Medical:
Dr. Robert Dent, MD, FRCPC

Dr. Robert Dent is a specialist in Internal Medicine with academic appointments in Endocrinology and surgery at the University of Ottawa.

In 1992 he established the Weight Management Clinic at the Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa. This is a multidisciplinary clinic designed with these objectives: patient care, teaching health care professionals and research in the genotype phenotype associations of obesity. This clinic design has been adopted in several Canadian university centres.

With respect to research, he has 35 publications in peer-reviewed journals in the last seven years. These publications deal with the design and outcomes of the clinic; and the genetics of obesity. Since 2011, he and Dr. Ruth McPherson hold a CIHR grant entitled Metabolic and Genetic determinants of Obesity and Obesity-related Phenotypes.

During the years 2005 to 2007, he was a member of the Expert Committee for the Canadian Clinical Practice Guidelines on the management and Prevention of Obesity and contributed two chapters to that work which were published and contributed two chapters to that work which were published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2007.

Other memberships include: The Canadian Obesity Network (founding Membership), Bariatric Surgery panel to develop the Health Technology Utilization guidelines of Ontario, November 2005, Chairman for the working group on obesity for the Champlain Primary Care CVD Prevention Guidelines both in September 2006 and for the 2012 edition of the Ontario Bariatric Network.

Since 2009, he has worked with the Ministry of Health of Ontario as Chairman. The Ontario Bariatric Network Patient Assessment Working Group. The objectives of this committee were to develop criteria to identify appropriate candidates for bariatric surgery including those outside the usual BMI and age ranges; to develop a structured assessment process to allow fair and equitable access to obese patients requiring bariatric surgery.

His primary interests include, obesity treatment, psychosocial aspects of obesity, patient advocacy, and the genotype-phenotype associations of obesity.

Surgical:
Michel Gagner, MD, FRCSC, FACS, FASMBS, FICS, AFC (Hon.)

Dr. Michel Gagner was born in 1960 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Dr. Gagner obtained a Diploma in Sciences at the Seminaire de Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke in 1978 and his M.D. from the Faculte de Medecine de l'Universite de Sherbrooke in Canada in 1982. He did his surgical training at McGill University in Montreal from 1982-1988. During his residency he completed 2 years of a Ph.D. program on human lipolysis in sepsis at the Royal Victoria Hospital, McGill University from 1984-1986. Dr. Gagner completed also fellowships in Hepatic surgery at Hopital Villejuif in Paris, France and Pancreatico-Biliary surgery at Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, from 1989-1990.

Upon completion of his fellowships, he was recruited to the Universite de Montreal School of Medicine, Hotel-Dieu de Montreal, where he was Assistant Professor of Surgery (1990-1995). He then spent several years at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland where he co-founded the Minimally Invasive Surgery Center (1995-1998). He was appointed the Franz Sichel Professor of Surgery and director of the Minimally invasive Surgery Center of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, from 1998 to 2003. He joined Weill Medical College of Cornell University (New York) as Professor of Surgery and Chief of the section of laparoscopic and Bariatric surgery (2003-2007). He was until recently, chair of dept. of Surgery at the Mount Sinai Medical Center (Miami) and Professor of Surgery at Florida International University, currently Professor of Surgery in Montreal.

Dr. Gagner is known for his contributions in the field of Minimally Invasive Surgery, in particular the first description of laparoscopic adrenalectomy for Cushing syndrome and pheochromocytoma (1992), first description of laparoscopic pancreatectomy (distal and proximal) (1992-93), first description of endoscopic neck surgery with parathyroidectomy in 1995, first transgastric cholecystectomy in 1997 (NOTES), first description of laparoscopic duodenal switch for obesity in 1999 and laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy in 2000. More recently, he was co-surgeon for the first World transatlantic robotic cholecystectomy, between New York City and Strasbourg (France), the only surgical article published in Nature in 2001.

He has over 250 published journal articles, 40 book chapters and 6 books on Minimally Invasive Surgery. He has been visiting professor and operated in over 60 institutions in 48 countries. He has held prominent positions in more than 35 societies and organizations. He has been on the editorial boards of 12 surgical journals.

Dr. Gagner also has received a number of honorary memberships and awards throughout his career. His most recent contributions focus on innovative upper digestive tract surgery like bariatric and endoluminal gastric procedures.