpatient consult service, and the Down Syndrome Program. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Current Diabetes Reports, an MGH Research Scholar, and the recipient of the 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineeringprofessionals in the early stages of their independent research careers. Nada Jabado, M.D., Ph.D. Dr. Jabado is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital and a professor of Pediatrics and Human genetics at the McGill University, Montreal, Canada. Nada received her M.D. at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France, and Ph.D. in Immunology in the INSERM, France. Nada’s research focuses on genetics of pediatric brain tumors. Her group established that the pediatric Glioblastomas Multiforme, one of the deadliest cancers in humans, is genetically distinct from the adult glioblastomas and arises due to a novel class of recurrent driver mutations in the histone molecules. The histone mutations lead to an abnormal epigenetic landscape in tumor cells blocking cell differentiation and inducing high-grade invasive tumor transformation. Nada’s work led to a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanisms that cause brain tumours in children and opened up new therapeutic possibilities based on specific mutations in specific patients. Nada’s ground-breaking work was recognized by numerous awards and a generous support from the Canadian Institute of Health Research, Genome Canada and other agencies. Ryuichi Nishinakamura, Ph.D. graduated from the University of Tokyo, and spent several years as a clinical nephrologist. After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1996, he started working on kidney development. He moved to Kumamoto University in 2004 as a professor, and is now a Director, as well as a Professor in the Department of Kidney Development, at the Institute of Molecular Embryology and Genetics, Kumamoto University, Japan. His ultimate goal is to elucidate molecular mechanisms in kidney development and to rebuild the kidney from pluripotent stem cells.