Governing Committee Members
Professor Katharine Barnard-Kelly PhD
Chair: Governing Committee
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Katharine Barnard, Professor of Health Psychology, specializes in the psychosocial impact and management of illness and long-term conditions. Her longstanding research career spans models of healthcare, process evaluation, quality of life, psychosocial impact, functional health status, psychological burden and their relationship with biomedical outcomes. Recently, Katharine and her team were awarded FDA MDDT qualification for the INSPIRE psychosocial measures to assess expectations and experience of automated insulin dosing systems.
Dr. Shideh Majidi
Co-Chair: Governing Committee
Pediatric Endocrinologist, Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes.
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Primary clinical and research interests include the behavioral and psychosocial aspects of care in youth with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Dr. Majidi is the Director for Behavioral Services for the Pediatric Clinic at Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes. She has worked for the past eight years to implement depression screening and suicide risk assessment at Barbara Davis Center and has collaborated to implement screening across the country.
Professor Tadej Battelino
University Children's Hospital Ljubljana, UMC Ljubljana, Slovenia
Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
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Professor Battelino is currently Consultant and Head of Department of Pediatric and Adolescent
Endocrinology, UMC Ljubljana, Head, Chair of Pediatrics, and Professor of Paediatrics at Faculty of
Medicine, University of Ljubljana. He is PI on several publicly funded research projects in the field of diabetes, endocrinology and metabolism, and was awarded the Slovene national award for research in 2014, and Gold medal for research at the University of Ljubljana in 2017.
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Marissa Town
Children with Diabetes
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Marissa Town, BSN, RN, CDCES, has had type 1 diabetes for 31 years and grew up as an attendee of the Children with Diabetes Friends for Life conferences since the beginning in the year 2000. Marissa has worked in a diabetes clinic, as a pump trainer, and most recently is working as a Clinical Research Manager at Stanford University on the artificial pancreas team as well as on other research studies.
Professor Eric Renard
Chair and Professor of Endocrinology Diabetes and Metabolism, University of Montpellier
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Eric also leads the Department of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Nutrition and is Head of the INSERM Clinical Research Centre at Montpellier University Hospital. Professor Renard devoted his work on developing insulin pump therapy, intra-peritoneal insulin delivery and closed-loop insulin delivery systems and authored more than 250 peer-reviewed papers.
Dr Andrew A Bremer, MD, PhD
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
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Chief of the Pediatric Growth and Nutrition Branch within the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). He is a board-certified internist, pediatrician, and pediatric endocrinologist, and has a Ph.D. in pharmacology.
Lucia M. Novak, MSN, ANP-BC, BC-ADM
Board-certified nurse practitioner
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Co-Executive Director of the Capital Health & Metabolic Center of Capital Diabetes & Endocrine Associates specializing in the comprehensive treatment of diabetes and obesity. Awarded The DAISY Foundation Award for Extraordinary Nurses.
Laurel Messer (Ph.D., RN, CDCES)
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes,
University of Colorado School of Medicine
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A clinical scientist who has specialized in the care of children, adolescents, and young adults with Type 1 Diabetes for over 16 years; research investigator in the PANTHER (Practical AdvaNced THERapies for Diabnetes) research program, conducting clinical research studies related to insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitors (CGM), and automated insulin delivery/closed-loop systems. Dr. Messer’s research interests include factors related to uptake/ongoing use of technology including CGM, insulin pump, and artificial pancreas systems in individuals with type 1 diabetes.
Stanford Diabetes Research Center
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Dr. Rayhan Lal, adult and pediatric endocrinologist, has lived with type 1 diabetes (T1D) for several decades and studied electrical engineering and computer science at U.C. Berkeley. As an engineer and physician-scientist with diabetes, his primary research interest is the design, development and testing of new diabetes technology with his mentor, Dr. Bruce Buckingham.
Mark A. Atkinson, PhD
American Diabetes Association Eminent Scholar for Diabetes Research
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Mark Atkinson (born March 27, 1961) is a medical researcher best known for his contributions to research seeking to predict, prevent, and cure type 1 diabetes.He is the author of over 500 publications and is one of the world's most cited diabetes researchers.. Atkinson currently conducts research at the University of Florida College of Medicine, where he is Director for the Diabetes Institute ...
Steph Habif, EdD, MS
Steph Habif, EdD, MS is a behavioral scientist with 20 years experience in health technology. She currently serves as the Vice President of Behavioral Sciences at Tandem Diabetes Care, where she oversees human factors, clinical and behavioral research teams, and contributes to the overall strategic direction of the company. Steph has held faculty appointments at Stanford University, Columbia University in New York, and Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. She resides with her family in San Diego, CA.
Simon O’Neill
Director of Health Intelligence and Professional Liaison
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Simon O’Neill has lived with type 1 diabetes for nearly 30 years, and has spent the last 25 of them working in various roles at Diabetes UK, the largest charity for all people living with diabetes and the health care professionals who help them. He is currently their Clinical Director, having a background in both adult and children’s nursing.
Richard Holt
Professor in Diabetes and Endocrinology at the University of Southampton
Honorary Consultant Physician in Diabetes and Endocrinology at the University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.
Richard's current research interests are broadly focussed around clinical diabetes but specifically encompass studies of the relationship between mental illness and diabetes and, diabetes and pregnancy. His clinical responsibilities include the diabetes and pregnancy clinic, young adult diabetes clinic and the cystic fibrosis related diabetes service.
Robert A. Vigersky, M.D.
Adult Endocrinologist & Chief Medical Officer of Medtronic Diabetes
Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences
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Bob's career has included time in academia, private practice, and industry. He established the Endocrine Society’s Clinical Practice Guideline Committee serving as its Chair for 6 years and served as Endocrine Society President from 2009-2010. He has also been active in the Diabetes Technology Society which gave him its Leadership Award in 2011. Dr. Vigersky has published over 310 scholarly papers and abstracts focusing on the use of technology to improve outcomes of patients with diabetes.
Diana Naranjo, PhD
Clinical Professor of Pediatrics & Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Stanford Children’s Hospital
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As a licensed clinical psychologist working in diabetes for 12 years, Diana focuses on psychosocial needs of patients and families with diabetes and related distress. Through clinical research, she aims to understand barriers and facilitators to diabetes self-management, families and individual responses to health technology, and provide services that engage youth and their families. Furthermore, as a Latina-American and fluent in Spanish, much of her clinical work focuses on bridging the health-care gap for underserved ethnic minority patients with chronic illness.
Douglas Tynan PhD, ABPP, Professor of Pediatrics,
Sidney Kimmel Medical Collage, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia.
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Doug Tynan is the Coordinator for Mental Health Education for the American Diabetes Association. As a health and child psychologist he has more than 30 years’ experience at AI duPont Hospital for Children and Children National Medical Center in both primary care and diabetes integrated care clinics. At CNMC he helped to develop one of the first comprehensive psychosocial program for children with diabetes. In addition, he has served on State of Delaware and federal HHS advisory boards on health care reform, early childhood programs and Head Start. He was a founding co-editor of Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology and the founding Director of Integrated Health Care at the American Psychological Association. His work has focused on the coordination of health, mental health, education and social services for children.
Marc D Breton, Ph.D.
University of Virginia, Charlottesville VA USA
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Marc Breton is Associate Professor at the University of Virginia and the Associate Director for Research of the UVA Center for Diabetes Technology. He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 2006.
Marc’s research is focused on the design and clinical validation of technological interventions to help manage diabetes, as well as how these new devices may impact people with Diabetes. He has received sustained funding from both institutional and industrial sources, developed with his UVA and international collaborators the modern artificial pancreas systems, and published over 150 peer-reviewed papers.
Mark A Clements MD PhD
Chief Medical Officer, Glooko
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Dr. Clements is recognized as an expert in diabetes data analytics with broad patient care and clinical research experience. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Chemistry (1993) at Butler University, Indianapolis, IN. Following, Dr. Clements earned his Medical Degree (2003) and PhD in Developmental Neuroscience (2003) at Washington University, St. Louis, MO. His previous training in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University School of Medicine provided a strong foundation in basic science research. Dr. Clements trained as a clinical researcher at Children’s Mercy Hospital, where he has applied his skills to clinical trials of new diabetes treatments, clinical trials of treatments designed to prevent type 1 diabetes, intervention development research and risk prediction/health outcomes research in type 1 diabetes. He is Associate Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. He served as Pediatric Chair of the T1D Exchange Clinic Registry from 2016-2019 and currently serves as data science co-lead for the T1D Exchange Quality Improvement Collaborative. He has a particular interest in the application of predictive analytics, real-time data listening, and digital health therapeutics to positively transform diabetes care.