Dr. Goldstein has been involved with sexual dysfunction research since the late 1970's. He has authored about 350 peer reviewed publications and multiple chapters, and edited 6 textbooks in the field. His interests include penile microvascular bypass surgery, surgery for dyspareunia, sexual health management post cancer treatment, genital dysesthesia/persistent genital arousal disorder, physiologic investigation of sexual function in men and women, and diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction in men and women. Dr. Goldstein is Director of Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital, Clinical Professor of Surgery at University of California, San Diego and practices medicine at San Diego Sexual Medicine. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Sexual Medicine Reviews and past Editor of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. He is a Past President of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health and the Sexual Medicine Society of North America. He holds a degree in engineering from Brown University and received his medical degree from McGill University. The World Association for Sexual Health awarded the Gold Medal to Dr. Goldstein in 2009 in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the field, in 2012 he received the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health Award for Distinguished Service in Women’s Sexual Health, in 2013 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, and in 2014 he received the ISSM Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Sexual Medicine. He is happily married to his college sweetheart Sue, and together they have three children and five grandchildren.

Mrs. Goldstein is an AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator and an ACRP Certified Clinical Research Coordinator, as well as managing editor of Sexual Medicine Reviews. She works at San Diego Sexual Medicine to develop clinical research projects, write protocols and oversee clinical trials, as well as supervise educational programs and support trainees. Mrs. Goldstein’s passion is education and in addition to co-authoring When Sex Isn’t Good to provide education and empowerment to women with sexual dysfunction, she has served as Education Chair of ISSWSH and currently serves on the Global Development and Online Services Committees and Chairs the Industry Relations Committee for the International Society for Sexual Medicine. In addition, she develops programs for The Institute for Sexual Medicine, a charitable corporation dedicated to research and education in the field.

Dr. Kellogg-Spadt is the Director of Female Sexual Medicine at Academic Urology’s Center for Pelvic Medicine in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. In this capacity, Dr. Kellogg performs direct patient care, consultative services as a vulvovaginal and pelvic pain specialist, researcher, educator and sexual dysfunction clinician and therapist. She is a Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health.

Dr. Kellogg is Professor of OB/GYN at Drexel University College of Medicine; Professor of Human Sexuality at Widener University; Associate Professor at Rutgers University Robert Wood Johnson School of Medicine and Clinical Associate faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. She is the course director for the Female Sexual Health Clinical Preceptorship and a member of the Board of Directors, Scientific Program Committee and Chair of the Fellowship Committee for the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health.

Dr. Kellogg is a certified sexuality counselor and therapist. She has been a featured columnist in The New York Times “Ask the Experts’ column and is the author/coauthor of 2 books, 10 books chapters and 75 peer-reviewed articles appearing in publications including: Journal of Sexual Medicine, Journal of Reproductive Medicine, International J Urogyencology, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Urology, Women’s Health Care, Female Patient, and Journal of Sex, Education and Therapy.

Dr. Kellogg speaks nationally and internationally on topics related to female sexuality, and has been featured in popular venues, including: The Today Show, 20/20, CNN, Discovery Channel, American Milestones, and Web MD.

Dr. Kellogg received her Ph.D. in Human Sexuality; OB/GYN practitioner certificate from the University of Pennsylvania; and MSN in Maternal Child Health from Loyola University in Chicago.

She is an active researcher and has been an investigator in a NIH trial and several industry trials investigating female sexual dysfunction and pelvic pain syndromes.

Dr. Choll Kim graduated cum laude from Harvard Medical School and completed his fellowship training in complex spine surgery at the Mayo Clinic. In addition, he is double-board certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American Board of Spine Surgery.

Dr. Kim is an internationally recognized expert in the field of computer-assisted minimally invasive spine surgery. He has trained and continues to train specialists throughout the country on the safe and effective application of state-of-the-art techniques using image guidance and navigation technologies.

Dr. Kim utilizes a broad range of minimally invasive treatments to effectively treat all aspects of complex spinal disorders, including herniated disks, spinal stenosis, adult scoliosis, spondylolisthesis, traumatic injuries, tumors, and infections throughout the entire spine from the neck to the low back. He is one of only a handful of surgeons in the world to master laser endoscopic spine surgery (LESS), a state-of-the-art minimally invasive procedure that effectively treats herniated disks, radiculopathy and sciatica. The LESS procedure can be performed under local anesthesia, in a same-day setting and with a small stab incision that is covered with a bandaid.

A leader in his field, Dr. Kim is the founder and past-president of the Society for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery (SMISS), the founder of Minimally Invasive Spine Centers of Excellence (MIS-COE), the chair of the MIS Committee for the International Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery (ISASS), the director of the Advanced Spine & Joint Institute at Alvarado Hospital and an associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Furthermore, Dr. Kim is a Qualified Medical Evaluator and a past voting member of the FDA Orthopedic Devices Panel, which reviews all new spinal technologies. He has designed minimally invasive instrumentation used by surgeons around the world. Dr. Kim is an active member of the North American Spine Society (NASS) and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), and a fellow of the Scoliosis Research Society. Dr. Kim has over 200 publications and presentations.

Dr. Kim is a Senior Investigator at the Institute for Sexual Medicine in San Diego, as well as an associate editor of Sexual Medicine Reviews. A member of the AUA, ISSM, ISSWSH, and SMSNA, Dr. Kim has been engaged in research on the physiology of sexual dysfunction since the mid-1980s. He has published and lectured extensively and has participated in the training of numerous students and fellows in sexual medicine. He was among the early investigators to describe the role of nitric oxide in penile erection and has consistently contributed to the field of sexual medicine with research in both male and female sexual function, being recognized with numerous research prizes from various sexual medicine societies. Dr. Kim was a member of the editorial board of The Journal of Sexual Medicine for the first decade of the journal through 2014. Previously, he has held positions as Assistant Director of the Laboratory for Sexual Medicine Research at the Boston University School of Medicine, Chief Scientific Officer of Alagin Research, a biotechnology company devoted to developing therapeutics and diagnostics in sexual medicine, and Interim Vice President of R&D at Sprout Pharmaceuticals, assisting in gaining regulatory approval for the first treatment for hypoactive sexual desire disorder in premenopausal women in both the US and Canada. Dr. Kim continues to serve as a consultant to other companies developing therapies for sexual dysfunction. Dr. Kim received his BA in biology, MA in biochemistry and PhD in physiology from Boston University and completed a research fellowship in cardiology at the University of California, San Diego.

Barry R. Komisaruk is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University-Newark, having graduated from the City University of New York in with a B.S. in Biology in 1961, from Rutgers University with a PhD in Psychobiology in 1965, and a Postdoctoral NIH fellowship in Neuroendocrinology at UCLA in 1966.

He has served as a Program Director at the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS), on the Psychobiology Review Panel at the National Science Foundation, and as Associate Editor on the Journal of Sexual Medicine and Sexual Medicine Reviews. His research firsts include identification of brain regions activated during orgasm in women, the role of the Vagus nerves in conveying genital sensation in women with severed spinal cord, the phenomenon and mechanism of the pain-blocking action of vaginal stimulation, and recognition of Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD) as a form of genital nerve radiculopathy. The research has been funded by grants from the NIH, NSF, and State and private foundations (grant funding: > $12M) and resulted in more than 160 research articles, plus 170 conference abstracts and 4 books, including “The Science of Orgasm,” published in 7 languages, and in 2017 “Behavioral Neuroendocrinology”. He has received the Hugo F. Beigel Research Award in Sexuality and the Bullough Award of the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and supervised the doctoral dissertations of 26 PhDs and 20 postdoctoral scholars.

Dr. Kenneth M. Peters is chief of the Department of Urology at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak and medical director of the Beaumont Women’s Urology and Pelvic Health Center, a unique multidisciplinary center dedicated to women with chronic pelvic pain and voiding dysfunction. Dr. Peters is also Professor and Chair of Urology at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in Rochester, Michigan. He graduated with honors from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and earned his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr Peters subsequently completed his training in surgery and urology at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, where he also completed a fellowship in female urology and urodynamics.

Widely recognized as a leader in research, Dr. Peters is internationally known for his work on interstitial cystitis, neuromodulation for voiding dysfunction, nerve rerouting surgery to restore voiding in spina bifida patients, and adult human stem cell injection for stress urinary incontinence. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed scientific papers and book chapters and has millions of dollars in NIH and DOD funding.

Dr. Peters is an active and well-respected clinician, educator and researcher who specializes in the treatment of voiding dysfunction, pelvic pain and female urology. He is an active member of the American Urological Association (AUA), the North Central Section of the AUA, the Society for Urodynamics & Female Urology, and the International Neuromodulation Society. He has served on the Research Council of the American Urological Association. Dr. Peters has a private practice in Royal Oak, Michigan.

An internationally known expert in the neurobiology of sexual behavior, Dr. Pfaus has authored over 200 publications and chapters that examine how the brain’s neurochemical and neuroanatomical systems are organized for sexual arousal, desire, pleasure, and inhibition. His work focuses on the role played by stimuli associated with sexual reward in priming sexual responses and has revealed a strong effect of experience with sexual pleasure on the crystallization of sexual attraction, preference, and performance. His laboratory has also played a major role in the preclinical development of drugs to treat sexual arousal and desire disorders. His research has been reported worldwide in the popular media, and he has been interviewed for Time, Newsweek, Playboy, Scientific American, The Scientist, CBC, BBC, and ABC’s Nightline. He has been featured in interviews in the Discovery Channel’s Sex Files, Daily Planet, and The Nature of Things, and he has been interviewed in several documentaries, including the joint HBO-BBC documentary “Middle Sex”.

Originally from the US, Dr. Pfaus received his PhD in Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1990. After postdoctoral training in molecular biology at New York’s Rockefeller University in the laboratory of Dr. Donald Pfaff, Dr. Pfaus was hired in the Center for Studies in Behavioral Neurobiology at Concordia University in Montréal in 1992, where he was a professor of psychology and neuroscience and held joint appointments in the graduate Departments of Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Kinesiology and Applied Physiology. Since 2019 he has been a Senior Researcher with the Centro de Investigaciones Cerebrales at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, México. His research has been funded by grants from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, NIH, USA. Dr. Pfaus is the Editor-in-Chief of Current Sexual Health Reports, Associate Editor of Sexual Medicine Reviews, and sits on the editorial boards of Behavioral Neuroscience, Physiology & Behavior, and Investigative and Clinical Urology. He is a Past President of the International Academy of Sex Research and a past Director of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health.

Dr. Caroline Pukall obtained her PhD in Clinical Psychology from McGill University in 2003. During her doctoral degree, she worked under the supervision of Dr. Irv Binik, applying pain methodologies to the study of vulvodynia (i.e., chronic genital pain), in particular, vestibulodynia. The goal of her work was to demonstrate differences in genital sensitivity between affected and non-affected women using methods commonly used in pain research; this goal was partly driven by the fact that many affected women reported that physicians found nothing physically wrong and implied that the pain was “in their head”.

Dr. Pukall’s research provided evidence of heightened sensitivity to touch and pain – not only in the genital area, but also in non-genital regions of the body. This and other work has helped shift the conceptualization of vulvodynia from that of a psychosexual problem to that of a pain disorder that results in psychosexual difficulties. As a result of her unique research, she has been awarded several young investigator awards from international organizations such as the International Society of the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH) and the Society for Sex Therapy and Research (SSTAR), and she won the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies Distinguished Dissertation Award in 2004.

Dr. Pukall is currently a professor in the Department of Psychology at Queen’s University. Her laboratory, the Sexual Health Research Laboratory, is full of highly devoted students working on numerous projects examining multiple components of vulvodynia, including those that focus on self-reported measures of pain, psychosocial function, and relationship adjustment in affected and non-affected women and their partners; psychophysical assessments of genital and non-genital sensitivity; spinal cord and brain imaging in response to painful genital stimulation; and laser Doppler imaging of genital and non-genital blood flow.

Dr. Pukall has published numerous research papers and has presented her work at several local, national, and international meetings. As well, she has been successful in obtaining research funding from various agencies (e.g., Canadian Institutes of Health Research, National Vulvodynia Association) to support costs associated with her projects. She is actively involved in many women’s health and pain organizations.