Professor Brand was recruited as a Professor and Chair of Developmental Dynamics in October 2009 from the University of Würzburg, Germany, where he was a Professor of Molecular Developmental Biology and Head of a Working Group in Cardiac Developmental Biology since 2004. He was a Group Leader at the Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology (Professor Hans-Henning Arnold), University of Braunschweig, Germany, from 1994 to 2004. He did his postdoctoral training with Professor Michael D. Schneider at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, U.S.A, from 1991 to 1994. For his Ph.D. he worked at the Max-Planck Institute for Physiological and Clinical Research in Bad Nauheim, Germany (Professor Wolfgang Schaper), from 1988 to 1990. He studied Biology at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, from 1980 to 1987. Professor Brand's research focuses on cardiac development and ageing. He is interested in the development of the proepicardium, an embryonic structure that develops into the epicardium and the coronary vasculature. He is interested in the signaling process involved in left-right asymmetry development of the heart. Finally, he works on a novel class of membrane proteins, the Popeye proteins, which are involved in stress adaptation of cardiac pacemaker activity.

Ciro De Luca has been a Human Anatomy full-time researcher at the Neuronal Network Morphology & Systems Biology (NNMSB) Lab of the University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” (UCLV) since 2020. He is studying reactive gliosis, the extracellular matrix, and neurovascular unit involvement in integrated CNS plasticity. He completed with distinction the course of human cadaver dissection at New York University (D’Youville College – Buffalo) in 2010. He graduated in Medicine and Surgery at the University of Salerno in 2013 with full marks, as the best graduating student of the year. He completed a full marks residency program in Neurology at the University of Pisa in 2018, where he was interested in neurophysiology and clinical research about migraine and dementia. He won a research grant about the longitudinal evaluation of migraine patients at the University of Pisa, which ceased in 2020. In 2021, he completed his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biotechnology at UCLV. He is in the Scientific Committee of Parkinson’s Foundation “Fondazione Antonietta Cirino Onlus—Progetto Parkinson Avellino”.

Prof. Locatelli is Past President of the European Renal Association – European Dialysis and Transplant Association (ERA-EDTA), International Society of Blood Purification (ISBP), and the Italian Society of Nephrology (SIN), He is an Honorary Member of Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and Turkish Societies of Nephrology and he is International Distinguished Medalist and he received the Garabed Eknojan Award of US National Kidney Foundation. Locatelli is also an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London, U.K. ( FRCPB). He has been chairman of the Lombardy Regional Dialysis and Transplantation Registry. He also served as chairman of the board of European Best Practice Guidelines (EBPG) and on the board of National Kidney Foundation, Dialysis Outcome Quality Improvement, NKFDOQITM, and on the executive board of directors of Global Guidelines and Kidney Disease Improvement Outcome KDIGO. He was President of the World Congress of Nephrology 2009 in Milan. Locatelli is President of the International Society of Geriatric Nephrology since 2007 and a Council member of the International Society of Nephrology Subject Editor of Nephrol Dial Transplant, Associate Editor of J Nephrol, Nephron Clinical Practice, Blood Purification, International Journal of Artificial Organs member of the Editorial Board of J Am Soc Nephrol, past associate Editor of Am J Kidney Dis (2001-2004). He also serves as a reviewer of a number of Journals (including the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet).