Stefan Hecht obtained his doctorate in 2001 under the guidance of Professor Jean M. J. Frechet at the University of California at Berkeley. After working as a group leader at the Freie Universitat in Berlin and the Max-Planck-Institut Fur Kohlenforschung in Mulheim an der Ruhr, he recently returned to Berlin as Professor of Organic Chemistry and Functional Materials at the Humboldt Universitat. He is a recipient of the Sofia Kovalevskaja Award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the MIT Technology Review Top 100 Young Innovator Award, and the ADUC Young Investigator Award of the German Chemical Society.

Ivan Huc received his PhD in 1994 from the University of Paris VI, jointly supervised by Dr. C. Rolando (Ecole Normale Superieure) and Professor J. Rebek Jr. (MIT). After a one year post-doctoral period with Dr. J.-P. Behr in Strasbourgillkirch, he joined Nobel prizewinner Professor J. -M. Lehn's laboratories in Strasbourg as a CNRS researcher. Since 1998, he has been a group leader at the Institut Europeen de Chimie et Biologie in Bordeaux, where he holds a CNRS research director position. Dr. Huc has received several scientific awards, including the bronze medal of the CNRS and the Acros prize awarded by the Organic division of the French Chemical Society.