Ilan Marek is Professor of Chemistry at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. He was educated in France and received his PhD thesis in 1988 from the University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris. He has been visiting Professor at the University de Montreal (Canada); University of Strasbourg (France); University Paris-Descartes (France); California Institute of Technology (USA) and at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Montpellier (France). He was a member of the International Scientific Committee of the European Symposium on Organic Chemistry (ESOC), including the position of Chairman (2007-2009) and is currently the chairman of the division of organic chemistry, European Association of Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS).

Laurent Micouin leads the research unit "Diversity and Selectivity in Synthesis" at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences at Descartes University in Paris (France). He received his academic degrees from the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie and from Paris University, followed by a postdoctorate at the University of Marburg (Germany). The focus of his research is in novel methods for organic synthesis, in the fields of asymmetric synthesis and organometallic chemistry.