Caroline M. Apovian, MD, FACP, FTOS, DABOM is Co-Director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness (CWMW) in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Hypertension at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. For over thirty years, Dr. Apovian has held a position at the forefront of the obesity and nutrition fields. One of the world’s premier weight management experts, she has distinguished herself as a leading researcher, healthcare provider, teacher, and New York Times bestselling author.

In collaboration with the Divisions of Gastroenterology and Metabolic Surgery, the CWMW will offer comprehensive, multidisciplinary care for patients seeking weight loss. Under Dr. Apovian’s direction, the Endocrinology arm of the Center will specialize in the assessment and treatment of obesity and its comorbidities. Nationally, she is one of the founding creators of the American Board of Obesity Medicine which provides certification and recognition for physicians who have specialized knowledge and training in the practice of obesity medicine.

Her current research interests are weight change and its effects on adipose tissue metabolism and inflammation, obesity and cardiovascular disease, resolution of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease in the bariatric surgery population, disparities in the treatment of obesity in underserved populations, and novel pharmacotherapeutic agents for the treatment of obesity. She is also an expert in sampling subcutaneous adipose tissue and muscle tissue in humans and has been studying the relationship between adipose tissue inflammation and obesity for over 15 years.

Dr. Apovian has published over ten books and over 200 peer-reviewed original research and review articles on obesity and nutrition. Dr. Apovian was a member of the expert panel for updating the 2013 AHA/ACC/TOS Clinical Guidelines for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults, published in the Circulation and Obesity journals and was the Chair of the Endocrine Society Guidelines for Medical Treatment of Obesity published in the Journal of Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2015. She is a former Nutrition Consultant for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Dr. Apovian has given over 200 invited lectures nationally and internationally and served as President of The Obesity Society in 2017-2018. She is also a past Co-Director for the NIH-funded Boston Nutrition and Obesity Research Center.

Dr. Harold Bays is Board Certified in Endocrinology and Internal Medicine, Diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine and Diplomate of the American Board of Clinical Lipidology. He is Medical Director/President of the Louisville Metabolic and Atherosclerosis Research Center and Associate Clinical Professor at the University of Louisville School of Medicine. He has served as an Investigator for over 600 Phase I - IV clinical trials regarding treatments for obesity, dyslipidemias, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and other cardiometabolic and hormonal disorders. Dr. Bays is Chief Science Officer of the Obesity Medicine Association and is Editor in Chief for Obesity Pillars – the journal of the Obesity Medicine Association. Dr. Bays has written and/or served as a contributing author to approximately 350 peer review scientific manuscripts and book chapters, hundreds of scientific abstracts presented at major scientific meetings. He has served as first author and/or co-author for scientific consensus statements, position statements, and clinical practice statements in Obesity Medicine and Clinical Lipidology. He is a Fellow of the Obesity Medicine Association (FOMA), Fellow of the National Lipid Association (FNLA), Fellow of The Obesity Society (FTOS), Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC), and Fellow of the American Society of Preventive Cardiology (FASPC).  Dr. Bays originated the term "adiposopathy" ("sick fat"), which defines how and when the pathogenic consequences of adipose tissue accumulation promote metabolic disease, including dyslipidemia, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension. Dr. Bays has received several scientific awards such as the 2016 Obesity Medicine Association “Obesity Medicine Clinician of the Year” and 2015 National Lipid Association “President’s Service Award.”

Dr. Bramlett received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, her MS in Psychology at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and her MS and PhD degrees in Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of Miami.  She completed her postdoctoral work in Neurotrauma at the University of Miami and she received a postdoctoral fellowship award from the American Heart Association.

Dr. Bramlett is actively involved in undergraduate teaching and serves as Director of the Undergraduate Neuroscience Program at the University of Miami.  Dr. Bramlett is an internationally recognized scientist with over 20 years’ experience in the field of CNS injury including the pathophysiology and treatment of traumatic brain and spinal cord injury as well as stroke. Her laboratory focuses on three areas of traumatic research: 1) neuroprotective strategies for traumatic injury, 2) progressive damage after trauma and 3) secondary injury mechanisms of traumatic brain injury. She is currently funded by NIH, DOD, the State of Florida and the VA. Dr. Bramlett serves on several national review boards and is on the Editorial Board of Journal of Neurotrauma and Translational Stroke Research.  She is the Managing Editor of Therapeutic Hypothermia and Temperature Management.  She is a founding member of the InflamaCORE, LLC, a company dedicated to treating and diagnosing inflammatory injury and disease.

Dr. Cornier is currently Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina. Prior to that he received his undergraduate education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee where he received a Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Engineering in 1987. Dr. Cornier then attended the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Georgia, receiving his medical degree in 1992. He went on to do his internal medicine residency at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC from 1992 to 1995. He followed this with a fellowship in Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes at the University of Colorado health Sciences Center in Denver, Colorado, which he completed in 1999. He was then on faculty at the University of Colorado with the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes until 2021.

 At the University of Colorado, Dr. Cornier was the Associated Division Head for Endocrinology as well as the Associate Director and Medical Director of the University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center. He was the Director of the Clinical Intervention and Translation Core of the Colorado Nutrition Obesity Research Center and an Associate Director of the University of Colorado Obesity Medicine Fellowship Program. Dr Cornier was the Director of the Advanced Lipid Disorders Clinic and Lipoprotein Apheresis Program at University of Colorado Hospital and where he also ran a diabetes clinic. Dr. Cornier was also on staff at Denver Health Medical Center in Denver, Colorado from 1999 to 2016 as a general clinical endocrinologist and at Aspen Valley Hospital in Aspen, Colorado from 2017 to 2021.

 Dr. Cornier is an active clinical and translational investigator with a primary research interest in understanding the complex regulation of food intake and body weight and in studying optimal interventions for weight management and metabolic health. He has also been involved in clinical trials for investigational treatments for lipid disorders and obesity. Dr. Cornier has been an active volunteer in important health-related associations, such as the Endocrine Society, American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, National Lipid Association, and The Obesity Society. He is currently the President-Elect of The Obesity Society.

Dr. de Rivero Vaccari is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery & The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine . He has studied the innate immune response for 14 years and was the first to show the involvement of the inflammasome in vivo in a sterile event, particularly after spinal cord injury. Dr. de Rivero Vaccari has also contributed to studies of the innate immune response following brain injury, stroke, aging, multiple sclerosis, depression, sciatic nerve pain, Alzheimer’s disease, male infertility, male pattern baldness, wound healing, disc degeneration and corneal degeneration. In addition, he has conducted biomarker research on stroke, spinal cord and brain injury, multiple sclerosis, depression and mild cognitive impairment.

Dr. de Rivero Vaccari graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Biology from Florida International University where he was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society (2004). He then pursued his Ph.D. in Physiology & Biophysics at the University of Miami in the laboratory of Dr. Robert Keane (2007) and his post-doctoral fellowship in Neurotrauma at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis in the laboratory of Dr. Dalton Dietrich (2010). In addition, Dr. de Rivero Vaccari has trained on Biomarker Science at the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center and on Computational Immunology at the Santa Fe Institute. He is currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in Business Analytics at the Miami Business School of the University of Miami.

Dr. de Rivero Vaccari is a managing member of InflamaCORE, LLC., an Associate Editor for the Journal Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience, and he has served as an ad hoc reviewer for over 60 different scientific journals. He has co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles, and his work has been cited over 3,000 times.

Dr. Dalton Dietrich is the Kinetic Concepts Distinguished Chair in Neurosurgery and Scientific Director at The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.  He received his Ph.D. in Anatomy from the Medical College of Virginia in 1979 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Pharmacology at Washington University, St. Louis.  Since 1981, Dr. Dietrich has been a faculty member at the University of Miami and is currently Professor of Neurosurgery, Neurology, Biomedical Engineering and Cell Biology. He also serves as Senior Associate Dean for Discovery Science and Co-Director of the Institute for Neural Engineering.

Research in Dr. Dietrich’s laboratory is focused on clarifying the pathophysiology of brain and spinal cord injury with the goal of developing new therapies to protect and enhance recovery. His seminal work in therapeutic hypothermia helped change medical practice for treating cardiac arrest, neonatal encephalopathy and other neurological disorders. Dr. Dietrich is a founding member of InflamaCORE, LLC, and collaborates on studies targeting inflammasome signaling to discover novel therapeutic and diagnostic strategies. He has been listed by the Institute of Scientific Information as a “Highly Cited Researcher” placing him in the top 0.5% of all scientists on the impact his research has made on other scientists. He serves on study sections for NIH, Department of Defense and various Foundations. He is Editor-In-Chief of the Journal Therapeutic Hypothermia & Temperature Management and Deputy Editor of the Journal of Neurotrauma.

Dr. Keane received his bachelor’s degree in biology from SUNY, College at Buffalo and his MS and Ph.D. degree in Genetics from the University of California, Davis.  From 1976-1980 he completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Biology and Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and he received a postdoctoral fellowship award from the Leukemia Society of America.  

Dr. Keane is Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Neurological Surgery and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine.  Dr. Keane is actively involved in medical education and is head coordinator of the Neuroscience and Behavioral Science module for MD and MD/MPH students, and is the recipient of the “Teacher of the Year” award.  Over the last 30 years his research has focused on understanding the innate immune response in the central nervous system. Dr. Keane is the discoverer of inflammasomes in neurons after central nervous system injury.  Dr. Keane currently is the recipient of a fast-track STTR grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a biologic to treat central nervous system injury, and has published extensively in fields of neuroinflammation and neuroimmunology.  He is a founding member of InflamaCORE, LLC, a company dedicated to treating and diagnosing inflammatory injury and disease.

Samuel Klein, MD is the William H. Danforth Professor of Medicine, Director of the Center for Human Nutrition, Chief of the Division of Nutritional Science and Obesity Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.

Dr. Klein received an MD degree from Temple University Medical School and an MS in Nutritional Biochemistry and Metabolism from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He completed residency training in Internal Medicine and a Clinical Nutrition fellowship at Boston University Hospital, a Nutrition and Metabolism Research fellowship at Harvard Medical School, and a Gastroenterology fellowship at The Mt. Sinai Medical Center. He is board certified in Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, and Nutrition.

Dr. Klein is past president of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity and the American Society for Clinical Nutrition. He was inaugural chair of the Integrative Physiology of Obesity and Diabetes NIH study section. He was elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation in 1996 and to the American Association of Physicians in 2008. Dr. Klein has published more than 500 papers in nutrition, metabolism, and obesity. His research activities focus on understanding the mechanisms responsible for metabolic dysfunction associated with obesity and the therapeutic effects of weight loss.

Dr. Koliwad is Chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism and an investigator in the Diabetes Center at The University of California San Francisco, where he holds The Gerold Grodsky Professorship in Diabetes Research and the Mount Zion Health Fund Distinguished Professorship in Endocrinology. His group focuses on determining links between diet, nutrient metabolism, inflammation, and fibrosis in insulin-sensitive tissues, and how these links impact intermediary metabolism and both glucose and energy homeostasis. His group has made key discoveries regarding the biology of inflammation in tissues such as fat, liver, brain, and vasculature that are important to normal physiology and also to the pathogenesis of obesity and consequent diseases such diabetes, steatohepatitis, and cardiovascular disease.

The goal is to identify ways to manipulate the crosstalk between tissue myeloid cells and their parenchymal neighbors, including progenitor cell populations, as a means to slow or halt the development of these diseases. To do so, his group leverages cutting-edge tools to probe metabolic pathways modulating the inflammatory activity of peripheral macrophages, dendritic cells, hypothalamic microglia, and hepatic Kupffer cells. Additionally, the group focuses on probing the heterogeneity of stem-like cell populations in metabolic tissues. Dr. Koliwad’s group has also developed and is deeply characterizing a unique multi-ethnic cohort of lean and obese individuals in order to understand how adipose tissue inflammation and dysfunction drive fat distribution and metabolic disease progression in diverse human populations.

Clinically, Dr. Koliwad attends in the Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Lipid Clinics at UCSF, where he teaches students, residents, nurses, and fellows how to care for challenging and underserved patients.