Sergey Suchkov was born in the City of Astrakhan, Russia, in a family of dynasty medical doctors. In 1980, graduated from Astrakhan State Medical University and was awarded with MD. In 1985, maintained his PhD as a PhD student of the I.M. Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy and Institute of Medical Enzymology, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2001, maintained his Doctor Degree at the National Institute of Immunology, Russia. From 1985 through 1987, worked as a Post Doc Research Associate, for Institute of Medical Enzymology; from 1987 through 1989, was a Senior Research Associate, Koltzov Institute of Developmental Biology, USSR Academy of Sciences. From 1989 through 1995, was a Head of the Lab of Immunology and Immunobiotechnology, Helmholtz Eye Research Institute in Moscow. In 1989, trained at the Lab of Immunology, NEI, Bethesda, MD, USA,, NIH and Lab of Immunology, Wills Eye Hospital, Philadelphia, USA, as well as at some of the British Universities on the invitation of the Royal Society for Immunology. From 1995 through 2004, was a Director of the Dept for Immu-nology, Moscow Clinical Research Institute (MONIKI). In 1993-1996, was an Executice Secretary-in-Chief of the Editorial Board, Biomedical Science, an international journal published jointly by the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Chemistry, UK.

Yehuda Shoenfeld is the founder and head of the Zabludowicz Center for Autoimmune Diseases, at the Sheba Medical Center, which is affiliated to the Sackler Faculty of Medicine in Tel-Aviv University, in Israel. Professor Shoenfeld is also the Incumbent of the Laura Schwarz-Kipp Chair for Research of Autoimmune Diseases at the Tel-Aviv University. Professor Shoenfeld’s clinical and scientific works focus on autoimmune and rheumatic diseases, and he has published more than 2000 papers in journals such as New Eng J Med, Nature, Lancet, Proc Nat AcadScie, J Clin Invest, J Immunol, Blood, FASEB, J Exp Med, Circulation, Cancer and others. His articles have had over 65,000 citations. He has written more than 350 chapters in books, and has authored and edited 35 books, some of which became cornerstones in science and clinical practice, such as "The Mosaic of Autoimmunity", "Infections and Autoimmunity" and the textbook "Autoantibodies" and "Diagnostic criteria of autoimmune diseases", all of which were published by Elsevier and sold thousands of copies. Professor Shoenfeldis on the editorial boards of 43 journals in the field of rheumatology and autoimmunity and is the founder and the editor of the IMAJ (Israel Medical Association Journal) the representative journal of science and medicine in the English language in Israel, and also is the founder and Editor of Autoimmunity Reviews (Elsevier) (Impact factor 8.9) and co-Editor of the Journal of Autoimmunity (Impact factor 8).For the past twenty years Yehuda has been the Editor of “Harefuah” – The Israel journal in medicine (Hebrew).

Professor S. Louise Cosby is a graduate (B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Microbiology) of Queen’s University Belfast and was a member of staff for over 30 years. She held the post of Chair of Microbiology in the School of Medicine Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences from 2002 to 2015. She is currently Head of Virology Branch at the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute in Belfast and emeritus/honorary Professor at Queen's University Belfast. Professor Cosby is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (London) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (UK). In 1985 she was a visiting Associate Professor in Cornell University USA and has been an occasional visiting scientist at the Pirbright Institute, UK. Professor Cosby is an editor for 'Vaccines' and 'Frontiers in Microbiology'.

Dirk Van Hyfte is a visionary serial entrepreneur with the unique capacity to push technology into new frontiers. He develops and applies ground-breaking multi-disciplinary concepts to shift paradigms both in the minds of people he works with and the organizations he consults. He pushes concepts in pioneering beyond what is technically possible by fostering innovation and delivering extraordinary technological breakthroughs and solutions. Dirk reinvented himself several times and merged the expertise as a trained psychiatrist with a Ph.D. in Medical Informatics and Artificial Intelligence with his solid business skills and Enterprise Software knowledge. His first big success was i.Know, providing unique text analytic technology for both structured and unstructured data. i.Know was acquired by InterSystems in 2010 to help further the AI-capabilities of their data-platform. Together with his wife and business partner Ingrid Brands, Dirk Van Hyfte, co-founded BioKey, BioClue and BioStrand in January 2019. creating new disruptive solutions in the analysis of genomic data. His R&D background and previous CTO experience with i.Know provided a unique perspective on data processing (finding structures in unstructured data) and development of scalable applications: research the analysis of biological sequences from a “semantic and syntactic” point of view. He is co-inventor of 5 patentsof which 3 are in the domain of biological sequence handling. He has been involved in research on psychopharmacological expert systems, clinical psychiatry, psychopharmacology, medical artificial intelligence and biomedical engineering and is (co-) author of several scientific publications within these fields.

Bernard A.M. Van der Zeijst Ph.D. is an expert in the fields of molecular biology, biotechnology, microbiology, vaccines and drug development, including clinical development. Recently, he also started to work on the immunotherapy and diagnosis of cancer. He worked both in veterinary and human medicine. He is presently affiliated to the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) as professor emeritus ‘Vaccines and Vaccination’. He is advisor to government agencies and active in national and international scientific bodies an in postgraduate teaching in vaccinology. In addition, he is active as an independent consultant.