About
Editors and people

Leadership team

eLife’s editors, early-career advisors, governing board, and executive staff work in concert to realise our mission.

Type

co-Editors-in-Chief

Timothy Behrens

University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Tim Behrens is Professor of Computational Neuroscience at Oxford University and University College London, and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. His work investigating the neural mechanisms that control behaviour has made an impact across scales from cells to brain regions across mammalian species. He has also developed widely used approaches for measuring brain connections non-invasively that have been taken up by the Human Connectome Project, where he is a senior investigator and chair of the anatomical connectivity team.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
brain imaging
fMRI
learning
cognition
behavioural neuroscience
learning and decision making
brain connectivity
computational neuroscience
neural coding

Experimental organism
human
macaque
mouse

Competing interests statement
Tim Behrens receives funding from the Wellcome Trust, the James S McDonnell Foundation, the National Institute of Health, and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He is on the editorial board of PLOS Biology.
Detlef Weigel

Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany

Detlef Weigel received his PhD in 1988 from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. After postdoctoral work at the California Institute of Technology, he joined the faculty of the Salk Institute in 1993. Since 2002, he has been director of the Department of Molecular Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. His current research interests focus on natural genetic variation and evolutionary genomics of plants. Examples of recent important projects are the 1001 Genomes project for Arabidopsis thaliana, and the systematic dissection of deleterious epistasis between Arabidopsis strains due to autoimmunity. Among the awards he has received are the Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Award of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and the Otto Bayer Award. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Royal Society.

Expertise
Plant Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Evolutionary Biology

Research focus
plants
genomics
evolution
genetic variation
evolutionary genomics
adaptation
microbiome

Experimental organism
A. thaliana

Competing interests statement
Detlef Weigel has received funding from the Max Planck Society, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the Foundation of the State of Baden-Württemberg, the German Ministry for Education and Research, the European Commission, the Human Frontiers Science Program Organization, and several US Federal agencies. He serves on the Editorial Boards of Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology and Genome Biology. He is Chair of EMBO Council, and is serving or has recently served on the Advisory Boards of the Epigenomics of Plants International Consortium, Bayer Crop Science, The Arabidopsis Information Resource, Flanders Institute of Biotechnology, Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, and the Sainsbury Laboratory. He is a co-founder of Computomics and CeMet.

Deputy editors

Yamini Dalal

National Cancer Institute, United States

Yamini Dalal did her graduate work on chromatin structure with Arnie Stein and Minou Bina at Purdue University (PhD, 2003), and her postdoctoral research on centromeres with Steve Henikoff at the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center (2007). She is currently a Senior Investigator leading the Chromosome Structure and Epigenetics Mechanism Unit within the Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene Expression at the Center for Cancer Research of the NCI/NIH in Bethesda. Her lab focuses on histones, which package the entirety of the human genome into chromatin. Using a combination of chromatin biochemistry, computational modelling, atomic force microscopy (AFM), genetics, genomics and cell biology, Dr. Dalal and colleagues are investigating whether chromatin adopts alternate structural conformations in cancer cells, the functional consequences of large-scale chromosomal alterations upon the cancer epigenome, and identifying small molecules which can target these structures or processes.

Expertise
Cancer Biology
Chromosomes and Gene Expression
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
chromatin
centromeres
chromosomes
mitosis
chromosome cancer biology
histone variants
nucleosomes
histones

Experimental organism
human
mouse

Competing interests statement
Dr. Dalal is serving as Deputy Editor of eLife in her personal capacity as a chromosome biology expert with a deep interest in molecular and cellular biology, not as a representative of the NIH.
Diane M Harper

University of Michigan, United States

Diane M Harper, MD, MPH, MS, completed her undergraduate and graduate degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the fields of Chemical Engineering and Polymerics. She received her medical and public health degrees from the University of Kansas in Kansas City, where she also did residencies in Gynecology/Obstetrics and Family Medicine. Dr Harper has spent the majority of her professional career at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire, as clinician, teacher and researcher in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Community and Family Medicine and Women’s and Gender Studies, including improving life for LGBTQ.

She has received the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) Excellence in Education Award and the Curtis Hames Research Award honoring her for changing medical care for women through evidence based research. She served as the Chair of Family and Geriatric Medicine at the University of Louisville during which time she also served on the United States Preventive Services Task Force.

She currently is a tenured Professor at the University of Michigan, serving as the Director for Research Management within the Michigan Institute of Clinical and Health Research, one of 50 Clinical and Translational Science Award Research Hubs across the United States. To date she has over 250 peer reviewed publications with over 27,000 citations, and over 40,000 downloads of her seminal review of HPV vaccines.

While at Dartmouth she developed and directed the Gynecologic Cancer Prevention Research Group based at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center in which research on all aspects of HPV associated diseases, specifically cervical cancer prevention was conducted. She is an internationally recognized expert on Human Papillomavirus, the cause of cervical cancer, and its prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines. She has published the seminal clinical research on HPV vaccines and lectured internationally in over 100 countries. She has served on NCI research committees, European research study sections, addressed the Council on Foreign Affairs, and served as a technical advisor to the World Health Organization. Dr Harper has been honored as one of the top clinicians in her field in the US, and Family Physician of the Year in New Hampshire in 2006.

Expertise
Medicine
Epidemiology and Global Health
Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Immunology and Inflammation

Research focus
HPV associated diseases
primary care
women's health
cancer precursor detection
health behaviours
epidemiology
cancer screening

Experimental organism
human

Competing interests statement
Diane Harper has received funding from NCI, NCATS, NHLBI, CDC, multiple national philanthropic organizations, including the American Cancer Society, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Susan G Komen Foundation, in addition to state and local funding agencies and collaborations with industry. She serves in editorship capacities on boards including the Annals of Family Medicine, Preventive Medicine Reports, PLoS ONE, and Gynecologic Oncology. She is a peer reviewer for The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, among other journals.

Senior editors

Olujimi A Ajijola

University of California, Los Angeles, United States

Dr Ajijola completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Virginia, and received his medical degree from Duke University. He went on to the Massachusetts General Hospital for residency training in internal medicine, and completed clinical fellowships in cardiovascular medicine and cardiac electrophysiology at UCLA. He received a PhD in Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology at UCLA, as part of the Specialty Training and Advanced Research (STAR) program. He is interested in novel approaches for cardiac arrhythmias, and performs invasive cardiac electrophysiological procedures. His research interests revolve around peripheral neural circuits that control cardiac function in health and disease, including neural interventions that alleviate progressive cardiac dysfunction and arrhythmias.

In addition to the NIH Director’s New Innovator award, he is a recipient of the Jeremiah Stamler Cardiovascular Research Award, an AP Giannini Foundation post-doctoral award, and a Young Physician Scientist Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). He is a member of the New Voices program of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine. He is a recipient of the Chan Zuckerberg Science Diversity Leadership Award and an elected member of the ASCI.

He is the Associate Director of the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center & EP Programs, and directs the Neurocardiology Research Program at UCLA. He also co-directs the NIH-funded UCLA-Caltech Medical Scientist Training Program.

Expertise
Medicine

Research focus
cardiovascular
neurobiology
sympathetic nerves
ventricular arrhythmias
RNA sequencing

Competing interests statement
Editorial roles: Journal of Electrocardiography, Heart Rhythm Journal 2019, Circulation: Arrhythmia & Electrophysiology, JACC Clinical Electrophysiology, Journal of the American Heart Association.PCT Patent Application No. PCT/US2022/015696Grants and fellowships: NIH/NHLBI, NIH SPARC, NIH/NIGMS, NIH/NHLB, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Rethinking the Physician-Scientist Pipeline to Enhance Diversity, NIH/Case Western Reserve University
Amy H Andreotti

Iowa State University, United States

Amy Andreotti is the Roy J Carver Chair in Biochemistry and a University Professor at Iowa State University. She joined the faculty of the Roy J Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology in 1997 after earning her PhD in Chemistry at Princeton University and completing a postdoctoral training period in the Chemistry Department at Harvard University where she was a Science Scholar at the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. Her work explores the mechanisms of kinase regulation during cell signaling with an emphasis on the immune specific TEC family of non-receptor tyrosine kinases. A particular focus of the lab is Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) and its interactions with small molecule therapeutics. Her lab uses a variety of biochemical, enzymatic and structural biology methods including solution NMR spectroscopy.

Expertise
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
NMR spectroscopy
kinase regulation
cell signalling
Tec family kinases

Experimental organism
human

Competing interests statement
Amy Andreotti's research is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health. She also serves on the National Advisory Committee for the Biomedical Scholars program of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Sofia J Araújo

University of Barcelona, Spain

Sofia J Araújo is Associate Professor in Genetics, at the Department of Genetics Microbiology and Statistics, University of Barcelona, where she leads the genetics of cell behaviour research group. She received her PhD in Biochemistry from the University of London and did postdoctoral training at King’s College London and IBMB-CSIC in Barcelona. Her research at the University of Barcelona is centered in cell migration and branching morphogenesis, with the aim of understanding how branched organs develop and contribute to living organism homeostasis as well as the ageing process. She is currently head of the Genetics section of the Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics, and board member of the Spanish Society for Developmental Biology. She also holds a Diploma in Science Communication from Birkbeck College, London, and has extensive experience in teaching, communication, and training of scientists on better ways of bringing science to the public.

Expertise
Cell Biology
Developmental Biology
Neuroscience
Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine

Research focus
neurodevelopment
DNA repair
single-cell branching
cell migration
tubulogenesis
organogenesis

Experimental organism
D. melanogaster

Competing interests statement
Sofia J Araújo's research is currently funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR).
Utpal Banerjee

University of California, Los Angeles, United States

Utpal Banerjee is the Irving and Jean Stone Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles, with a joint appointment in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the David Geffen School of Medicine. He also serves as Co-Director of the Broad Stem Cell Research Center and as Director of the UCLA Interdepartmental Minor in Biomedical Research. He is a member of UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and is affiliated with the Brain Research Institute and the Neuroscience Graduate Program.

Banerjee’s laboratory has worked on several oncogenic and metabolic signals that are important in development and disease. The lab studies the effects of systemic signals on the maintenance of blood progenitors in Drosophila, and the role of metabolic pathways in the control of proliferation and differentiation in the preimplantation mouse embryo.

Expertise
Developmental Biology
Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine
Cancer Biology

Research focus
haematopoiesis
cancer biology

Experimental organism
D. melanogaster
mouse
Matthias Barton

University of Zurich, Switzerland

Matthias Barton, MD, is a Professor of Cardiology at the University of Zurich. His clinical and investigative focus are general cardiology and preventive medicine, with a particular interest in coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction. His work explores mechanisms of atherosclerosis, heart disease in women, and vascular factors contributing to cardiovascular health and disease.

Expertise
Medicine

Research focus
cardiovascular medicine
coronary artery disease
vascular biology
heart disease in women
molecular medicine

Competing interests statement
Matthias Barton has received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation and is on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Cardiovascular Disease, the American Journal of Physiology Regulatory Integrative & Comparative Physiology, Endocrine and Metabolic Science, Experimental Biology and Medicine, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology and Hypertension, official journals of the American Heart Association. He has been an elected ordinary member of the Academy of Europe (Academia Europaea) since 2017.
Balram Bhargava

Indian Council of Medical Research, India

Dr Bhargava is the Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Secretary, Department of Health Research, (Ministry of Health & Family Welfare), Government of India.

Professor (Dr) Balram Bhargava was born in Lucknow 21st July 1961. He received all his medical training at the King George Medical College, Lucknow. Further, he received advanced training at the Gardiner Institute, University of Glasgow and the Washington Heart Centre, Washington DC.

Balram Bhargava is Professor of Cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, and also serves as the Executive Director for Stanford India Biodesign Centre, School of International Biodesign (SiB).

He is a cardiologist at the forefront of biomedical innovation, public health, medical education, and medical research. He directs the School of International Biodesign at AIIMS, an interdisciplinary programme to foster innovation and design of low-cost implants and devices which has led to more than thirty patents on low-cost medical devices and a dozen start-ups. He developed the indigenous Platinum Iridium coil coronary stent and has been instrumental in clinically evaluating and establishing medicated Indian stents. He has led innovations initiatives, such as Society for Less Investigative Medicine (SLIM). He is currently providing leadership for creative disease prevention, early detection, and transport system for sick cardiac patients (mission DELHI (Delhi Emergency Life Heart-Attack Initiative) by trained motorcycle first responder Paramedics).

Professor Bhargava was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government for his contributions to medicine. He is also been awarded the SN Bose Centenary Award by the Indian National Science Congress, the National Academy of Sciences Platinum Jubilee Award, the Tata Innovation Fellowship, Vasvik Award for Biomedical Technology Innovation, the Ranbaxy Award, OP Bhasin Award in the field of Health and Medical Sciences and more recently the UNESCO Equatorial Guinea Prize for Life Sciences. Dr Lee Jong-Wook Memorial Prize for Public Health, 2019 by WHO Hqrs, Geneva and received President’s Medal Award from Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, UK for his research in ‘Frugal Innovations’ in February 2020.

Expertise
Medicine
Epidemiology and Global Health

Research focus
interventional cardiology
stents
restenosis
coronary artery disease
risk factors of valvular heart disease
interventions of rheumatic heart disease
epidemiology
non-communicable disease
infectious disease
health policy
public health

Experimental organism
human

Competing interests statement
Dr Bhargava is the founding editor of the British Medical Journal Innovations (BMJi) until 2018, and he is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
Yanchao Bi

Beijing Normal University, China

Yanchao Bi is a ChangJiang professor in IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, at Beijing Normal University. She received her PhD from the Department of Psychology, Harvard University in 2006. Her work focuses on the functional and neural architecture associated with semantic memory and language, tackling how the human brain represents and understands the meanings of words, objects and actions, and how such knowledge is acquired and interacts with sensory and language experiences. She mainly studies human models, including typically developed individuals and special populations such as congenitally blind, deaf, or patients with brain damage, using cognitive, neuropsychological, neuroimaging and computational methods. She also works with collaborators to study these questions from the comparative (nonhuman primates) and developmental (human infants) perspectives.

She has won various awards, scholarships or recognitions such as “The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars”, “The National Science Fund for Excellent Young Scholars”, “New Century Excellent Talents in University”, Sackler scholar of psychophysiology, Fulbright scholar, and “rising star” in the Observer by the American Psychological Association.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
cognitive neuroscience
cognition
systems neuroscience
semantic memory
language
object perception and representation

Competing interests statement
Yanchao Bi is currently funded by National Science Foundation of China and Ministry of Science and Technology, China. In addition to serving as a Senior Editor at eLife, she is also currently serving on the editorial boards of Cognition, Cognitive Neuropsychology, and Neurobiology of Language.
Christian Büchel

University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany

Christian Büchel is a member of the Hamburg Center for Neuroscience in Hamburg, where he is also the Director of the Department for Systems Neuroscience at Hamburg University Medical Center. He holds an Affiliate Professor appointment in the Psychology department at the University of Hamburg. After Medical School at the University of Heidelberg, he performed postdoctoral research with Karl Friston as a Wellcome Research Fellow at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience at UCL in London with a focus on effective connectivity.

Establishing his lab in Hamburg, he focused on the cognitive neuroscience of pain and motivation and initially studied decision making with an emphasis on delay discounting. In a parallel stream of projects he observed that the pain modulation underlying placebo analgesia can already be observed at the spinal cord level, a finding which he later also established for nocebo hyperalgesia. He is part of the IMAGEN study and during his time at Stanford he identified hypoactivation of reward circuits as a potential risk factor for addiction.

He is a member of the Academy of Science in Hamburg and was awarded the Jung Award for Medicine, the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Preis by the German Research Foundation, and the Wiley Young Investigator Award of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping for recognition of his work in cognitive neuroscience.

Expertise
Neuroscience
Medicine

Research focus
cognitive neuroscience
pain modulation
decision-making
fear
anxiety
addiction

Experimental organism
human

Competing interests statement
Christian Büchel has received research grants from the European Research Council, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung. He serves on the board of reviewing editors of Science magazine. He serves on the Swiss National Research Council, the Scientific Advisory Board of the ICM in Paris and the Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences, Magdeburg, Germany.
Felix Campelo

The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Spain

Felix Campelo is a researcher specializing in membrane biophysics, cell biology, and fluorescence microscopy tools to understand intracellular organization. He did his PhD research in theoretical biophysics at the University of Barcelona and Tel Aviv University, developing computational and theoretical methods to study membrane shape and dynamics. In his postdoc at the Malhotra lab (CRG-Center for Genomic Regulation), he shifted to experimental cell biology and biochemistry to explore mechanisms of intracellular trafficking and the cooperation between lipids and proteins in organizing Golgi membranes.

Currently leading the Intracellular Dynamics and Nanoscopy lab at ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, Felix and his interdisciplinary lab focus on organelle morphology and dynamics, with a particular interest in intracellular membrane trafficking in the early secretory pathway. They employ advanced microscopy techniques, molecular and cell biology tools, and theoretical biophysics to address fundamental topics in cell biology.

Expertise
Physics of Living Systems
Cell Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
membrane mechanics
membrane curvature
intracellular trafficking
membrane organization
membrane contact sites
Golgi complex
endoplasmic reticulum exit sites
super-resolution microscopy
single-molecule microscopy

Experimental organism
human
S. cerevisiae

Competing interests statement
Dr Campelo receives funding from Government of Spain, Fundació Privada Cellex, Fundació Privada Mir-Puig, and Generalitat de Catalunya.
Albert Cardona

University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Albert Cardona is a programme leader at the MRC LMB and a professor of neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, UK. Formerly a group leader at HHMI Janelia and at the Institute of Neuroinformatics in Zurich. Trained in biology with emphasis in genetics, development and evolution, a passion and need for image processing of bioimagery led to co-founding the Fiji open source software, as well as the TrakEM2 and CATMAID softwares for image registration, segmentation, visualization and the

analysis of neural circuits. His laboratory studies how the structure of a neural circuit relates to its function. Albert's core expertise is in reconstructing neuronal anatomy and synaptic circuits – the connectome – of small animal brains using volume electron microscopy, to then analyse the circuit architecture and formulate computational models of circuit function that capture the neural dynamics and explain how circuits implement behaviour.

Expertise
Neuroscience
Developmental Biology

Research focus
neuroscience
image processing
development
neural evolution

Experimental organism
D. melanogaster
squids
Amphioxus
lizards

Competing interests statement
Albert Cardona receives funding from the MRC LMB and from the Wellcome Trust. He has served as editor of Open Biology and as Reviewing Editor for eLife.
Kathryn Cheah

The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR China

Kathryn Cheah is a developmental geneticist and Jimmy & Emily Tang Professor in Molecular Genetics and Chair Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Hong Kong. She received her BSc Hons degree in Biology from the University of London and PhD in Molecular Biology from Cambridge University, U.K. After postdoctoral training at the University of Manchester and Imperial Cancer Research Fund in the UK, she joined the University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on using functional genomics and mouse models to understand gene function and regulation, the associated gene regulatory networks and mechanisms of disease, with a focus on skeletal and inner ear development, congenital and common skeletal disorders. Notable contributions are the identification of SOX2 as essential for prosensory development in the inner ear, SOX9 as a key regulator of COL2A1 and the cartilage gene regulatory network, a lineage continuum for cartilage and bone cells and a causative mechanistic link between endoplasmic reticulum stress and skeletal disorders. She is an elected Fellow of the Global Science Academy, The World Academy Sciences (TWAS).

She was the founding President of the Hong Kong Society for Developmental Biology and the Hong Kong representative for the Asia-Pacific Developmental Biology Network and the International Society of Developmental Biology (2004-2013), elected President of the International Society for Matrix Biology (2006-2008), Senior External Fellow of the University of Freiburg Institute of Advanced Studies (2011-2012) and elected member of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Differentiation (2012-2018).

She brings editorial expertise to eLife having previously served as Associate Editor for Genesis, guest Associate Editor for PLOS Genetics, Asian Editor for Development Growth & Differentiation (2015-2016), editorial board member of Matrix Biology, BioEssays, Annual Reviews of Genomics & Human Genetics, and as Reviewing Editor of eLife.

Expertise
Developmental Biology
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
gene regulation and development
inherited and degenerative skeletal disorder
inner ear
matrix biology

Experimental organism
mouse
human

Competing interests statement
Kathryn Cheah receives research funding from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and the Hong Kong Health and Medical Research Fund. She is serving as a member of Hong Kong’s University Grants Council Biology Panel for the Research Assessment Exercise 2020. She currently also serves on the editorial boards of Scientific Reports, Genesis and Journal of Orthopaedic Research. She is also serving on the Hong Kong Advisory Board of the Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) and the GRC Conference Evaluation Committee.
Lu Chen

Stanford University, United States

Lu Chen is a Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research focuses on understanding the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity and memory engram formation during behavioral learning, and how synapse functions are altered in neurodevelopmental disorders. She received her PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Southern California under the mentorship of Richard Thompson. After a postdoc fellowship in the University of California, San Francisco with Roger Nicoll, she joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. In 2011, she moved to Stanford University School of Medicine.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
cellular neurophysiology
synaptic physiology
synaptic plasticity
learning
memory
memory engram
hippocampal function
induced human neurons
fragile-X syndrome

Experimental organism
mouse

Competing interests statement
Lu Chen currently receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. She is on the Editorial Board of Current Opinion of Neurobiology and PLOS One. She also serves as an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience.
Murim Choi

Seoul National University College of Medicine, South Korea

Murim Choi’s main scientific question is to elucidate the genetic mechanisms of human diseases. To address this, his expertise lies in the functional interpretation of human genetic variants using genomic and bioinformatic methodologies. He graduated from Seoul National University (SNU), Seoul, Korea, majoring in Molecular Biology (BS and MS). During the Ph.D course at Duke University, he studied cardiovascular system development in mice. In his postdoctoral training at Yale University, he studied human genetics, setting up a whole exome sequencing pipeline and applying it to various human diseases to identify causal genes. He received a K99/R00 grant for the postdoctoral works and was a recipient of SNU Invitation Program for Distinguished Scholar grant.

Establishing his independent lab at SNU, he has been studying the genetic mechanisms of rare disease pathogenesis, focusing on cases with neurodevelopmental defects. His current approach combines developmental biology and genetics, shaped by the fact that most pediatric rare disease patients experience congenital problems. More recently, his group has undertaken common disease research. His group recently established a bioinformatic pipeline that allows screening of eQTL signals only functioning in the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) status and validated its utility. At SNU, he has been instrumental in establishing genetics and genomics methodologies by collaborating with clinicians in SNU Hospital. His lab has recently established protocols in advanced functional genomics approaches, including single-cell sequencing, saturation mutagenesis, modifier screening, and cell tracing technique to understand the genetic mechanisms underlying disease progression.

He has a strong interest in clinical and translational research, especially in elucidating genotype-phenotype relationships that may lead to human diseases. In 2018, he was selected as a member of the Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology.

Expertise
Genetics and Genomics
Medicine

Research focus
rare diseases
neurodevelopmental disorders
functional characterization of genetic variants
bioinformatics
Mendelian genetics

Competing interests statement
Current funding: Genetic elucidation of rare developmental disorders (200M KRW/year (~152,800 USD); Apr. 2014-Sep.2022; National Research Foundation of Ministry of Science and ICT); Genetic elucidation of gene expression noises (300M KRW/year (~229,200 USD); Mar. 2021-Feb. 2025; National Research Foundation of Ministry of Science and ICT); Discovery of NAFLD causing genes using single cell expression quantitative trait loci approach (80M KRW/year (~61,120 USD); Apr. 2021-Dec. 2025; National Research Foundation of Ministry of Science and ICT).Other editorial roles: editor of Experimental and Molecular Medicine (Springer Nature)
Laura Colgin

The University of Texas at Austin Center for Learning and Memory, United States

Laura Colgin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and co-Director of the Center for Learning and Memory at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on understanding the functional significance of brain rhythms for learning and memory operations. Her lab also investigates how different brain rhythms affect neuronal ensemble representations of spatial memories, and how aberrant rhythmic activity influences neuronal activity and cognitive function in brain disorders. She received her PhD from the University of California at Irvine and completed her postdoctoral training in the Moser Lab at the Norwegian Institute of Science and Technology. She is a recipient of the Peter and Patricia Gruber International Research Award in Neuroscience, an Alfred P Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, the Klingenstein Foundation Award in the Neurosciences, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator award, and an NSF CAREER award.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
memory
hippocampus
place cells
entorhinal cortex
grid cells
theta rhythms
gamma rhythms
sharp wave-ripples

Experimental organism
rat

Competing interests statement
Laura Colgin currently receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the USAMRMC Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program, and the National Science Foundation. She is Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Progress in Neurobiology. She is a member of the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory (LAM) study section for the National Institutes of Health.
Jonathan A Cooper

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States

Jon Cooper is a member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and an Affiliate Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Washington. After undergraduate studies at the University of Cambridge and post-graduate research at the University of Warwick, he performed postdoctoral research with Bernard Moss at the NIH and with Tony Hunter at the Salk Institute. With Tony, he found that oncogenic retroviruses (Rous sarcoma virus and others) and growth factors (EGF and PDGF) stimulate the tyrosine phosphorylation of overlapping subsets of cell proteins, which were candidates to regulate cell proliferation and metabolism. He joined Fred Hutch in 1985 to continue the work he started at the Salk, investigating the mechanisms by which protein kinases regulate cell proliferation and transformation. His laboratory played important roles in establishing how Src is regulated, how activated growth factor receptors recruit signaling proteins, and establishing Ras-Raf-MAPK signaling. In 1995, postdoc Brian Howell knocked out the gene for a Src substrate and observed a distinctive brain development phenotype. Efforts by several laboratories rapidly established a signaling pathway that regulates neuron migrations during brain development. Further studies on this pathway revealed the importance of ubiquitination and degradation for terminating signaling, and led in recent years to detailed investigation of the roles of Cullin-RING ligases in regulating signal transduction events in vivo and in cultured cells.

Expertise
Cell Biology

Research focus
signaling pathways
cell migration
post-translational modifications
neuron migrations
immune cell migration
phosphorylation
cell transformation

Competing interests statement
Jon Cooper receives research grants from the NIH.
Qiang Cui

Boston University, United States

Qiang Cui is a professor of Chemistry at Boston University and also affiliated with the Departments of Physics and Biomedical Engineering. He received a B.S. in Chemical Physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1993, and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry in 1997 from Emory University under the tutelage of Professor Keiji Morokuma. He conducted postodctoral research with Professor Martin Karplus at Harvard University and, in 2001, moved to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as a faculty member in the Chemistry department. After spending almost 17 wonderful years in Madison, he moved back to Boston in 2018. His current research interests include quantum chemistry and statistical mechanics and their applications to various chemical, biological, and materials problems.

Expertise: Computational biophysics, especially molecular dynamics, hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanics simulations, free energy simulations applied to enzymes, biomolecular machines and lipid membranes.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
molecular dynamics
hybrid quantum
classical simulations
enzyme catalysis
allostery
protein dynamics
membrane remodeling

Competing interests statement
Qiang Cui currently serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation (American Chemical Society).
Claude Desplan

New York University, United States

Claude Desplan, DSc, PhD is a Silver Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at NYU and an Affiliate Professor at the CGSB at NYU in Abu Dhabi. Dr. Desplan was born in Algeria and was trained at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in St. Cloud, France. He received his DSc at INSERM in Paris in 1983 working with M.S. Moukhtar and M. Thomasset on calcium regulation. He joined Pat O’Farrell at UCSF as a postdoc where he demonstrated that the homeodomain, a conserved signature of many developmental genes, is a DNA binding motif. In 1987, he joined the Faculty of Rockefeller University as an HHMI Assistant/Associate Investigator to pursue structural studies of the homeodomain and the evolution of axis formation.

In 1999, Dr. Desplan joined NYU where he investigates the generation of neural diversity using the Drosophila visual system. His team has described the molecular mechanisms that pattern the eye and showed how stochastic decisions contribute to the diversification of photoreceptors. It also investigates the development and function of the optic lobes where neuronal diversity is generated by spatio-temporal patterning of neuroblasts, a mechanism that also applies to cortical development in mammals. Recently, his lab has also provided a functional understanding of the neuronal and computational mechanisms underlying motion detection.

His laboratory also uses ‘evo-devo’ approaches to understand the mechanisms by which sensory systems adapt to different ecological conditions, from flies to ants to butterflies.

Dr. Desplan serves on multiple scientific advisory boards and committees for funding agencies. He is an elected member of the AAAS, of EMBO, the New York Academy of Sciences as well as the US National Academy of Sciences.

Expertise
Developmental Biology
Evolutionary Biology
Neuroscience

Research focus
development neurobiology
evo-devo
vision
stochasticity in development
rhodopsin
aging and caste determination (ants)

Experimental organism
D. melanogaster
ants
insects
butterflies
wasps
flies

Competing interests statement
Dr. Desplan has been a member of the Board of Reviewing Editor for Science for the last 10 years (non-renumerated). He is an academic editor for PLOS Biology and PLOS Genetics (non-renumerated). Dr. Desplan occasionally serves as academic editor for other scientific journals (e.g. PNAS). He is a consultant for the Khalifa Center for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology Al Ain, UAE. Dr. Desplan receives funding from the NIH and the NYU Abu Dhabi Center for Genomics and Systems Biology.
Betty Diamond

The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, United States

Betty Diamond received an MD from Harvard Medical School. She performed a residency in Internal Medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and then a post-doctoral fellowship in Immunology with Dr Matthew Scharff at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is currently Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research.

Dr Diamond’s research has focused on the induction and pathogenicity of anti-DNA antibodies in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus. She showed that somatic mutation of immunoglobulin genes can generate autoantibodies in mice and humans, making the germinal center a focus in disease pathogenesis. Her laboratory has also demonstrated that a subset of anti-DNA antibodies cross-reacts with the NMDA receptor and showed that autoantibodies can cause aspects of neuropsychiatric lupus, creating a paradigm for antibody-mediated changes in brain function in many conditions. Most recently, she has developed a research program on the immunomodulatory functions of C1q.

She received the Outstanding Investigator Award of the ACR in 2001, the Lee Howley Award from the Arthritis Foundation in 2002, and the Recognition Award from the National Association of MD-PhD Programs in 2004 and the AAI Distinguished Fellow Award in 2019. In 2006, she was elected to the Institute of Medicine and became a fellow of the AAAS. She has served on the Scientific Council of NIAMS and the Board of Directors of the American College of Rheumatology. She is a past President of the American Association of Immunologists.

Expertise
Medicine
Immunology and Inflammation

Research focus
B cells
systemic lupus
neuropsychiatric lupus
autoantibodies
autoimmunity

Experimental organism
human
mouse

Competing interests statement
Betty Diamond receives funding from the NIH, LuCIN (Lupus Clinical Investigators Network), Lupus Research Alliance, DOD Lupus and Leidos Biomedical Research, Inc.. She is the Chief Editor at Molecular Medicine and a Deputy Editor for Frontiers in Immunology.
Volker Dötsch

Goethe University, Germany

Volker Dötsch is Professor of Biophysical Chemistry at Goethe University and a member of the Magnetic Resonance Center Frankfurt. He studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen and obtained a PhD from the ETH in Zürich. As a postdoctoral fellow he used NMR to determine the structure of protein-DNA complexes at the Harvard Medical School. In 1998 he moved as assistant professor to the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). In 2003 he was appointed professor at the Institute of Biophysical Chemistry of Goethe University in Frankfurt. His research interests focus on the structural and functional characterization of members of the p53 protein family, in particular p63 and its involvement in genetic quality control in germ cells. In addition, his laboratory uses a combination of NMR spectroscopy and cell-free protein expression to investigate the structure and function of membrane proteins and studies molecular interactions regulating autophagy. His lab uses a wide variety of biophysical methods including NMR spectroscopy and combines these studies with investigations in cell culture experiments and mouse models. Volker Dötsch is an elected EMBO member.

Expertise
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
p53 protein family
cell-free expression and membrane protein structure and function
autophagy

Competing interests statement
Volker Dötsch has received funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the National Institutes of Health and the Deutsche Krebshilfe. He is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Frankfurt Institute of Advanced Studies and a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Biological Chemistry and Cell Death & Disease.
Wafik S El-Deiry

Brown University, United States

Wafik El-Deiry, MD, PhD, FACP is Associate Dean for Oncologic Sciences at the Warren Alpert Medical School, Director, Cancer Center at Brown University, and Director of the Joint Program in Cancer Biology at Brown and Lifespan. He is a Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Professor of Medical Science, and Mencoff Family University Professor at Brown. He sees patients in his weekly clinic at Rhode Island Hospital focused on care of patients with colorectal cancer and participates in clinical trials based on his laboratory’s research on novel therapeutics. He previously served as Deputy Director for Translational Research, co-Leader of the Molecular Therapeutics Program, Professor of Oncology, and the William Wikoff Smith Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Fox Chase Cancer Center. From 2010 through 2014 Dr El-Deiry was the Rose Dunlap Professor of Medicine and Chief of Hematology-Oncology at Penn State. In 2009, El-Deiry became an American Cancer Society Research Professor. He was previously a tenured Professor of Medicine (Hematology-Oncology), Genetics, and Pharmacology at University of Pennsylvania, co-Leader of the Radiobiology and Imaging Program at the Abramson Cancer Center and Associate Director for Physician-Scientist Training in Hematology-Oncology when he left Penn in 2010. He earned MD/PhD degrees from University of Miami School of Medicine and completed internal medicine residency and medical oncology fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center. As a practicing academic Oncologist, his scientific interest and expertise is in cell death, drug resistance in cancer and drug discovery and development. El-Deiry founded two companies, Oncoceutics, Inc. and p53-Therapeutics, Inc.

El-Deiry discovered p21(WAF1) as a p53 target gene, universal cell cycle inhibitor, and tumor suppressor gene that for the first time explained the mammalian cell stress response. He discovered TRAIL receptor DR5 and its regulation by p53. TRAIL is part of the host immune system that suppresses cancer and its metastases. His lab created a knock-out mouse for TRAIL receptor DR5 and this mouse is tumor prone and develops an inflammatory syndrome in the lungs and gut after sub-lethal irradiation. He identified c-Myc as a major determinant of TRAIL sensitivity and demonstrated synergy between TRAIL therapy and multi-kinase inhibitor sorafenib. Building on his prior accomplishments, El-Deiry discovered ONC201/TIC10 as a first-in-class TRAIL pathway inducer that is orally bioavailable and crosses the blood-brain barrier to treat brain tumors. TRAIL and Foxo3a are required for the anti-tumor effect of ONC201 through dual blockade of ERK and Akt kinases that promotes the nuclear translocation of the Foxo3a transcription factor which directly regulates the TRAIL gene. Data from El-Deiry’s lab identified that ONC201 induces TRAIL receptor DR5 through an integrated stress response involving ATF4 and CHOP transcription factors. Patients with among the most aggressive gliomas (H3K27M mutant DIPG) have had exceptional responses to ONC201.

As a physician-scientist, Dr El-Deiry has worked to bring new discoveries to the clinic. He is committed in the next phase of his career to unraveling the mechanisms involved in p53 pathway restoration by candidate therapeutics his lab has discovered. This is exciting as he is defining a novel class of anti-cancer drugs with p53 pathway restoration and S-phase checkpoint targeting and recognizing ATF4 as a major transcription factor mechanism for p53 pathway restoration in p53-null or p53 mutant tumor cells. He is establishing transcriptomic and proteomic data sets with chemotherapy that acts through p53, and with novel small molecules that restore the p53 pathway in p53-deficient or mutant p53 expressing cells. He is exploiting medicinal chemistry and organoid technologies to perform his translational science that is leading to clinical trials some of which he leads. Dr El-Deiry conducts basic and translational clinical oncology therapeutics research through funded NIH grants, Foundations and industry. He is a member of the ASCI, AAP, Past President of the Interurban Clinical Club, previous Chair of ASCO’s Tumor Biology Track, and past Chair of an NIH Study Section on Cancer Therapeutics. Dr El-Deiry has trained many students and post-doctoral fellows, physician-scientists, and continues to mentor junior scientists and faculty in basic and translational cancer research.

Expertise
Medicine
Cancer Biology

Research focus
cancer
tumor suppressor genes
colorectal cancer
p53 pathway
cell death
medical oncology
drug development
drug discovery
p21(WAF1)
ONC201/TIC10
physician-scientist issues

Experimental organism
human
mouse

Competing interests statement
Dr El-Deiry receives funding from the NIH/NCI, the Warren Alpert Foundation, and D&D Pharmatech. He is a Specialty Chief Editor for the Cancer Molecular Targets and Therapeutics Section of Frontiers in Oncology. He is also a Section Editor for Molecular Oncology and HemOnc Today. Dr El-Deiry is the scientific founder and shareholder of Oncoceutics, Inc. and p53-Therapeutics, Inc.
Eduardo Franco

McGill University, Canada

Eduardo Franco is Professor and Chairman, Department of Oncology, and Director, Division of Cancer Epidemiology, McGill University, Montreal. He holds BSc (1975) and Licentiate (1976) degrees in biology from Universidade de Campinas, Brazil, and master's (MPH) and doctoral (DrPH) degrees in public health microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1981-84). He was a Guest Researcher at the US Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta (1980-81 and 1983-84), and a post-doctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology during 1984 at the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, at the US National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Bethesda, and at Louisiana State University, in New Orleans. Since 1985, he has conducted epidemiologic research on the causes of cancer and on the means to prevent it or to improve patient survival. He is mostly known for his contributions to our understanding of human papillomavirus infection as the cause of cervical cancer and using this knowledge to prevent this cancer via vaccination and improved screening strategies. He received the Canadian Cancer Research Alliance’s Distinguished Service to Cancer Research Award, Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology and from the International Papillomavirus Society, the Women in US Government’s Leadership Award, the Canadian Cancer Society’s Warwick Prize, the Geoffrey Howe Outstanding Contribution Award from the Canadian Society for Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the University of British Columbia’s Chew Wei Memorial Prize in Cancer Research, and the McLaughlin-Gallie Award from the Royal College of Physicians of Canada. He has mentored 115 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, and 30 undergraduate trainees. He is Officer of the Order of Canada and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Heholds an honorary doctorate from Universidade Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal.

Expertise
Cancer Biology
Epidemiology and Global Health
Medicine

Research focus
cancer epidemiology
cancer prevention
human papillomavirus
cancer screening

Experimental organism
human

Competing interests statement
Entire research program funded by the Medical Research Council of Canada (until 1999), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) (1999-present), National Institutes of Health, Canadian Cancer Society, and Cancer Research Society. He has received salary awards from the Fonds de Recherche Quebec Santé and CIHR. He holds a James McGill Professorship and the Minda de Gunzburg Endowed Chair at McGill University. He serves as Editor-in-Chief for Preventive Medicine and Preventive Medicine Reports and serves on the editorial boards of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, International Journal of Cancer, Papillomavirus Research, and Salud Publica de Mexico. He has served as occasional consultant to companies involved with HPV vaccination (Merck and GSK) and HPV diagnostics (Roche, Abbott, Qiagen, and BD).
Michael J Frank

Brown University, United States

Michael J Frank is Edgar L Marston Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences affiliated with the Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University, where he directs the Initiative for Computation in Brain and Mind. He received his PhD in Neuroscience and Psychology in 2004 at the University of Colorado, following undergraduate and master's degrees in electrical engineering and biomedicine. Dr. Frank’s work focuses primarily on computational models of frontostriatal circuits across multiple levels of analysis, especially in terms of their cognitive functions and implications for neurological and psychiatric disorders. The models are tested and refined with multimodal experiments across species. He is a Kavli Science Fellow, and recipient of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award (2011), the Janet T Spence Award for early career transformative contributions (Association for Psychological Science, 2010) and the DG Marquis award for best paper published in Behavioral Neuroscience (2006).

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
computational neuroscience
decision making
reinforcement learning
dopamine
basal ganglia
prefrontal cortex
cognitive control

Experimental organism
human
mouse
rat
R.macaque

Competing interests statement
Michael Frank serves of the editorial boards of Journal of Neuroscience and Behavioral Neuroscience, and he receives consulting fees for work with F Hoffman LaRoche Pharmaceuticals.
Wendy S Garrett

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, United States

Wendy Garrett is a Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, co-Director of the Harvard Chan Center for the Microbiome in Public Health, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. Her work explores host-microbiota interactions underlying mucosal immune homeostasis, gastrointestinal inflammatory disorders, and cancer. She graduated from the Yale College; received her MD PhD from Yale University and completed post-graduate training at Harvard.

Expertise
Immunology and Inflammation
Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Medicine

Research focus
host-microbiota interactions
microbiome
mucosal immunology

Competing interests statement
Wendy Garrett serves on advisory boards of Evelo Biosciences, Kintai Therapeutics, and Leap Therapeutics. She is a member of the Cell Reports and Journal of Clinical Microbiology editorial boards.
Joshua I Gold

University of Pennsylvania, United States

Joshua I Gold is Professor of Neuroscience, Chair of the Neuroscience Graduate Group, and Co-Director of the Computational Neuroscience Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been since 2002. He studied models of synaptic plasticity with Drs Mark Bear and Leon Cooper as an undergraduate at Brown University, plasticity in the sound-localization pathway of the barn owl with Dr Eric Knudsen as a graduate student at Stanford University, and computational and neural mechanisms of deicsion-making with Dr Michael Shadlen as a post-doc at the University of Washington. Gold currently studies the neural basis of learning and decision-making in the primate brain, with a focus on interactions between physiological arousal and cognitive processing. His work uses several complementary approaches, including theory and modeling; measures of behavior and pupil diameter in humans; and measures of behavior, pupil diameter, and brain activity in non-human primates. Much of his current work involves understanding how the brain adaptively processes information in dynamic environments. He won early career awards from the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund, the McKnight Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
decision-making
probabilistic inference
predictive inference
perceptual learning

Experimental organism
human
non-human primates

Competing interests statement
Joshua Gold is employed by the University of Pennsylvania. He receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. He has also received funding from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the McKnight Foundation for Neuroscience, and the Sloan Foundation. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Neurophysiology.
Silke Hauf

Virginia Tech, United States

Silke Hauf is Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Virginia Tech. She received her MD from the University of Wuerzburg, Germany, and did postdoctoral training at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria, and the University of Tokyo, Japan. She joined Virginia Tech in 2014 after being a group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Laboratory of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen, Germany. Her work explores how cells execute the cell cycle reliably and ensure the proper inheritance of chromosomes. To obtain a systems understanding of these processes, her group often collaborates with theoretical biologists. At Virginia Tech, she also serves as Associate Director of the Center for the Mathematics of Biosystems.

Expertise
Cell Biology
Chromosomes and Gene Expression

Research focus
cell cycle regulation
mitotic checkpoint
chromosome segregation
quantitative imaging
gene expression noise
post-transcriptional regulation

Experimental organism
S. pombe

Competing interests statement
Silke Hauf receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, and is on the Advisory Editorial Board of Life Science Alliance.
Christopher L-H Huang

University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Prof. Christopher Huang is Professor of Cell Physiology in the University of Cambridge. He read Physiology and Clinical Medicine at the Queen’s College, Oxford on a Florence Heale Scholarship award, and his PhD, at the Physiological Laboratory, Cambridge, on a Medical Research Council award. He was then successively, Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, Reader in the University of Cambridge. His electrophysiological contributions fall in the areas of skeletal muscle excitation-contraction coupling, cellular ionic homeostasis, central nervous system imaging, and cardiac arrhythmogenic mechanisms in genetic Na⁺, K⁺ and ryanodine receptor channel, and metabolic models, in addition to authoring/editing 7 books/monographs, and 5 journal theme issues. He was awarded the Brian Johnson, Rolleston (Oxford) and Gedge Prizes (Cambridge), and has been editor for Journal of Physiology, Monographs of the Physiological Society, Biological Reviews, Europace, eLife and Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society and Faculty Opinions Integrative Physiology Section Leader. He was Cambridge Philosophical Society President, served on the British Heart Foundation Advisory Council and Fellowships Committee, and is Sino British Fellowship Trustee (UK).

Expertise
Medicine

Research focus
cellular muscle electrophysiology
Ca2+ imaging
Na+ channel function and pharmacology
cardiac arrhythmias

Experimental organism
mouse

Competing interests statement
Current funding: British Heart Foundation (UK); BioMarin Ltd. (UK)Editorial Roles: Europace, ELife, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society; International Journal of Drug Discovery and PharmacologyOthers: Sino-British Fellowship Trust (UK); Faculty Opinions Integrative Physiology Section Leader.Visiting Professorships: Southwest University, Luzhuo, China; University of Surrey, UK.
John Huguenard

Stanford University School of Medicine, United States

John Huguenard is Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, with additional appointments in the Departments of Molecular and Cellular Physiology and Neurosurgery. He joined the faculty in 1994, and served on the executive and steering committees from 2000-2016. He was director of the Stanford Neurosciences PhD program from 2006-2013, and of the NIH T32 supported Stanford Postdoctoral Epilepsy Training Program from 2004 to the present. His work is on neurophysiology of voltage- and ligand-gated ion channels in neural circuits related to neuropsychiatric diseases such as epilepsy and autism spectrum disorders. A particular focus is mechanisms of action of antiepileptic drugs, and development of modern therapeutic interventions such as on demand optogenetics. His work is multidisciplinary including in vitro electrophysiology, genetic models, computational neuroscience, multiphoton microscopy, image analysis, and in vivo imaging and extracellular neurophysiology. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has received the research career award from the American Epilepsy Society and has served on its board.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
thalamocortical epileptic network
epilepsy
cortical microcircuitry
ion channels

Experimental organism
mouse

Competing interests statement
John Huguenard is employed by Stanford University. He receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health and the Simons Foundation. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He serves actively on the editorial boards of Experimental Neurology and Journal of Computational Neuroscience.
David James

University of Sydney, Australia

Professor James currently holds the Leonard P Ullmann Chair in Molecular Systems Biology and he is the Domain Leader for Biology at the Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney. Professor James has made major contributions to our understanding of insulin action. In the late 1980s he published a series of journal articles in Nature describing the identification and characterization of the insulin responsive glucose transporter GLUT4. Professor James then focused his efforts on unveiling the cellular and molecular control of insulin-stimulated glucose transport. He has also made contributions in the area of SNARE proteins, signal transduction and more recently in systems biology.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
diabetes
signal transduction
systems biology

Experimental organism
mouse
human
rat

Competing interests statement
David James has been funded by bodies like National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Wellcome Trust, Australian Research Council (ARC), NIH, Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Novo, had continuous NHMRC research fellowships since 1998 and is now Senior Principal Research Fellow.

James has served on editorial boards of journals such as The Journal of Biological Chemistry and The American Journal of Physiology for more than 10 years and is currently on five boards with major roles at Cell Metabolism (only Australian) and The Journal of Clinical Investigation. James reviews ~30 manuscripts per year for journals like Nature, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Medicine, Science, PNAS, The Journal Clinical Invest, Molecular Endocrinology, Endocrinology, Molecular Biology of the Cell, Journal of Cell Biology, Traffic, FASEB J, Genes & Development and grants for Diabetes Australia, National Heart, Wellcome Trust, ARC, NHMRC and International Foundations.
Bavesh Kana

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Bavesh Kana directs the DSI/NRF Centre of Excellence for Biomedical TB Research, a national Centre of Excellence with nodes at University of the Witwatersrand, Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town. He is a research fellow at the Centre for AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa and a consultant for the South African Medical Research Council and the Bill and Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute in Cambridge, USA. He obtained his PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand, and has conducted research visits at the University of Pennsylvania, the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Texas A&M University, the Public Health Research Institute in New Jersey and Harvard Medical School. He studies tuberculosis with a focus on identifying new drug targets implicated in remodelling of the peptidoglycan layer in the cell wall of the tubercle bacteria that cause this disease. His research extends to the clinical setting in South Africa, where he has developed several cohorts to study treatment response in individuals infected with tuberculosis and HIV, with an emphasis on eradicating persister organisms and shortening treatment duration. He has also been involved in the development of proficiency and quality assurance reagents for scaled deployment of infectious disease molecular diagnostics in resource-limited settings. Among the awards he has received are an appointment as an Early Career Scientist of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, selection as one of the 200 top young South Africans by the Mail and Guardian newspaper, the South African Medical Research Council scientific merit award for outstanding lifetime scientific contribution to health research, and the Vice Chancellors Innovation Award. He received the CEO Titan Award for meaningful contributions to shift the African landscape and has been involved in various spinout biotech companies in South Africa and internationally. He is a member of the Health Professions Council of South Africa and the Academy of Science of South Africa.

Expertise
Microbiology and Infectious Disease

Research focus
tuberculosis
tuberculosis-HIV
bacterial dormancy
bacterial persistence
differential culturability
peptidoglycan
bacterial cell walls
bacterial energy metabolism
tuberculosis drugs
drug resistance

Experimental organism
M. tuberculosis
M. smegmatis
E. coli
SARS-CoV-2

Competing interests statement
Bavesh Kana has received funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, United States National Institutes of Health, European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), South African Department of Science and Technology/Innovation, South African National Research Foundation, South African Medical Research Council, National Health Laboratory Services and the University of the Witwatersrand. He is a co-founder of and scientific advisor to SmartSpot Quality CC and scientific advisor to the Sydney Brenner Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Microscopy and Microanalysis Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, Cape Town HVTN laboratory and Olilux Biosciences (USA).
Pankaj Kapahi

Buck Institute for Research on Aging, United States

Dr Kapahi received his PhD from the University of Manchester, where he worked with Tom Kirkwood. He did his postdoctoral work with Seymour Benzer at Caltech and Michael Karin at University of California, San Diego. He joined the Buck Institute as an assistant professor in 2004.

Dr Kapahi has published more than 80 scientific papers and holds three current patents. He has been recognized for his scientific excellence with many awards, including the Eureka Award from the National Institute on Aging, a New Scholar Award from the Ellison Medical Foundation, a Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, the Nathan Shock Young Investigator Award, and the Breakthrough in Gerontology and Julie Martin Mid-career awards from AFAR. Dr. Kapahi also initiated the first master’s degree course in gerontology at the Buck Institute. His lab studies the genetic mechanisms by which nutrients modulate aging and age-related disease.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Developmental Biology

Research focus
aging
age-related diseases
nutrient signaling
metabolism
inflammation

Experimental organism
C. elegans
D. melanogaster
E. coli
mouse

Competing interests statement
Dr Kapahi currently hold grants from the NIH, Hillblom Foundation, Hevolution Foundation. He is also founder of a start up in the aging field, Juvify.
Andrew J King

University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Andrew King is Professor of Neurophysiology and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, where he is the Director of the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and heads the Auditory Neuroscience Group in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics. His research uses an interdisciplinary approach to investigate the neural basis for auditory perception and multisensory integration. His group is currently investigating the representation and coding of sound features by populations of neurons, how neural responses adjust to changes in the statistical distribution of sounds associated with different acoustic environments, and the capacity of the brain to compensate for the changes in inputs that result from hearing loss. He was awarded the Wellcome Prize in Physiology in 1990 and was made a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences in 2011, a Fellow of the Physiology Society in 2017, and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2018.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
auditory perception
multisensory processing
crossmodal perception
cortex
midbrain
neuronal adaptation
hearing

Experimental organism
ferret
mouse
human

Competing interests statement
Andrew King receives funding for his research from the Wellcome Trust, the University of Oxford, and from Action on Hearing Loss. He serves on the editorial board of Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. He is a member of Auditory Verbal UK Advisory Board and the Agir Pour L’Audition Scientific Prize Committee.
Jürgen Kleine-Vehn

University of Freiburg, Germany

Jürgen is a Professor at the University of Freiburg. He obtained his PhD for his work on plant cell polarity at the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology (VIB) at the Ghent University. He has been an Associate Professor at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna and is now full Professor and chair of Molecular Plant Physiology (MoPP) at the University of Freiburg. He works at the interface of quantitative plant cell biology and developmental plant genetics, addressing plant growth control at a subcellular to organ scale.

Expertise
Plant Biology
Cell Biology
Developmental Biology

Research focus
plant hormones
growth control
plant architecture

Competing interests statement
Jürgen Kleine-Vehn has received and profited from funding by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), the European Research Council (ERC), the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and the German Research Foundation (DFG). He is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Molecular Science and on the advisory board of Review Commons (operated by EMBO). He has been an elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Young Curia).
Benoît Kornmann

University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Benoit Kornmann is Associate Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford, and fellow of St Hugh’s College. Benoit Kornmann studies membrane contact sites, how intracellular organization impinges on organelle function and how lipid molecules are distributed among the many membranes of a eukaryotic cell. Benoit Kornmann is an expert in yeast genetics, membrane biology, organelle dynamics and signalling. He holds a PhD of the University of Geneva, and previously held the positions of Assistant Professor at the ETH Zurich, Professor of the Swiss National Science Foundation, and fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
membrane contact sites
mitochondria
membrane dynamics
membrane trafficking
phospholipids

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae

Competing interests statement
Benoit Kornmann is funded by the Wellcome trust and Syngenta Crop Protection. He is a board member of Review Commons and Contact, a faculty member of Faculty Opinions, and an advisory board member of F1000 Research.
Caigang Liu

Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, China

Caigang Liu received his PhD from the China Medical University, and trained clinically at first hospital of China Medical University. Then joined and served as a director of Breast Center Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University in 2016. His current research interests focus on clinical and translational research of oncology. In recent years, he has led a clinical research term to explore the improvement in breast reconstruction surgery and highly safe and effective anti-cancer strategies, along with identification of therapeutic targets and development of small molecular drugs against cancer metastasis. He has led several projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation, including the discovery of FSIP1 as a new target for anti-HER2 treatment, and is developing a new strategy to reverse anti-HER2 resistance in breast cancer. He is a member of the National Micro-noninvasive Committee of Chinese Medical Association, a vice chairman of the first breast disease branch of China Sexology Association, and a member of the Standing Committee in breast cancer marker collaboration group of Chinese Anti-cancer Association.

Expertise
Medicine
Cancer Biology

Research focus
surgical oncology
oncological clinical trials
breast cancer translational medicine
cancer metastasis and drug resistance
small molecular drug development

Experimental organism
human
mouse

Competing interests statement
Caigang Liu is currently funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and “Top young talent” project of Liaoning province, China. He now holds a number of patents for anti-tumor small molecular drugs and Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Huan Luo

Peking University, China

Dr Huan Luo is a tenured associate professor in the School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences at Peking University, China. She is also a PI of the IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research at PKU. Her research primarily focuses on the human brain mechanisms of cognitive functions such as attention, working memory, perceptual decision-making, and learning, particularly from a dynamic perspective. She has recently been interested in abstract relational structures in learning and memory. Dr Luo received her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Maryland College Park under the mentorship of David Poeppel. She first worked at the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and joined the faculty at Peking University in 2015. As one of six labs in the world, her lab participated in a high-impact international collaborative project COGITATE to test theories of neural correlates of consciousness.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
cognitive neuroscience
neural dynamics
neural oscillation
working memory
attention
EEG/MEG
learning and memory
neural coding

Competing interests statement
Huan Luo is currently funded by the National Science Foundation of China and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology. She is on the Editorial Board of PLOS Biology and Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. She also serves as an associate editor for Progress in Neurobiology.
Merritt Maduke

Stanford University School of Medicine, United States

Merritt Maduke is an Associate Professor of Molecular & Cellular Physiology and co-director of the Neurosciences Interdisciplinary Graduate Program at Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her PhD in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego and did postdoctoral training at Brandeis University with Professor Chris Miller. Her research at Stanford is centered on the biophysics of ion channels and transporters, with the overarching goal of understanding molecular mechanisms within the context of physiological functions. She also applies her mechanistic approach in the field of ultrasound neuromodulation. She was awarded the Society of General Physiologist’s Cranefield Award for her research on ion channels (2008) and served as the Society’s President from 2018-2019.

Expertise
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Neuroscience
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
ion channel and transporter molecular mechanisms
ion channel and transporter physiology
ion channel and transporter pharmacology
ultrasound neuromodulation

Experimental organism
E. coli
mouse
rat

Competing interests statement
Merritt Maduke is employed by Stanford University and receives research funding from the National Institutes of Health and Stanford Innovative Medicine Accelerator. She has served on the BPNS and BBM study sections at the NIH and as ad hoc member of additional panels. She serves on the editorial boards of the Biophysical Journal and The Journal of General Physiology and is a founding curator for Biophysics Colab.
Tamar Makin

University College London, United Kingdom

Tamar Makin is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, UK and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. Her research seeks to define the boundaries of brain plasticity in body representation, by studying the extent to which brain areas supporting action are shaped by experience. Her primary model for this work is studying brain reorganisation in individuals with a missing hand, as well as the brain representation of motor substitution and augmentation technologies. Her lab integrates methods from the fields of neuroscience, experimental psychology and rehabilitation.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
fMRI
plasticity
motor control
body representation
somatosensory
deprivation
augmentation
assistive technology

Experimental organism
human
non-human primates

Competing interests statement
Tamar Makin is presently funded by the European Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.
André F Marquand

Donders Institute, Radboud University / King's College London, Netherlands

André Marquand is a computational neuroscientist interested in the development of novel statistical techniques for neuroimaging data, aiming to further the understanding of human brain function. He has a particular focus on machine learning techniques that aim to learn to detect patterns of statistical regularity in empirical data. These methods hold significant promise for decoding cognitive states and predicting clinically relevant variables in health and disease.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
neuroimaging
computational psychiatry
machine learning
big data
probabilistic inference
normative modelling

Competing interests statement
André Marquand receives funding from the European Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.
Adèle L Marston

University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Adèle Marston is Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh, a Wellcome Investigator and Director of the Wellcome Discovery Research Platform for Hidden Cell Biology. Adèle investigates the fundamental mechanisms by which cells reproduce themselves and transmit their genome to the next generation. She has a particular interest in meiosis, the cell division that generates eggs and sperm. Her laboratory takes a multi-disciplinary approach to identify the fundamental mechanisms of chromosome segregation in model organisms, including yeast, frogs and mice. To understand the relevance of these discoveries for human fertility, she also works with clinicians to investigate the origins of chromosome segregation errors in human oocytes.

Expertise
Cell Biology
Chromosomes and Gene Expression
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
chromosome biology
cell biology
reproductive biology
meiosis
mitosis
chromosome segregation
cell cycle

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae
S. pombe
xenopus laevis
mouse
human

Competing interests statement
Adèle Marston is funded by Wellcome. She has served as Reviewing Editor for eLife.
Pramod Mistry

Yale University School of Medicine, United States

Pramod Mistry is Professor at Yale University School of Medicine, Medicine, Pediatrics and Cellular & Molecular Physiology and Yale Medicine’s Director of Lysosomal/Gaucher Disease Center. He was born in Kenya and moved to the UK after high school, where he became a junior lab technician to the late Professor Jack Pepys at London’s Brompton Hospital. He went on to complete BSc/PhD/MBBS at the University of London and completed training in Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology and Metabolic Medicine at London’s UCL/Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine and at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. His translational research has been focused on Gaucher disease genotype/phenotype correlations, annotation of distinct phenotypes of GD (i.e., those associated with Parkinson disease, cancers and pulmonary hypertension), discovery of genetic modifiers through WES and scRNAseq, recombinant enzyme replacement therapies, small molecule substrate reduction therapy and biomarker discovery. His lab was among the first to develop and authentic mouse model of non-neuronopathic Gaucher disease that led to the delineation of system-wide involvement triggered by GBA deletion, including immune dysregulation and identification of biomarkers. His lab maintains a large repertoire of mouse model of Gaucher disease type 1 as well as neuronopathic types of Gaucher disease and humanized models. Research in his lab is now informing common diseases, such as cancers, including myeloma, and Parkinson disease.

He has long-standing interest in mentorship of Junior Faculty, post-doctoral trainees and students. He is Core Mentor in Yale’s T32 Award in Investigative Hepatology. He serves on the Executive Committee of Yale’s Liver Center.

His research has been funded by the NIH and Sanofi.

Expertise
Medicine

Research focus
lysosomal diseases
Gaucher disease
metabolic liver diseases

Competing interests statement
I receive a research grant from Sanofi. I do not have any other senior editorial roles.
Tirin Moore

Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, United States

Tirin Moore is a Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1995. He was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, and later a research fellow at Princeton. In 2003, he started his own laboratory at Stanford. His laboratory studies the neural mechanisms of visually guided behavior and the neural basis of cognitive functions (e.g. attention), with a focus on the primate brain. He has been a Sloan fellow, a Pew Scholar, a McKnight Scholar, and received a Career Award from the National Science Foundation. Before becoming an HHMI investigator, he was an HHMI Early Career Scientist. In 2009, he received a Troland Award from the National Academy of Sciences for his work on visual attention. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2017.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
Systems and cognitive neuroscience
Visual neuroscience
Perception and cognition
Prefrontal cortex
Electrophysiology
Psychophysics
Neural circuits

Competing interests statement
Tirin Moore is employed by Stanford University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and HHMI.
Alan Moses

University of Toronto, Canada

Alan M Moses is currently Professor and Canada Research Chair in Computational Biology in the Departments of Cell & Systems Biology and Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research touches on many of the major areas in computational biology, including DNA and protein sequence analysis, phylogenetic models, population genetics, expression profiles, regulatory network simulations and image analysis. Recent areas of focus include machine learning applied to microscope images, protein and genome sequences, to better understand subcellular localization, intrinsically disordered regions and regulatory sequences in non-coding DNA.

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Evolutionary Biology
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
data analysis
bioinformatics
molecular evolution
intrinsically disordered proteins
signaling pathways
regulatory networks

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae

Competing interests statement
- Current research funding: Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Canada Research Chairs (CRC)- Other editorial roles: Associate Editor, Genetics
Sacha B Nelson

Brandeis University, United States

Sacha Nelson is the Tauber Professor of Biology and Chair of the Program in Neuroscience at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He received his MDPhD (Biology) from UCSD in 1991, did postdoctoral work at MIT and has been at Brandeis University since 1994. He has received awards from the Sloan, McKnight and Rett Syndrome Research Foundations. His current research focuses on transcriptional networks underlying neuronal plasticity and excitability in the mammalian neocortex.

Expertise
Neuroscience
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
regulation of neuronal gene expression
cellular and systems electrophysiology
developmental disorders
learning and synaptic plasticity

Experimental organism
mouse

Competing interests statement
Sacha Nelson receives funding from the NIH and from the WM Keck Foundation. He serves on the Advisory Boards for eNeuro and for the Carney Institute for Brain Science at Brown University.
Tony Ng

King's College London, United Kingdom

Tony Ng (FMEDSCI, MB ChB, MRCP, FRCPath, PhD) brings a rich spectrum of knowledge and capabilities with clinical experience in treating AIDS patients (with opportunistic infections and cancers) and fundamental immunology skills. He is also a pioneer of molecular imaging in cancer. He was the first person to use antibody based fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) approaches in tumour cells and tissues to monitor protein states and function. He has published on how to visualize protein biochemistry in preclinical models; as well as in patient-derived cancer tissues for establishing in vitro/ companion diagnostics. He has adopted a multidisciplinary approach to understand cancer recurrence and also to stratify molecularly targeted agents in combination with immunotherapy. His research bridges the gap between physics, biology and medicine, particularly in the field of translational cancer research.

For clinical translation, he has the proven ability to coordinate and work cooperatively with colleagues and leaders in a wide variety of disciplines (imaging, cell biology, oncology, bioinformatics, surgery, pathology, genomics, as well as physical science disciplines such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and engineering). He has directed the KCL and UCL Comprehensive Cancer Imaging Centre (CCIC, one of four centres funded by CRUK & EPSRC in the UK) since its inception in 2008. The vision for the CCIC is to develop novel imaging (PET and MRI) technologies and use them in combination with clinicopathological assessment, genomics and in-house nanoscopic imaging to measure protein interactions in the context of interventional trials. In such trial context, the tissue imaging (FLIM histology) approach he has developed and refined over the years is beginning to reveal ErbB/ HER receptor rewiring as a mechanism of resistance in human tumours under selection pressure such as cetuximab.

Tony Ng is the current Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Centre, part of the KCL School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Guy’s & St Thomas’ Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) Cancer Theme. In 2022, he joined GSK on a part-time basis, to help establish the GSK-KCL Translational Oncology Research Hub which was which was announced in September 2021. The aim is to apply his clinical medicine training as well as immunology, biochemistry and imaging expertise to accelerate the development of the anti-cancer drugs. HIs experience of collaborating with mathematicians/theoretical physicists creates an opportunity to bridge the biology & AI/ML interface, an essential component of delivering the innovative Digital biological twin vision.

Training/expertise: Medicine, Immunology, Cancer cell biology, Biochemistry and Optical Imaging/Biophysics as well as preclinical Radionuclide imaging.

Expertise
Medicine
Cancer Biology
Immunology and Inflammation

Research focus
imaging
biomarkers
trial
immune
cancer
reverse translation
exosome
organoid
tumour microenvironment

Competing interests statement
At KCL, Tony Ng receives funding from Cancer Research UK, Medical Research Council, Wellcome Leap Inc., European Commission and GSK. He is employed on a part time basis as the Vice President of the Digital biological twin Unit at GSK.
Päivi Ojala

University of Helsinki, Finland
Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Päivi Ojala is the Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at University of Helsinki and Chair of Viral Tumorigenesis at Imperial College London. She has made significant contributions to the Kaposi’s Sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) field and has more recently focused also on the role of lymphatic endothelial microenvironment on cancer cell metastasis. She has expertise in organotypic 3D co-culture models, cell-based high-content screens, protein kinase signalling and viral technologies. Her work has led to demonstration of restoration of p53 function by small molecule inhibitors as a therapeutic modality for KSHV-induced lymphomas, identification of host Pim kinases, nucleophosmin, and the p53-p21 axis as novel regulators of viral replication, and shown that KSHV infection reprograms lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) to a new, more invasive cell type. They have also demonstrated that LEC interaction with melanoma cells leads to increased distant organ metastasis in vivo, which is dependent on MMP14, Notch3 and b1-integrin- Dr. Ojala holds a doctoral degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of Helsinki, and has received postdoctoral training at the Yale School of Medicine, CT, USA.

Expertise
Cancer Biology
Microbiology and Infectious Disease

Research focus
human tumor viruses
virus-host interactions
cancer metastasis
notch signaling
lymphatic endothelial transcription factors
CAR T cell therapies

Experimental organism
human primary and cancer cells
immunocompromised mouse

Competing interests statement
Päivi Ojala receives funding from the Academy of Finland, Sigrid Juselius Foundation, Cancer Foundation Finland and University of Helsinki.
Panayiota Poirazi

Foundation for Research and Technology–Hellas, Greece

Panayiota Poirazi is a Research Director and head of the Dendrites Lab (www.dendrites.gr) at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) of the Foundation for Research and Technology–Hellas (FORTH). She has a Bachelor in Mathematics from the University of Cyprus, and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She is interested in understanding how dendrites contribute to complex brain functions and uses computational modelling approaches, often in conjunction with experiments, to answer this question. Her work has significantly advanced our understanding of how single neurons compute, by revealing the power of dendrites in solving difficult problems.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
computational neuroscience
neurophysiology
dendrites
learning and memory
modeling

Experimental organism
mouse

Competing interests statement
Panayiota Poirazi receives funding from the European Commission (European Research Council, European Innovation Council, Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions etc.), the EINSTEIN Foundation Berlin, the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (Greece), the National Institutes of Health (USA) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia). She is on the editorial board of Neuroscience.
Lynne-Marie Postovit

University of Alberta, Canada

Dr Lynne-Marie Postovit is a Professor and Head of the Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences (DBMS) at Queen’s University. Prior to this she held several endowed chairs in Cancer Research at the University of Alberta. Overall, Dr Postovit’s work has yielded many fundamental discoveries, leading to highly cited papers as well as putative clinical applications. As examples, she is recognized for her work related to the role of NODAL, a stem-cell associated protein, in cancer progression, as well as significant contributions related to extracellular matrices, the role of hypoxia in cancer progression and more recently the role of mRNA translation in cancer cell plasticity. Her discoveries have also provided the foundations for three patents. While focused on fundamental biology related to cancer cell plasticity, Dr Postovit’s research has often been translated to the clinic, for the benefit of patients.

Exemplifying her stature in the field, Dr Postovit has served on the editorial boards of journals and has presented her work at international conferences and institutions around the globe. Dr Postovit’s achievements have also been recognized by invitations to participate on scientific advisory boards, adjudication panels, and planning committees. For instance, she was a member of the Standing Committee on Research Excellence [Terry Fox Research Institute (TFRI)], the Scientific Advisory Board for the Cancer Research Society, the AACR Regional Advisory Subcommittee of Canada, and the Medical Review panel (Gairdner Foundation). These boards decided the outcomes of some of the most prestigious awards and grants related to cancer research. Dr Postovit has also received several awards and accolades: For example, she was the top ranked New Investigator at the CIHR (2009) and in 2016, was nominated to the college of the Royal Society of Canada.

Importantly, Dr Postovit has been a dedicated advocate for the research enterprise at large. She was a founding co-director of the Cancer Research Institute of Northern Alberta, wherein she built educational programming and organizational structures to support translational cancer research. More recently she has been building core research capacities at Queen’s, obtaining funds from sources such as the Transformative Educational Research Fund, to establish team based experiential learning opportunities in the health sciences and to ensure equitable access to research infrastructure.

Expertise
Cancer Biology
Cell Biology
Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine

Research focus
cellular plasticity
tumour microenvironment
hypoxia
stem cells
metastasis
ovarian cancer
breast cancer

Competing interests statement
Dr Postovit holds funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Cancer Research Society, the Canadian Cancer Society and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.
Sergio Rasmann

University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Sergio Rasmann is a plant chemical ecologist who obtained his PhD in 2006 from the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), during which he discovered that herbivore-damaged maize roots emit volatile signals in the soil that attract predatory nematodes near the site of wounding. After a post‐doc at Cornell University, a research fellowship at the University of Lausanne, and an assistant professorship at the University of California, Irvine, he is now Full Professor at the University of Neuchâtel, head of the Laboratory of Functional Ecology. His current research interests focus on addressing the mechanistic, ecological and evolutionary causes and consequences of chemically mediated interactions between plants and their biotic and abiotic environment. This broad theme is split into studying the effects of climate change on plant-herbivore interaction, improving biological control methods using beneficial microbes, and conservation biology practices. He has been awarded the early career award by the International Society of Chemical Ecology in 2014.

Expertise
Ecology
Plant Biology

Research focus
chemical ecology
functional ecology
community ecology
soil science

Competing interests statement
Sergio has been receiving continuous funding mainly from the Swiss National Science Foundation, and occasionally from the European Union (Horizon 2020). He is an active member of several scientific commissions at the Swiss National Science Foundation, and at CITES. He is associate editor for Functional ecology, and Frontiers in Plant Science, and has served as Reviewing Editor for eLife.
Satyajit Rath

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune, India

Satyajit Rath was trained as a physician and a pathologist in Pune and Mumbai, India. He has worked on various issues related to the mechanisms involved in the development and functioning of the immune system since the nineteen-eighties, initially in post-doctoral stints across the world and then as a faculty member at the National Institute of Immunology (NII) in New Delhi over 1991-2017. Over 2017-2018, he held the Agharkar Chair at the Agharkar Research Institute, Pune, India. Currently, he is a visiting professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune, and an adjunct faculty member at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, Faridabad, India. Satyajit also works on science-and-society policies as well as science education and outreach with both government agencies and civil society groups.

Expertise
Immunology and Inflammation

Research focus
immune physiology
lymphocyte development
lymphocyte responses
macrophage activation
immunity in disease

Competing interests statement
Research support for Satyajit's group over the years has come mainly from agencies of the government of India. He serves as a member of the scientific advisory committees/councils as well as management boards of a number of life science institutions in India. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for Frontiers in Immunology. He is a non-executive director of Ahammune Biosciences Private Limited, Pune, India, and a member of the scientific advisory boards of Curadev Pharma Private Limited, NOIDA, India, and Mynvax Private Limited, Bangalore, India.
Peter A Rodgers

Features Editor, eLife, United Kingdom

Peter joined eLife as Features editor in June 2012 and has worked in scientific publishing for more than twenty years. As Features Editor he oversees the non-research content of eLife and also the Digests that are included in all Research articles and Short reports. Previously he has been the Chief Editor of Nature Nanotechnology (2006-2012), where he had overall responsibility for all research and non-research content, and the Editor of Physics World magazine (1996-2005). Peter has a degree in physics from Imperial College London (1984) and a PhD from the Queen's University of Belfast (1988), and worked at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory before joining Physics World as an Assistant Editor in 1990.
Jonathan Roiser

University College London, United Kingdom

Jonathan Roiser is Professor of Neuroscience and Mental Health and Deputy Director at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. His research interests lie in understanding the brain and psychological processes driving mental health problems, especially disrupted motivation in depression. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers and his recent research has been funded by Wellcome, the MRC, the Leverhulme Trust and the Rosetrees Trust. He founded and directs two PhD schemes: the UCL-NIMH Joint Doctoral Training Program in Neuroscience and the UCL Wellcome 4-year PhD Programme in Mental Health Science.

Expertise
Neuroscience
Medicine

Research focus
mental health
neuroimaging
behavior
psychopharmacology
computational modelling

Experimental organism
human

Competing interests statement
I hold active grants from Rosetrees, Wellcome and the Leverhulme Trust. I supervise an ongoing PhD studentship co-funded by MRC and Cambridge Cognition Ltd. I have performed paid consultancy work for GE Ltd within the last 3 years. I sit on the Editorial Board of Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.
David Ron

Cambridge University, United Kingdom

David Ron is a Professor at Cambridge University. He directs a lab at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR) studying protein-folding homeostasis in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). The lab uses biochemical, biophysical and cell-based tools to research both the molecular mechanisms that recognize the burden of unfolded proteins and thus initiate signalling in the ER unfolded protein response (UPR) and the downstream effector pathways by which cells adapt to unfolded protein stress in their ER. These effector mechanisms engage post-translational regulation of ER chaperone function, regulated translation of mRNA and transcriptional control of gene expression and thus interface with other cellular stress pathways.

To eLife, David Ron brings scientific expertise in the study of the unfolded protein response, chaperone function and stress-induced regulation of mRNA translation and editorial experience from having served as an eLife Reviewing Editor since 2012.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
chaperones
unfolded protein response
oxidative protein folding
protein synthesis

Experimental organism
C. elegans
E. coli
human
mouse
S. cerevisiae

Competing interests statement
David Ron holds a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellowship and is on the editorial advisory boards of J. Cell Science, PLOS Biology and EMBO J.
John W Schoggins

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, United States

John Schoggins is a tenured Professor in the Department of Microbiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. His lab studies innate immunity at the virus-host interface, with an emphasis on the discovery of novel genetically encoded antiviral proteins, their mechanisms of action, and their roles in mouse models of viral pathogenesis. He received a BS in Chemistry from University of Rochester, a PhD in Molecular Biology from Weill Cornell Medical College, and he trained as an NRSA-funded postdoctoral fellow in Virology and Infectious Diseases at The Rockefeller University. John is a Rita Allen Foundation Scholar (2015) and a recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2014) and the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (2020).

Expertise
Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Immunology and Inflammation

Research focus
virology
immunology
infectious diseases
host-pathogen interactions

Experimental organism
human
mouse
bats

Competing interests statement
John Schoggins receives funding from the The National Institutes of Health, The Clayton Foundation, The Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and The Welch Foundation. He is an Editor at mShpere and on the Editorial Boards of Journal of Virology and Cytokine Growth Factors and Reviews.
Meredith C Schuman

University of Zurich, Switzerland

Meredith Schuman (Merry) is an Assistant Professor in Spatial Genetics, Departments of Geography and Chemistry, University of Zurich and a member of the Remote Sensing Laboratories and the University Research Priority Program on Global Change and Biodiversity at the University of Zurich. Her background is in the chemical ecology and functional genetics of plant interactions, and plant ecophysiology. She works on projects combining direct analyses of plant tissue, and remote sensing techniques with the aim of developing approaches to assess genetic and chemotypic variation, plasticity, and adaptive potential within plant species, and their interactions in the context of global change. She was previously a Group Leader in the Department of Molecular Ecology at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (MPICE) in Jena and a Junior Group Leader in the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) on the ecological functions of plant genes.

Expertise
Ecology
Plant Biology

Research focus
chemical ecology
spatial ecology
plant interactions
functional genetics
intraspecific diversity

Competing interests statement
Merry's position and her research is currently supported by the NOMIS foundation (grant to Michael Schaepman, University of Zurich, project: Remotely Sensing Ecological Genomics) and the University of Zurich, including the Departments of Geography and Chemistry and the University Research Priority Program on Global Change and Biodiversity in which she is a PI. From November 2020 her work will also be funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 program (UPSCALE consortium, grant number 861998, co-PI and work package lead).
Sonia Q Sen

Tata Institute for Genetics and Society, India

Sonia Sen is a senior scientist at the Tata Institute for Genetics and Society, Bangalore. Her research interests span neurodevelopment and behaviour. Her group studies how neural stem cells use and integrate spatial and temporal information to generate diverse cell types during development. Beyond neurodevelopment, her team explores how these diverse cell types form functional neural circuits and examines how these circuits give rise to appropriate behaviours, with a particular emphasis on mosquitoes.

Sonia did her PhD at the National Centre for Biological Sciences – TIFR, Bangalore and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oregon with Chris Q Doe.

Expertise
Developmental Biology
Neuroscience
Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine

Research focus
neural stem cells
neural circuits
evo-devo
mosquito

Experimental organism
D. melanogaster
Anopheles stephensi
Dolores Shoback

University of California, San Francisco, United States

Dr Dolores Shoback cares for patients with a variety of disorders related to the endocrine system, focusing particularly on metabolic bone disease, parathyroid disorders and osteoporosis. She also directs UCSF's physician training program in diabetes, endocrinology and metabolism.

Shoback's research interests include metabolic bone disease, the calcium-sensing receptor and parathyroid hormone.

Shoback completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her MD from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and completed a residency in internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She completed a fellowship in endocrinology at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Expertise
Medicine

Research focus
endocrinology
hormones
bone metabolism
calcium
mineral
parathyroid
vitamin D

Experimental organism
human
mouse

Competing interests statement
Dr Shoback is currently funded by the NIH.
Lois Smith

Harvard Medical School, Children's Hospital Boston, United States

Lois EH Smith MD, PhD is an ophthalmologist and clinician/scientist at Boston Children’s Hospital and Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School. Her basic research work is in retinal neovascularization, both basic mechanism and treatment including diabetic retinopathy, retinopathy of prematurity, age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa.

She has a long standing interest in eye diseases particularly retinopathy of prematurity, diabetic retinopathy, and AMD and in the mechanisms behind these diseases, particularly the underlying causes of neovascularization and the interactions between neurons and vessels. Many pathways that they have found have been translated into clinical trials, including replacement of IGF-1 in preterm infants and treatment of AMD with anti-VEGF antibodies in which they were the first to show the benefit of blocking VEGF in a mouse model of retinopathy. More recently Dr Smith's work has been interested in metabolic function in photoreceptors, particularly with respect to lipids. Photoreceptor metabolic dysfunction causes central vision loss in retinal degenerative diseases (including ROP) but is also implicated in age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.

Dr Smith is the recipient of the Friedenwald award, the Alcon Research Institute award, the Silverman award, and the Bressler Prize.

Expertise
Developmental Biology
Medicine
Neuroscience

Research focus
age-related macular degeneration
diabetic eye disease
retinopathy
ocular disease
developmental neuroscience

Competing interests statement
Dr Smith has received funding from the National Eye Institute, Massachusetts Lions Eye Research Fund, the European Union, the Lowy Medical Research Institute, Foundation Fighting Blindness, Research to Prevent Blindness Senior Investigator Award, and the Alcon Award.Current editor roles include: Editor for Ophthalmology (Science), Editor for Journal of Clinical Ophthalmology, and Editor IOVS (Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science).
Dominique Soldati-Favre

University of Geneva, Switzerland

Dr Dominique Soldati-Favre studied biochemistry and earned her PhD degree in molecular biology from the University of Zürich (Switzerland). She is full Professor at the department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva. Her laboratory is studying obligate intracellular parasitism using Toxoplasma gondii. The main line of research focuses on the cell biology underlying parasite active invasion into mammalian cells. Her group is also aiming at defining the metabolic needs and capabilities of the parasites as well as how they subvert host cellular functions notably to access nutrients.

Expertise
Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
parasitology
organelle biogenesis
protein trafficking
metabolism
host pathogen interaction
signalling

Experimental organism
T. gondii
apicomplexans
kinetoplastids

Competing interests statement
Dominique Soldati-Favre’s research is currently funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She serves as Section Editor at PLOS Pathogens, and Editor at mBio.
Didier Stainier

Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, Germany

Didier Stainier is the director of the Department of Developmental Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research, Bad Nauheim (Frankfurt), Germany. He studied Biology in Wales, Belgium and the USA (Brandeis University) where he got a BA in 1984. He then received his PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Harvard University (1990) where he investigated the cellular basis of axon guidance and target recognition in the developing mouse brain with Wally Gilbert. After a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellowship with Mark Fishman at the Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), where he initiated the studies on zebrafish cardiac development, he set up his lab at the University of California, San Francisco in 1995, where he expanded his research to investigate questions of cell differentiation, tissue morphogenesis, organ homeostasis and function, as well as organ regeneration, in the zebrafish cardiovascular system and endodermal organs. In 2012, he moved to the Max Planck Institute where he continues to utilize both forward and reverse genetic approaches to investigate cellular and molecular mechanisms of developmental processes during vertebrate organ formation, in both zebrafish and mouse. He is also an Honorary Professor at Goethe University in Frankfurt. In addition to research and mentorship awards at UCSF, he was a Packard Fellow, Basil O’Connor scholar, established Investigator of the American Heart Association, received the American Association of Anatomists Harland Mossman Award in Developmental Biology, and was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Academia Europaea and European Molecular Biology Organization, as well as an Officier de l’ordre de Léopold de Belgique.

Expertise
Developmental Biology

Research focus
developmental genetics
organogenesis
tissue morphogenesis
organ homeostasis

Experimental organism
zebrafish
mouse

Competing interests statement
Didier Stainier has received funding from the Max Planck Society, the European Research Council, the National Institutes of Health, the Packard Foundation, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the American Heart Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Leducq Foundation among others. In addition to being a Senior Editor for eLife, he currently serves as a Managing Editor for Mechanisms of Development, is on the editorial board of Development and FEBS letters, and is an International Strategic Advisor for the National Institute of Genetics in Mishima, Japan. He previously served as a Section Editor for BMC Developmental Biology and was the founding chair of the Dev1 study section of the National Institutes of Health.
Lori Sussel

University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, United States

Lori Sussel is a Professor of Pediatrics and Cell & Developmental Biology at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center. She also serves as Director of the Research Division at Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes. She received her BA in Microbiology at the University of Texas, Austin and her PhD in Molecular Biology from Columbia University where she investigated transcriptional regulation in yeast. She pursued postdoctoral studies first with Dr. Barbara Meyer (UC Berkeley) and then Dr. John Rubenstein (UC San Francisco) where applied her interests in transcriptional regulation of cell fates to developmental processes. During her postdoctoral studies, she was funded by a Life Science Research Fellowship, a NIH F32 fellowship and the A.P Giannini Foundation. She began her independent career at the University of Colorado where she initiated her studies on the transcriptional regulation of pancreatic islet cell fates. In 2006, she moved to the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center at Columbia University where she continued to investigate pancreas development and islet biology, expanding her interests in transcriptional regulation to roles of long non-coding RNAs and RNA processing. In 2016, she returned to the University of Colorado to become the Director of Basic and Translational Research at the Barbara Davis Center for Diabetes. Her research continues to focus on pancreas development and islet biology using mice and human stem cell platforms to understand the molecular underpinnings of the islet dysfunctions associated with diabetes. In this position, she holds the Sissel and Findlow Family Chair in Stem Cell Biology.

Expertise
Chromosomes and Gene Expression
Developmental Biology
Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine

Research focus
pancreas development
islet biology
transcriptional regulation
long non-coding RNAs
diabetes
developmental genetics

Experimental organism
mouse
human cells

Competing interests statement
Lori Sussel has received funding from the National Institutes of Health, the American Diabetes Association, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. In addition to being a Senior Editor for eLife, she currently serves as an Associate Editor for Science Advances, and is on the editorial board of Developmental Biology and Life Science Alliance. She previously served as an Associate Editor for Diabetes and Pediatric Diabetes and was on the editorial board of Molecular Metabolism.
Kenton J Swartz

National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH, United States

Kenton Swartz has been a Senior Investigator in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke within the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland since 2003. He obtained a BS in Chemistry and Biology from Eastern Mennonite College in 1986 and a PhD in Neurobiology from Harvard Medical School in 1993, where he worked with Bruce Bean studying the regulation of voltage-gated calcium channels by G-proteins and protein kinases. He obtained postdoctoral training with Roderick MacKinnon at Harvard Medical School, where he began isolating and studying toxins that interact with voltage-activated potassium channels. His laboratory uses biochemical, molecular biological, biophysical and structural techniques to understand how ion channel proteins sense critical biological stimuli, including membrane voltage, temperature, and both chemical and mechanical signals. He received an NIH Directors Award for Scientific Achievement in 2008, an NIH Office of the Director Honor Award on behalf of the Diversity Task Force in 2011 and the Kenneth S. Cole Award from the Biophysical Society in 2017. He has also served as the president of the Society of General Physiologists.

Expertise
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Neuroscience
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
ion channel structure
ion channel mechanisms
ion channel physiology
ion channel pharmacology

Experimental organism
mouse

Competing interests statement
Kenton Swartz is employed by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health. In addition to serving as a Senior Editor at eLife, he has served as a Reviewing Editor for eLife and as an Associate Editor at the Journal of General Physiology. He also teaches yoga at LifeTime Athletic.
Michael Taffe

University of California, San Diego, United States

Mike is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at UCSD, a position he accepted following nearly two decades at The Scripps Research Institute. His research focuses on furthering our understanding of the health impacts of acute and chronic exposure to drugs of abuse, including psychomotor stimulants, cannabinoids and opioids.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
addiction
substance use disorders
behavioral pharmacology
dementia
motivation
reward learning
reward memory
behavioral neuroscience
behavioral toxicology
monkey behavior

Experimental organism
rat
rodents

Competing interests statement
Michael Taffe currently receives funding from the United States National Institutes of Health. He serves as an academic editor at PLoS ONE and is an editorial board member at Pharmacology, Biochemistry & Behavior, Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology and Behavioral Neuroscience.
Tadatsugu Taniguchi

Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Tada Taniguchi is Professor Emeritus of The University of Tokyo and Fellow at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology of the University. He also served as Director of the Max Planck–The University of Tokyo Center for Integrative Inflammology from 2014 to 2018. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Zurich. His work principally concerns the mechanisms of signal transduction and gene expression that underlie immunity and oncogenesis. Many of his research projects have stemmed from his original discovery of two cytokine genes, interferon-beta and interleukin-2. These discoveries have laid the groundwork for the molecular characterization of the various systems of cytokines as well as therapeutic advances achieved by the administration of cytokines. One extension of this research was his discovery of a new family of transcription factors, the interferon regulatory factors (IRFs), which he and others have since identified as playing integral roles in the regulation of the immunity, inflammation and cancer. He has received numerous awards, including the Robert Koch Prize, Pezcoller-AACR International Award for Cancer Research, and was bestowed the Person of Cultural Merit award from the Government of Japan. More recently, he received Order of Culture medal, the highest honor in Japan. He was also elected Foreign Associate Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, in 2003, International Member of the National Academy of Medicine in 2016 and Associate Member of EMBO in 2018.

Expertise
Immunology and Inflammation

Research focus
inflammation
innate immunity
adaptive immunity
immunological disease
anti-tumor immunity
gene regulation in immune cells
signaling in immune cells
gene regulation in host defence

Competing interests statement
Tada Taniguchi has received funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology, and Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development in Japan. He is a member of the editorial boards of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Immunity. He is a member of the board of directors of the Japan Molecular Biology Society, and served as member of the Science Council of Japan between 2005 and 2011. He also served as co-chairperson of the International Affairs Committee of The American Association for Cancer Research between 2002 and 2008.
Aleksandra Walczak

Ecole Normale Superieure, France

Aleksandra Walczak received her PhD in physics at UCSD working on models of stochastic gene expression. After a graduate fellowship at KITP, she was a Princeton Center for Theoretical Science Fellow, focusing on applying information theory to signal processing in small gene regulatory networks. Currently she is a CNRS researcher at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, interested in a variety of problems in the physics of living systems.

She actively works on development, collective behavior of bird flocks and statistical descriptions of the immune system.

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Immunology and Inflammation
Physics of Living Systems

Research focus
biophysics
quantitative immunology
probabilistic data analysis
theoretical models
development
collective behaviour

Competing interests statement
Aleksandra Walczak is the recipient of a CNRS-Chicago Cooperation Grant, a FACCTS CNRS-Chicago Cooperation Grant, an IRN CNRS Predictability, Adaptability Evolution network collaboration grant, a CNRS-MIT Cooperation Grant, a q-Life Grant "The physics of repair and silencing foci?, an ERC Proof of Concept Grant "Automated evaluation and correction of generation bias in immune receptor repertoires", a DFG CRC "Predictability in evolution", an ERC International Training Network QuanTII grant, and an ERC Consolidator Grant "Statistical physics of immune-viral co-evolution”.
Kate Wassum

University of California, Los Angeles, United States

Kate is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience in the Psychology Department at UCLA. Her research focuses on the neural signals and circuits underlying appetitive associative learning, motivated behavior, and decision making and how dysfunction in these mechanisms can produce the maladaptive behavior underlying mental illness. Her lab uses multidisciplinary approach, combining behavioral procedures rooted in the rich traditions of learning theory with advanced systems neuroscience and molecular methods.

Expertise
Neuroscience

Research focus
behavioural neuroscience
systems neuroscience
learning and memory
motivation
reward
decision making
addiction

Experimental organism
rat
mouse

Competing interests statement
Kate Wassum currently receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. She is an associate editor at the Journal of Neuroscience, editorial board member at Neuropsychopharmacology, ACS Chemical Neuroscience, and Scientific Reports, and a consulting editor at Journal of Experimental Psychology Animal Learning & Cognition.
Richard M White

Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Richard White, M.D., Ph.D, is a physician-scientist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College. He is interested in basic mechanisms underlying metastasis, using the zebrafish as a model system. His work has established numerous techniques for cancer modeling and high-resolution imaging in the fish. Using these tools, the lab is focused on the cross-talk between tumor cells and the microenvironment, and how this interplay influences metastatic success. His work has revealed novel interactions between melanoma cells and adipocytes in the microenvironment, and how neural crest programs play roles in melanoma progression. He has been awarded the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Pershing Square Foundation Award, and the Mark Foundation ASPIRE award.

Expertise
Cancer Biology
Cell Biology
Developmental Biology
Medicine

Research focus
development
neural crest
zebrafish
cancer
melanoma
metastasis
microenvironment

Experimental organism
zebrafish

Competing interests statement
Richard White receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Pershing Square Sohn Foundation, the Mark Foundation, the Melanoma Research Alliance, the American Cancer Society and the Harry J. Lloyd Foundation. He receives consulting fees from N-of-One, Inc.
Ma-Li Wong

State University of New York Upstate Medical University, United States

Ma-Li Wong, MD, PhD, FRANZCP, is Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and Neurosciences and Physiology at SUNY Upstate Medical University. She was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Brazil, where she graduated from the University of São Paulo School of Medicine (FMUSP). She had clinical and research training in psychiatry at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NIH, and Yale University. Ma-Li Wong is a bench, clinical and translational researcher in the biology of depression and co-morbid conditions, chronic stress, and antidepressant drugs. She has conducted research for over 30 years at Yale (Chief Resident and Instructor), National Institutes of Health (Unit Chief), University of California, Los Angeles (Professor), University of Miami (Professor and Vice-Chair), and in Australia (Australian National University, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and Flinders University). She was the recipient of the following awards: Milton Rosenbaum Award for Psychiatric Research (1989); Lilly Psychiatric Research Fellowship by the American Psychiatric Association (1990); SmithKline Beecham Award by the Society of Biological Psychiatry (1990); APA/Dista Research Award (1993); NIH Fare Award (1996 and 1997); Henry L. Moses Award by the Montefiore Medical Center (1998). She co-edited two books: Pharmacogenomics: The Search for Individualized Therapeutics (2002) and Biology of Depression: From Novel Insights to Therapeutic Strategies (2005).

Expertise
Medicine
Neuroscience

Research focus
major depression
chronic stress
neuroinflammation
neuroendocrinology
pharmacogenomics
genetics
obesity
leptin

Experimental organism
human
mouse
primary cells
immortalized cells

Competing interests statement
Ma-Li Wong is an Associate Editor for Molecular Psychiatry. She has been funded by organizations such as the NIH in the US and the National Health and Medical Research Council in Australia.
Wei Yan

Washington State University, United States

Wei Yan obtained his MD from China Medical University and PhD from University of Turku, Finland. After finishing his post-doc training at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, he started his own lab at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, where he rose through the ranks and eventually named University Foundation Professor, the highest honor the University bestows upon its faculty. In 2020, he joined The Lundquist Institute at Harbor-UCLA to direct the newly established National Center for Male Reproductive Epigenomics, one of the seven National Centers for Translational Research in Reproduction and Infertility (NCTRI) supported by the NICDH. The Yan lab works on genetic and epigenetic control of fertility and the epigenetic contribution of gametes to fertilization, early embryonic development, and adulthood health. He has so far published over 160 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters with over 12,00 citations.

His lab first put forward a novel idea for the development of non-hormonal male contraceptives: “Do not kill, but disable sperm”, which led to the discovery of TRIPTONIDE, a natural compound, as a reversible non-hormonal contraceptive agent in mice and monkeys, and established it as a drug candidate for “The Pill” for men. His lab also discovered the function of motile cilia in the reproductive tracts. In the male, motile ciliary beating function as an agitator to maintain the constant suspension of immotile testicular sperm during their transit through the efferent ductules in men. In the female, motile cilia in the oviduct/Fallopian tube are essential for oocyte pickup and fertility, but dispensable for embryo and sperm transport, which are mostly achieved through smooth muscle contraction. This discovery solved the long-standing controversy about the role of cilia beating vs. muscle contraction in gamete/embryo transport. His lab elucidated several novel mechanisms underlying the unique regulation of gene expression during the haploid phase of spermatogenesis, including global shortening of transcripts, delayed translation/uncoupling of transcription and translation, and dynamic changes in poly(A) length and non-A contents. His lab first discovered mitochondrial genome-encoded small RNAs (mitosRNAs), endo-siRNAs in the male germline and MSCI-escaping X-linked miRNAs. His lab was also among those that suggested critical functions of sperm-borne RNAs in supporting early embryonic development and epigenetic inheritance.

Wei Yan’s contributions to science have been recognized by several academic awards, including the 2009 Society for the Study of Reproduction (SSR) Young Investigator Award, the 2012 American Society of Andrology (ASA) Young Andrologist Award, the 2013 Nevada Healthcare Hero Award for Research and Technology, the 2017 University of Nevada, Reno Outstanding Researcher Award, the 2018 SSR Research Award and the 2020 Nevada System of Higher Education Research Award. Dr Yan was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2017 and SSR Distinguished Fellow in 2023.

Expertise
Developmental Biology
Genetics and Genomics
Medicine

Research focus
reproduction
epigenetic inheritance
regulation of spermatogenesis
female infertility
sperm biology
reproductive tract
ovarian biology
female fertility
contraceptive development
endocrine control of reproduction and fertility
germline epigenetic reprogramming
sperm-borne large and small RNA

Competing interests statement
The Yan lab receives funding from the NIH, Male Contraceptive Initiative, and John Templeton Foundation. Wei Yan serves on the Advisory Board of Contraceptive Accelerator Network, LLC. Wei Yan served as co-Editor-in-Chief of Biology of Reproduction (2017-2021). He serves as Associate Editor for Environmental Epigenetics and Reviewing Editor for FASEB journal.

Founding Editor-in-Chief

Randy Schekman

Founding Editor-in-Chief, HHMI, University of California, Berkeley, United States

Randy Schekman was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with James Rothman and Thomas Sudhof. He is Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His work concerns the mechanism of membrane assembly and vesicular traffic in eukaryotic cells. He and his laboratory discovered many of the genes and proteins required for secretion in yeast and they have applied this knowledge to understand human genetic diseases that affect core components of the secretory machinery. Among other awards, he shared the Gairdner International Award, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize and the Lasker Award with James Rothman. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Sciences, he was elected President of the American Society for Cell Biology in 1999 and served as Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from 2006 to late 2011.

Expertise
Cell Biology

Research focus
membrane assembly
vesicular trafficking
protein transport
animal and human cell biology

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae