Dr. Giacomo Carrea joined the Italian National Research Council (CNR) in 1969 where presently he is Director of the Institute of Chemistry of Molecular Recognition. He has been working in such fields as enzyme catalysis in organic solvents, synthesis of fine chemicals catalyzed by hydrolases, dehydrogenases, peroxidases and monooxygenases, study of conformation of proteins and polypeptides and analytical applications of bioluminescent enzymes. He is a member of the Editorial Board of "Trends in Biotechnology" and "Biocatalysis and Biotransformation" and the author of about 220 publications in international peer reviewed journals.

Dr. Sergio Riva is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of the Chemistry of Molecular Recognition. He took his Laurea in Chemistry in 1983 and his Diploma di Specialita in Organic Synthesis in 1989. In 1987 he was at M.I.T. (USA) working with Prof. A. Klibanov. In 1993 he was awarded the Ciamician medal by the Organic Chemical Division of the Italian Chemical Society for his research activity in biocatalysis, presently documented by more than 150 publications reporting on the isolation and characterization of enzymes and on the synthetic exploitation of these biocatalysts.