Geoffrey Burnstock is best known for his seminal discovery and definition of P2 purinergic receptors, their signaling pathways and functional relevance. He is the director of the Autonomic Neuroscience Institute at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, member of Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and editor-in-chief of the journals Autonomic Neuroscience and Purinergic Signalling. Prof. Burnstock is first in the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) list of most cited scientists in Pharmacology and Toxicology for the period 1994 - 2004.

Barry J. Hoffer has served as the Scientific Director at NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), part of NIH. He has made several seminal discoveries in Parkinson disease since 1972. In his present position as adjunct professor of Neurosurgery, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, Barry Hoffer studies animal models of neurodegenerative disorders (PD, stroke, TBI) and aging (with an emphasis on mitochondrial mechanisms in aging).

Professor Kai Kaila investigates the biophysical, ion-regulatory and molecular mechanisms of neuronal communication and plasticity in the brain. The research strategy is based on using a number of electrophysiological and molecular biological techniques on research models ranging from cloned receptors and isolated or cultured neurons to brain tissue slices, and to the human brain in vivo.

John Nicholls is Professor of Neuroscience at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste. He has worked at University College London, at Oxford, Harvard, Yale and Stanford Universities and at the Biocenter in Basel. With Stephen Kuffler, he wrote the first edition of the book "From Neuron to Brain" (now in its 5th edition). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society. His work concerns regeneration of the nervous system after injury, which he studied first in an invertebrate, the leech, and recently in immature mammalian spinal cord.

Professor Arto Urtti’s main research fields are drug delivery (controlled release, computational and cell-based methods for ADME research) and nanotechnology (biomaterial structures for drug and gene targeting and for 3-d cell cultures).