Professor Dr Pablo Aschner Montoya is an associate professor of endocrinology at the Javeriana University School of Medicine, Bogotá, Colombia, and a research advisor at San Ignacio University Hospital, Bogotá. He is also the Scientific Director of the Colombian Diabetes Association. Professor Aschner has served as a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on chronic degenerative diseases and currently serves as chair of the International Diabetes Federation Guidelines Task Force. He is a faculty member of the Cambridge Diabetes Seminar and the Latin American Diabetes Epidemiology Course, and is also former president of the Latin American Diabetes Association. Professor Aschner's main research interests include the diagnosis, control and treatment of diabetes, and the epidemiology of diabetes and its complications, as well as the metabolic syndrome in Latin America and the role of diabetes associations in primary healthcare. He has authored, or co-authored, over 100 abstracts, articles and book chapters in the field of diabetes research. He is an advisor and a consultant for Sanofi-Aventis, Merck, Novartis and Astra-Zeneca. He has received research grants from AstraZeneca, Boehringer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Novartis, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi.