Join us as the Arts & Sciences undergraduate summer research students present their projects. There will also be a keynote in the beginning Dr. Silvia Corvera, Professor of Molecular Medicine and Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research at UMass Chan Medical School.
Silvia Corvera is Professor of Molecular Medicine, and holds the Endowed Chair in Diabetes Research at UMass Chan Medical School.
She received her M.D. and MSc in Molecular Biology at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, and was awarded an NIH Fogarty International Fellowship to conduct postdoctoral research studies in the USA. She was on the Faculty at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania before moving to the University of Massachusetts Medical School to the newly formed Program in Molecular Medicine.
The goal of her lab is to understand the relationship between obesity, insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes. Her studies center on understanding mechanisms of human adipose tissue development and function. Current efforts are focused on elucidating the mechanisms by which mesenchymal progenitor cells develop into different types of adipocytes, including white, and beige, with the goal of identifying potential therapeutic strategies in Type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes.
She has served on numerous national advisory committees, including the NIH BMDM study section, Chair of the Mentor Advisory Group for the new “Pathway to Stop Diabetes” of the American Diabetes Association, and was a member of the NIH Diabetes Research Strategic Plan Working Group for the Diabetes Mellitus Interagency Coordinating Committee (DMICC) of NIDDK (2010). She has served as organizatizer for national meetings including for the Keystone Symposia, and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) and has been a member of the Scientific Sessions Meeting Planning Committee of the American Diabetes Association. She has served on the editorial boards of FASEB J., Diabetes and the Journal of Biological Chemistry. She is also committed to developing the next generation of biomedical scientists, having served as the director of the MD/PhD program at UMass Chan from 2019 to 2021.