Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Carsten Schmitz-Peiffer is a Senior Research Fellow in the Diabetes and Obesity Program at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney. His research interests concern the mechanisms of lipid-induced insulin resistance in Type 2 diabetes, with emphasis on the roles of protein kinase C isoforms and sphingolipids, especially ceramides. His research group employs animal models of insulin resistance in combination with transgenic mice, as well as proteomic and lipidomic approaches at both the in vivo and in vitro level, to generate new insights into the molecular mechanisms involved in the defective insulin action seen in obesity and Type 2 diabetes.