Jan Hejatko obtained his Ph.D. in genetics and molecular biology at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic under the supervision of Bretislav Brzobohaty and in the Max-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding, Cologne, Germany in the group of Klaus Palme. He continues his work in the field of hormonal signaling and hormonal regulation of plant development as a research group leader and associated professor at CEITEC - Central European Institute of Technology and National Centre for Biomolecular Research, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University. He is mainly interested in multi-step phosphorelay signaling, signal recognition, specificity and signal integration? in plants.
Toshio Hakoshima obtained his Ph.D. in physical chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences at Osaka University, Suita, Japan, followed by postdoctoral research work on structural biology supervised by Alexander Rich at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1982, he joined the Osaka University faculty and continued his work on molecular recognition in protein-nucleic acid systems as an associated professor. In 1994, he moved to Nara Institute of Science and Technology as a professor of structural biology. He was promoted to the Dean of Graduate School of Biological Sciences (2013-2016) and then Executive Director/Vice President of the institute since 2017. He is interested in molecular recognition in signal transduction in the fields of medical science and plant biology and protein engineering of enzymes producing bioplastics.