Jonathan B. Weitzman is a professor of Genetics at the Université Paris Diderot and founding director of the Center for Epigenetics and Cell Fate. Jonathan teaches classes in genetics, epigenetics and stem cell biology to students of all ages and he directs the European Masters’ in Genetics programme. His research focuses on understanding gene regulatory networks and epigenetic contributions to disease.
Matthew D. Weitzman is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and runs a lab in the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Matthew has a background in virology and molecular biology, and he studies the intersection between virus infection and genome integrity. He has lectured around the world and organized numerous scientific meetings on viruses, genome integrity and gene therapy.
Jonathan and Matthew are identical twins.
Rodney Rothstein is a professor of Genetics & Development and Systems Biology at Columbia University Medical Center. He is well known for his studies on DNA double-strand break repair and methods to edit genomes. His honours include the Genetics Society of America 2009 Novitski Prize, Doctor honoris causa in Medicine, Umeå, Sweden, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
Thomas Bourgeron is a professor at the Université Paris Diderot in Paris. He leads a research group at the Institut Pasteur which gathers psychiatrists, neurobiologists and geneticists together to study the biology of the social brain. One of his main findings has been the identification of a synaptic pathway associated with autism.
Robert J. Brooker received his PhD in genetics from Yale University in 1983. At Harvard, he studied lactose permease, the product of the lacY gene of the lac operon. He continued working on transporters at the University of Minnesota, where he is a professor in the Department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Development. He is the author of several undergraduate genetics textbooks, including Genetics: Analysis & Principles, 6e, and Biology, 4e, published by McGraw-Hill Education.
Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo is a biology researcher at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris. Her team studies the mutations responsible for differences between species in order to better understand our evolution, past and future. She received the CNRS Bronze Medal and was elected ‘Young Woman Scientist’ of the year, 2014, in France.
Alain Fischer is Professor at Collège de France, Paris, founding director of the Imagine Institute. He is a specialist of genetics and immunology notably of primary immunodeficiency diseases and gene therapy.
Edith Heard is a British geneticist, working on X-chromosome inactivation, with a long-standing interest in epigenetics, nuclear organization and chromosome structure. She is director of the Genetics and Developmental Biology Unit at the Institut Curie in Paris and Professor of Epigenetics and Cellular Memory at the Collège de France. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Mark F. Sanders has been a member of the faculty in Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California, Davis since 1985, where he focuses on teaching genetics. He has also taught genetics at the University of Cambridge and the University of Vienna. Mark is the lead author of Genetic Analysis: An Integrated Approach published by Pearson.
Reiner A. Veitia is a professor of Genetics at Université Paris Diderot. His research focus is primarily the genetics of female infertility and ovarian malignancies. He has also actively explored the molecular and theoretical bases of genetic dominance. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of the journal Clinical Genetics and a member of non-governmental association Academia Europaea.