RISC Project Management Board

Beverley Balkau is a Director of Research in INSERM U258 in France. Her research interests include the epidemiology of the insulin resistance syndrome, diabetes epidemiology and screening and diagnostic criteria for diabetes. Dr Balkau is the author of more than 100 peer reviewed articles. She was the Principal Investigator of the D.E.S.I.R. Study (Data on an Epidemiological Study of the Insulin Resistance syndrome), a 9-year longitudinal study of 5200 subjects recruited in 1994, and is an investigator and member of the project management board of the EGIR-RISC. Dr Balkau was also one of the investigators in the DECODE study, a meta-analysis of existing European epidemiological studies to investigate the diagnostic criteria for diabetes.

Dr Simon Coppack is reader in Metabolic Medicine in the Academic Medical Unit at St. Bartholomew’s and The Royal London School of Medicine. The post is heavily research oriented and involves work at both the Royal London Hospital and St Bartholomew’s sites. His clinical interests (as Honorary Consultant Physician) include obesity, lipidology and diabetes mellitus as well as general (internal) medicine. Dr Coppack’s research interest are in the field of lipids, obesity, insulin resistance, non-insulin-dependent diabetes and nutritional fluxes. He has received numerous research awards. His research has been supported by research grants from the British Heart Foundation, Diabetes UK, Wellcome Trust, The European Commission Framework V and others. Dr Coppack’s publications include more than 80 peer-reviewed papers, review articles, and book chapters (incl. Diabetes Mellitus in Clinical Biochemistry: metabolic and clinical aspects, eds Marshall and Bangert)

Ele Ferrannini is Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Pisa School of Medicine and chief of the Metabolism Unit of the CNR (National Research Council) Institute of Clinical Physiology in Pisa, Italy. Professor Ferrannini also holds a post as a Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Diabetes Division of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas. Currently serving as the president of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), Professor Ferrannini has a special research interest in diabetes, in particular insulin resistance and compensatory insulin secretion. Professor Ferrannini has published over 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals, he is serving on numerous editorial boards, has been the Editor-in-Chief of Diabetologia and has served as an editor of the International Textbookof Diabetes Mellitus. Link to University of Pisa

Andrea Mari is a researcher at the National Research Council (CNR). His research interest concerns mathematical modelling in the area of metabolism, with specific focus on the glucose-insulin system, tracer kinetics and pharmacokinetics. He has a special interest on model-based methods for the assessment of insulin sensitivity and ß-cell function, developing and applying several original modelling methods, in collaboration with prestigious European and American research centres, and with pharmaceutical industries. Dr. Mari has published numerous articles in international journals and some invited reviews. He is currently involved in several national and international research projects and is Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and member of the Board of its European Chapter. Personal Link to Institute of Biomedical Engineering, CNR, Padova

Personal page at the University of Pisa

Personal page at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne