R. Armour Forse, MD, CM, PhD, FRCS(C), FACS, FCCM, FASMBSis currently the Chief Academic Officer at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, and President of Health Sciences Institute at Renaissance, where he oversees the educational and research programs for the health care system. He is also Clinical Professor of Surgery at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and was previously Professor of Surgery and the Associate Chair of Surgery for Education in the Department of Surgery at Creighton University School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate, medical, and post-doctorate degrees from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and completed his surgical residency at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. He completed a Medical Research Council of Canada research fellowship in surgical metabolism at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and The Rockefeller Institute in New York. He has been in active surgical and bariatric practice for more than 30 years, including being an Assistant Professor of Surgery at McGill University, an Associate Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and the Laszlo Nando Tauber Professor of Surgery at Boston University School of Medicine. Here he worked with Dr. Caroline Apovian to build the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston Medical Center where Dr. Apovian is the current director. Dr. Forse serves on the editorial boards ofObesity Surgery and Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. He is a prolific researcher and publisher with 15 patents, 59 research grants and more than 450 publications including abstracts, chapters, books, and papers.

Caroline M. Apovian, MDis Director of the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston Medical Center and Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. She is a nationally and internationally recognized authority on nutrition and has been in the field of obesity and nutrition since 1990. She was on the expert panel for updating the2013 AHA/ACC/TOS Guideline for the Management of Overweight and Obesity in Adults: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice GuidelinesandThe Obesity Society, which were published inCirculation, Obesity, and theJournal of the American College of Cardiology. She was also the Chair of the 2015 Endocrine Society guidelines on thePharmacologic Management of Obesity. In 2015, she was elected as Vice President of The Obesity Society.