Michael Young is Richard and Jeanne Fisher Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Genetics at The Rockefeller University. He is also the University's Vice-President for Academic Affairs. Young received a B.A. in biology in 1971 and a Ph.D. in genetics in 1975, both from The University of Texas, Austin. His graduate work, with Burke Judd, examined gene sizes and distributions in the chromosomes of Drosophila. He moved to Rockefeller in 1978, following postdoctoral work on transposable elements with David Hogness in the Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University School of Medicine. Young is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. Along with colleagues Jeffrey Hall and Michael Rosbash, he received the 2009 Gruber Neuroscience Prize, 2011 Horwitz Prize, 2012 Canada Gairdner International Award, 2012 Massry Prize, 2013 Wiley Prize, 2013 Shaw Prize and the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries of molecular mechanisms that control circadian (daily) rhythms.

Young has used the fruit fly, Drosophila for his studies of the circadian clock. The clock gene period, was first cloned by Young, and screens in his laboratory have identified five additional genes that are each essential for production of circadian rhythms. Interactions among these genes, and their proteins, contribute to a network of molecular oscillations within single cells. Young's discovery and characterization of timeless showed that it permits movement of the transcription factor Period to the nucleus only at night, establishing daily rhythms of period, timeless and other gene activities within the clock. Timeless was also found to be a light-sensitive protein, explaining how circadian rhythms entrain to environmental cycles. Young's studies of the clock genes double-time and shaggy, casein kinase 1 and GSK-3 orthologs respectively, showed these affect the period length of the rhythm by controlling phosphorylation and stability of Period and Timeless. Most of the clock genes discovered by Young and his colleagues in Drosophila are also central to the circadian pathways of vertebrates. Recently, Young's laboratory showed that a prevalent human sleep disorder is caused by dysfunction of a circadian clock gene.

Dr. Amato J. Giaccia obtained his Ph.D. in Pathology/Molecular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He is a Professor of Radiation Oncology, Associate Chair for Research & Director of the Division of Radiation & Cancer Biology in the Department of Radiation Oncology. He also is the Director of Basic Science at the Stanford Cancer Institute and heads the Radiation Biology Program in Stanford's Cancer Center. He was awarded an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Research Award and the Michael Fry Award from the Radiation Research Society for his outstanding contributions on understanding the molecular mechanisms of resistance promoted by the tumor microenvironment. Additionally, he was the recipient of the 2013 ASTRO Gold Medal. In 2015, he was awarded an NIH R35 Outstanding Investigator Award and was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine. He co-authored the sixth & seventh editions of the textbook, "Radiation Biology for the Radiologist," with Professor Eric Hall from Columbia. In addition, he is currently the "Jack, Lulu and Sam Willson Professor in Cancer Biology" in the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Bong-Kiun Kaang, Ph.D. is Professor of neurobiology at School of Biological Sciences, Seoul National University (SNU). He joined SNU as a faculty member since 1994. He obtained B.S. at SNU in 1984. He obtained Ph.D. at Columbia University, in 1992 (Supervisor: Nobel Laureate Eric R. Kandel). His research focuses on molecular mechanisms underlying synaptic plasticity. Most synapses are known to be plastic and readily modified by various environmental stimuli and even by pathological conditions. A change in synaptic efficacy leads to a functional modification of neural circuit that may represent new information and may often underlie neurological and psychiatric disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, autism spectrum disorder, drug addiction, depression and posttraumatic stress syndrome. He has used cellular, molecular, electrophysiological and behavioral techniques to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying learning and memory and brain disorders using marine snail and rodents as experimental models. He has published 190 research and review articles in a number of journals, including Science, Cell, Nature, Neuron, and Nature Neuroscience. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Molecular Brain. He won Life Science Award (2010) from Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology, the Kyung Ahm Prize (2012) from the Kyung Ahm Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences Award of Korea (2016), and Korea Best Scientist & Engineer Award (2018) from the Korean Federation of Science and Technology and the Korean Government. He is currently a National Honor Scientist and a Fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology.

Dr. Leroy E. Hood graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1964 with an MD and from Caltech with a PhD in biochemistry in 1968. After three years as a Senior Investigator at NIH, his academic career began at Caltech, where he and his colleagues developed the DNA gene sequencer and synthesizer, and the protein synthesizer and sequencer-four instruments that paved the way for the successful mapping and understanding of the human genome. A pillar in the biotechnology field, Dr. Hood has played a role in founding fifteen biotechnology companies including Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Integrated Diagnostics and Arivale. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. Of the more than 6,000 scientists world-wide who belong to one or more of these academies, Dr. Hood is one of only fifteen people nominated to all three. Dr. Hood has co-authored numerous textbooks in biochemistry, immunology, molecular biology and genetics, as well as a popular book on the human genome project, The Code of Codes and he is just finishing up a text on systems biology. He is the recipient of numerous national and international awards, including the Lasker Award for Studies of Immune Diversity (1987), the Kyoto Prize in advanced technology (2002), the Heinz Award for pioneering work in Systems Biology (2006), and the coveted NAE 2011 Fritz J. and Delores H. Russ Prize for developing automated DNA sequencing. In addition to having received 17 honorary degrees from prestigious universities in the U.S. and abroad, Dr. Hood has published over 750 peer-reviewed articles and currently holds 36 patents. In 2013, he received the National Medal of Science from President Obama. Hood has been named by The Best Schools as one of the 50 Most Influential Scientists in the World Today (2014) http://isb.io/top50. Scientific American has named Hood as one of the top 6 in their selection of 100 biotech visionaries world-wide (2015) http://isb.io/visionary.