9th Annual Canadian Neurometabolic Meeting

Dr. Sabrina Diano is the Robert R. Williams Professor of Nutrition, Director of the Institute of Human Nutrition and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She is also an adjunct Professor at Yale University, Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology.

Dr. Diano moved to Yale University from Italy in 1994 to pursue her interest in metabolism regulation. She received her PhD in Physiology in 1999 from the University of Naples “Federico II” in Italy for the studies conducted at Yale University, combining her expertise in neuroendocrinology and mitochondria biology to study brain regulation of energy and glucose metabolism.

She became faculty at Yale University in 2000 and then moved to Columbia University Irving Medical Center to the direct the Institute of Human Nutrition in 2020.

Her studies of the fundamental principles of metabolism regulation have been nationally and internationally recognized. She has been featured in the Women in Metabolism ( The “Rosies” of Cell Metabolism), was awarded the 2015 Novo Nordisk Foundation Laureate Award (declined) and was the recipient of the Helmholtz Diabetes Award in 2018.

Dr. Michael completed post-doctoral training in the Metabolic Disease and Obesity Program at the Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University Australia, and in the Center for Hypothalamic Research at UT Southwestern Medical Center USA, where her work focused on hypothalamic circuits and mechanisms regulating food intake, energy expenditure, and glucose homeostasis. She is now an Assistant Professor the Faculty of Pharmacy at Université Laval where her research program continues to explore the integration of metabolic status within the hypothalamus, including cross-talk between arousal promoting and metabolic neurons.

Paul Sabatini was recruited to the Research Institute of McGill University Health Centre as an assistant professor summer 2021. His research focus is on defining the cells and neurocircuits that regulate body weight. This work continues his research from his postdoctoral fellowship with Martin Myers Jr at the University of Michigan on both hypothalamic and brainstem-based cells regulating appetite. Since becoming an independent investigator, Dr. Sabatini is funded by CIHR, NSERC and Pfizer. He has is also an FRQS Junior I Research Scholar and a William Dawson scholar.

Dr. Frank Duca received his PhD from Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (now Sorbonne Université), working on the role of gastrointestinal peptides in the control of food intake. He was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow, under the mentorship of Dr. Tony Lam at Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, examining the role of small intestinal nutrient sensing and microbiota on regulating glucose homeostasis. Dr. Duca’s laboratory at the University of Arizona is focused on the role of the gut-brain axis in the development of obesity and diabetes. Through funding from NIH, USDA, and DoD, his lab investigates how different environmental factors, like diet and toxic exposures, impact metabolic homeostasis. The Duca lab studies how alterations in the gut microbiota can be both a factor and treatment for metabolic diseases via direct host-microbe interactions, as well as through the production of bacterially derived metabolites that can have an impact both locally in the intestine, as well as peripherally, at the liver and brain.