Dr. Tom Inge is a professor and chair of pediatric surgery and Children’s Hospital of Colorado.  In addition to his role as division head for pediatric surgery, in 2017 he established the adolescent bariatric surgery center, integrating a surgical treatment option into existing obesity treatment program for adolescents with severe and other special forms of obesity at the of the Children’s Hospital of Colorado.

Over his prior 16 years of tenure at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Dr. Inge gained extensive experience in advanced minimally invasive pediatric surgery, bariatric surgery, and clinical outcomes research.  With continuous research funding from the NIH over the past decade, he has also been the principal investigator of the Teen-Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery study (www.teen-labs.org), providing an evidence base defining the role of gastric surgery to treat adolescents with clinically severe obesity.  He has authored or co-authored over 140 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters and provided over 120 invited lectures for national and international professional groups.  Tom is a member of the FDA’s Gastrointestinal and Urological Devices Committee, and has served as a consultant to the NIH and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.  He has also served in leadership positions on numerous committees and task forces for surgical and pediatric professional organizations including ASMBS, TOS, AAP, and APSA. 

Anita P. Courcoulas, M.D., M.P.H., FACS is Professor of Surgery and Chief of the Division of Minimally Invasive Bariatric and General Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. She specializes in minimal access general surgery, abdominal surgery during pregnancy, and high-volume bariatric surgery. Dr. Courcoulas attended Brown University where she graduated with Honors and completed her medical degree at Boston University School of Medicine also with high Honors. She completed her General Surgery Internship and Residency, Pediatric Surgery Post Graduate Research Fellowship, and Minimally Invasive Surgery Post Graduate Fellowship training all at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. In addition, she obtained a Master’s Degree in Public Health in Epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health during her surgical training. Currently, Dr. Courcoulas directs a full-time clinical and surgical research group that focuses on surgical outcomes research, clinical trials, and emerging technologies in bariatric surgery. She is the Principal Investigator for several NIH, NIDDK-funded studies; the Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (LABS), Teen LABS, and The Triabetes Study. In addition, she participates in surgical and minimally invasive obesity treatment device trials and is the Co-Director of PittSORCE (University of Pittsburgh Surgical Outcomes Research Center). Dr. Courcoulas is also the Program Director for the Fellowship training program in Advanced Laparoscopic and Bariatric surgery. Dr. Courcoulas is active within many national surgical and obesity organizations and serves on the editorial boards of leading scientific journals. She is a scientific advisor for corporations engaged in surgical innovation. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, abstracts, and book chapters on focused areas of interest in trauma, pediatric, and bariatric surgery.

Dr. Marc Michalsky is a professor of clinical surgery and pediatrics at The Ohio State University, College of Medicine and the surgical director of the Center for Healthy Weight & Nutrition at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Under Dr. Michalsky’s leadership the center’s Adolescent Bariatric Surgery Program has become both nationally and internationally recognized for its clinical excellence a well as ongoing participation in the Teen-Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (Teen-LABS) study; an ongoing multicenter NIH-funded observational study designed to explore the long-term safety and efficacy of adolescents undergoing bariatric surgery. In August, 2015, the bariatric program at Nationwide became the country’s first free-standing pediatric center to be awarded accreditation as part of the American College of Surgeons’ Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP). On the national level, Dr. Michalsky has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on clinical outcomes related to bariatric surgery in the adolescent population and has served on various national organization committees including the American Society of Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS), American Pediatric Surgical Association (APSA), American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American College of Surgeons (ACS). In addition, he currently serves as a member of the FDA Gastrointestinal and Urological Device Committee and ACS-MBSAQIP Standards and Verification Committee.

Dr. Brandt is a Professor of Surgery, Pediatrics, and Ethics at Baylor College of Medicine. She is a recognized educator, and has been the recipient of numerous teaching awards. She has held various leadership roles in education, and is currently Senior Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Baylor College of Medicine. She is a pediatric surgeon based at Texas Children’s Hospital, with clinical expertise in general pediatric surgery, bariatric surgery, endocrine surgery, biliary atresia, and anorectal malformations. She has served in a number of national leadership positions in the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Pediatric Surgical Association, the American Board of Surgery (Pediatric Surgery Board) and is a Governor of the American College of Surgeons. Dr. Brandt is an established and successful clinical researcher with over 170 peer reviewed publications, 26 chapters and 2 books published to date. As a mentor to students, residents and faculty, she has developed a strong interest in self-care for physicians and speaks regularly on compassion fatigue, work-life balance and the art of medicine. She writes about these issues in her blog, www.wellnessrounds.org.

My research background includes both clinical and basic science research in the field of obesity. In terms of clinical research, I have had the pleasure of being a site principal investigator and now investigator in the TEEN-Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery, a NIH funded program for the past nine years. This is an important project looking prospectively at a cohort of adolescents undergoing weight loss surgery. In this vein, I have recently started a Children and Adolescent Weight Loss Program here at Women and Children’s Hospital of Buffalo to continue both the clinical work as well as the research in this area. In addition I have an interest in basic science related to both adipocyte biology as well as control of appetite. My lab has done extensive research in the area of melanocortin receptors and the role that MC3R and MC4R receptor play in appetite control. These studies have included sequencing MC4R in children who are extremely obese. We have recently identified several new single nucleotide polymorphisms that then can be tested in-vitro in cell culture to determine ligand binding and signaling defects that might explain the receptor dysfunction in these children. In addition before joining the University at Buffalo, I also was involved in several studies at University of Alabama at Birmingham looking at microbiome in obese children.