Keynote Speakers

This year we have a very strong line up of national and international speakers. Our keynote speakers for 2007 include:

Dr Tim Gill is Director of the NSW Centre for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Sydney. He also serves as Executive Officer for the Australasian Society for the study of Obesity and acts as Regional Co-ordinator for the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) in the Asia-Pacific and oversees the planning and implementation of IOTF projects in the region. Dr. Gill has authored several key reports on obesity for State and Federal Government departments as well as national and international agencies and has served on a number of World Health Organization expert committees on Obesity and Chronic disease.

Dr. Mike Rayner is Director of the British Heart Foundation Health Promotion Research Group which is based within the Department of Public Health of the University of Oxford. Mike works closely with voluntary organisations concerned with food and health in the UK and in Europe. He is currently Vice-Chair of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming and a trustee of the National Heart Forum in the UK. He is the Chair of the Nutrition Expert Group of the European Heart Network based in Brussels.

Dr. Greg Steinberg completed doctoral studies in 2002 at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada under the supervision of Prof. David Dyck. Greg's doctoral thesis demonstrated an important role of the adipocyte derived hormone leptin in regulating muscle fat metabolism and identified that muscle was an important target for leptin action and that leptin resistance was a major contributing factor to reduced fat metabolism in obesity. As a result of these findings Greg received 6 major awards at international conferences and twice was presented the young investigator award by the American Physiological Society. In 2002, Greg moved to Melbourne as a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Bruce Kemp's laboratory at St. Vincent's Institute of Medical Research. Currently, Greg is a senior Research Fellow and Head of the Metabolism Unit at St. Vincent's Institute. His laboratories primary focus is on the regulation of energy metabolism and insulin sensitivity and is funded through generous support from the HNMRC, DART and the Lord Mayor's Charitable Fund-Eldon and Anne Foote Trust.