Tuesday, August 11, 2026
7:00 - 8:30 AM Breakfast - Coppertop***All talks will be held in the Peak 5 Conference Room***
Session 4: Lipid Signaling
08:00 - 08:30 AM “Sphingolipids as Metabolic Modulators in Health and Disease” - L. Ashley Cowart, PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University
08:30 - 09:00 AM “Approaching Parkinson’s Disease as a Fatty Acid-opathy for Therapeutic Target Identification” - Saranna Fanning, PhD, Harvard Medical School
09:00 - 09:15 AM Short Talk: “The Effects of NR and NAD Metabolism in Health and Disease” - Moshe Levi, MD, Georgetown University
09:15 - 09:30 AM Short Talk: “Adipose Tissue Nicotinamide Phosphoribosyltransferase Regulates Systemic Metabolic Function Through Extracellular Vesicle Release” - Sandip Mukherjee, PhD, Washington University School of Medicine
09:30 - 09:35 AM Introduction and Presentation of the David L Williams Award Lecture & Award - Mary Sorci-Thomas, PhD, Medical College of Wisconsin
09:35 - 10:05 AM David L Williams Award Lecture - “The Role of Increased Sympathetic Nervous System Activity in Metabolic Disease” - Kenichi Sakamoto, MD, PhD, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
10:05 – 10:30 AM Coffee Break
Session 5: Lipids and Immunometabolism
10:30 - 11:00 AM “HFpEF: Malady, Model, Meta-inflammatory Mechanisms” - Joseph Hill, MD, PhD, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
11:00 - 11:30 AM “APOE-Linked Lipid Perturbations Reshape Glial Function” - Priyanka Narayan, PhD, NIDDK
11:30 - 11:45 AM Short Talk: “Neutrophils Support Brown Adipose Tissue Thermogenesis” - Samantha Krysa, PhD, Washington University School of Medicine
11:45 - 12:00 PM Short Talk: “Leptin Signaling to Neurons Increases Tolerance to Influenza Infection” - Kartik Rajagopalan, MD, PhD, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
12:00 - 12:15 PM Short Talk: “Weight-Cycling Worsens Obesity-Induced Inflammation Through the Reprogramming of Myeloid Cells and Their Progenitors” - Wenceslao Martinez-Navarrete, PhD Candidate, University of Chicago
12:15 – 1:15 PM Lunch - Coppertop
01:15 – 3:00 PM Afternoon Break/Exhibition/Small Group Discussions
Session 6: Emerging Technologies in Lipid Analysis and Imaging
03:00 - 03:30 PM “Differentiating Lipids with Hyperspectral Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy” - Eric Potma, PhD, University of California, Irvine
03:30 - 04:00 PM “Imaging Metabolic Re-wiring in Aging and Diseases with SuMMIT-SRS” - Lingyan Shi, PhD, University of California San Diego
04:00 - 04:15 PM “Lipotype-sponsored short talk - From Synapse to Systemic: The Expanding Reach of Lipidomics” - Christian Klose, PhD, Lipotype
04:15 - 04:20 PM JLR Lectureship Introduction
04:20 - 04:50 PM Journal of Lipid Research Lectureship: “Resolving Apolipoprotein–Receptor Interactions in Neurodegeneration through Multiscale Molecular Dynamics” - Kayla Sprenger, PhD, University of Colorado, Boulder
04:50 - 05:05 PM Short Talk: “A Lipid Membrane Embedded Model of the Full TREM2–DAP12 Signaling Complex” - David Saeb, PhD Candidate, University of Colorado, Boulder
05:05 - 06:00 PM Pre-dinner Break
Dinner - Imperial Ballroom
6:00 – 9:00 PM
Updated - July 31, 2026