Thomas J. J. Müller received his PhD at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) in Munich, Germany, in 1992. After a postdoctoral stay at the Stanford University in Palo Alto, USA, he moved to the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, and later back to the LMU where he finished his Habilitation in 2000. In 2002 he became Professor for Organic Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and currently he is Professor at the University of Düsseldorf, Germany. He is interested in the synthetic, methodological and physical chemical development of heterocyclic chemistry and its implications in medicinal chemistry, materials science and nanotechnology.

Uwe H. F. Bunz received his PhD at the LMU in Munich, Germany, in 1990. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of California in Berkeley, USA, he went to the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Science in Mainz, Germany, as a Research Associate and habilitated at the Univeristy of Mainz in 1997. He became Professor of Chemistry at the University of South Carolina, USA and currently he is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA, working on alkyne chemistry, polymer chemistry, chemistry of carbon rich materials, sugar and carbohydrate chemistry.