Prof. Dr. Vyacheslav (Slava) Yurchenko is a Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic. He did his PhD at the Moscow State University in Russia under prof. Alexander Kolesnikov working on kinetoplast genome of various trypanosomatids with a particular focus on minicircles and RNA editing. After graduation, he moved to the States and spent several years doing hard-core molecular virology and then immunology at the Einstein College of Medicine and Rockefeller University. He then moved back to Europe to establish his own laboratory of Trypanosomatid Biology in Ostrava raising in rank to the Full Professor.

Dr. Zhao-Rong Lun graduated from Sun Yat-sen University in 1989 with a Ph.D. in Science; from 1990 to 1992, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Swiss Institute of Tropical Medicine; from 1993 to 1995, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Toronto (during which time he received the NSERC International Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the National Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada); from 1997 to 1999, he was a research scientist at the Parasitology Research Centre of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency; from 1999 to 2002, he was a Research Officer at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada; and from 2002 to the present, he has been a professor at Sun Yat-sen University. His research findings have been published in over 200 international academic journals, including The Lancet Infectious Diseases, PNAS, Nature Communications, Schizophrenia Bulletin, Trends in Parasitology, Emerging Infectious Diseases, and RNA Biology. He co-authored several monographs, including the Oxford University textbook Zoonoses (2011), Emerging Infections (Vol. 8) edited by the American Society for Microbiology (2008), and Molecular Epidemiology of Trypanosomes and Leishmania (2011) edited by Professor G. Hide of the University of Salford.

Dr. Annetta is a zoology graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, where she also completed her PhD at the Departments of Zoology and Biochemistry. Following this, she worked for several years as a post-doctoral and Newman fellow in the Veterinary Sciences Centre, University College Dublin. Annetta teaches veterinary immunology and parasitology to veterinary medicine and veterinary nursing students as a lecturer in Parasitology and Immunology at the UCD School of Veterinary Sciences in University College Dublin. Her research interests focus on the epidemiology, detection, transmission and control of various parasites with the chief aim of investigating the impact of environmental factors on their epidemiology and their importance for animal and/or human health in Ireland. Her long-term research interests are ticks and other vectors and vector-borne diseases.

Prof. Dr. Susan Christina Welburn has research experience ranging from the management of high-tech laboratory research to the running of applied field projects in developing countries. This broad experience has allowed her to translate her research into vector control and management practices. Her research has focused on the interactions between parasites and their vectors and hosts that lead to transmission of human sleeping sickness. To date, this research has resulted in over 135 publications including 102 original papers, 24 peer refereed reviews and 9 book chapters and 23.5 million pounds of research funding.