Lori Laffel, MD, MPH
Dr. Laffel is Chief of the Pediatric, Adolescent and Young Adult Section at the Joslin Clinic, and a Senior Investigator in the Section on Genetics and Epidemiology at the Joslin Diabetes Center, as well as an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Under her leadership, the pediatric program at Joslin has quadrupled in size and is recognized worldwide as a major pediatric diabetes center for clinical care and research. She has been the Principal Investigator and Program Director of Joslin’s NIH-funded postdoctoral fellowship and early career development training grants for pediatric endocrinologists entering the field of diabetes research.

Dr. Laffel has been a member of the Advisory Board of the International Society of Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes and a member on the Clinical Advisory Committee for JDRF. She was the co-editor on the recently released ADA-JDRF Sourcebook on type 1 diabetes through the Lifespan. She also served as Co-Chair of JDRF’s Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) Study, which provided the benchmark for insurance reimbursement for CGM. As Co-Chair of this study, she, along with her co-investigators, received the Mary Tyler Moore and S. Robert Levine Excellence in Clinical Research Award from JDRF.

Dr. Laffel lectures at the undergraduate and graduate levels and serves as an invited speaker at local, national, and international meetings in areas of pediatric diabetes, childhood obesity, nutrition, behavioral and outcomes research, and the assessment and translation of new technologies in diabetes. She is the principal investigator on multiple clinical research grants with NIH or foundation funding. Dr. Laffel also contributes to the peer review process for journals and grants nationally and internationally, reviewing for NIH and JDRF, among others, and she is an Associate Editor for Diabetic Medicine. She received her medical degree from the University of Miami School of Medicine and her master’s degree in Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Laffel did her pediatric training at Children’s Hospital and her fellowship training at Children’s Hospital and Joslin.

Howard Wolpert, MD
Dr. Wolpert is Senior Physician in the Section of Adult Diabetes at the Joslin Diabetes Center, Director of the Joslin Institute of Technology Translation, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was born and attended medical school in South Africa. He received residency training in Internal Medicine at Deaconess Hospital/Harvard Medical School, followed by fellowship at the Joslin Diabetes Center and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, passing the Endocrinology Board examinations at the 99th percentile.

Dr. Wolpert’s research and clinical interests focus on the use of technology in diabetes care and enhancing patient adherence, and he established the Insulin Pump and Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) Programs at Joslin. He is the author of Smart Pumping, a guidebook on insulin pump therapy, and Transitions in Care, a guidebook focusing on the issues and challenges faced by young adults during the transition to independent diabetes self-care, both published by the American Diabetes Association.

Dr. Wolpert has been Principal Investigator in several multi-center randomized controlled studies involving diabetes technology, and his group received a Special Performance award for achieving the best outcome data of the 10 sites in the landmark multicenter JDRF CGM trial. After completion of that trial, Dr. Wolpert was active in the JDRF-sponsored lobby initiative that succeeded in broadening insurance coverage for real-time CGM for adults with type 1 diabetes. Dr. Wolpert was a member of the Endocrine Society CGM Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee and primary author of the recommendations for real-time CGM use in adults.

Dr. Wolpert is the current recipient of JDRF funding to develop an insulin bolus for higher fat meals, and also to evaluate the utility of point-of-care insulin measurements (using fingerstick blood droplets, similar to home glucose meters) in diabetes self-management.