Dieter Enders completed his PhD at the Justus-Liebig-Universitat Giessen under the supervision of D. Seebach. After postdoctoral studies at Harvard University with E. J. Corey, he returned to Giessen and completed his habilitation. He became Associate Professor at the Universitat Bonn in 1980, and moved to his present position as Professor of Organic Chemistry at the RWTH Aachen in 1985. He has received many awards (Leibniz-Prize of the DFG, Emil Fischer Medal of the GDCh, Yamada Prize, Japan) for his research, which focuses on the asymmetric synthesis of biologically active compounds and the development of new synthetic methods.

Karl-Erich Jaeger was born in Dortmund and studied biology and chemistry at the Ruhr-University Bochum, where he received his PhD under the supervision of U. Winkler. After postdoctoral studies with Robert E.W. Hancock at the Department of Microbiology of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, he received his habilitation in Bochum in 1995. Karl-Erich Jaeger is currently Professor at the Heinrich-Heine University of Dusseldorf and Director of the Institute of Molecular Enzyme Technology at the Research Centre Julich. His research interests include the expression, folding and secretion of bacterial enzymes, their optimization by directed evolution, and enantioselective biocatalysis.