Dr. Marques obtained his Ph.D. in 2002 from the Department of Microbiology at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais working on the characterization of wild poxviruses. After obtaining his Ph.D. he joined the laboratory of Bryan Williams at the Cleveland Clinic in the state of Ohio, USA in 2002 where he studied nucleic acid sensing mechanisms. In 2006, his interest in the area of RNA interference led him to move on to a new position in the laboratory of Richard Carthew where he developed Drosophila melanogaster models to study antiviral defense. Dr. Marques returned to Brazil in 2010 to join the Department of Biochemistry and Immunology at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. He has extensive experience in diverse areas of research such as virology, immunology, bioinformatics and genetics. Since his return, he has dedicated a lot of his time to research on the development of novel approaches to the fight transmission of arboviruses by mosquitoes such as Dengue virus. He has also pursued ways to contribute to the improvement of Brazilian science by getting involved with science policy and public outreach.

Dr. Pellicer was born in Mexico City. He studied his bachelor's, masters and PhD degrees at UNAM in Mexico City. The PhD defense took place in December 2007. He was a post-doctoral fellow in different universities in Canada and Slovenia for the two years following the PhD defense. In February 2010 he was hired by the Centro de Ciencias Matematicas, UNAM (Morelia). He was awarded with a post-doctoral fellowship to attend the Fall thematic program on Discrete Geometry of the Fields Institute (University of Toronto) from July to December 2011. During his stay at the Fields Institute he was additionally awarded with the prestigious Marsden post-doctoral fellowship.

Yraima Cordeiro holds a bachelor's degree in Biological Sciences from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) (1999), a Master's degree (2001) and Doctor's degree (2005) in Biological Chemistry by the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She is currently Associate Professor of the Department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at the Faculty of Pharmacy of UFRJ. He has experience in the field of Biochemistry and Biophysics of macromolecules, working mainly in the following subjects: prion protein, protein aggregation and folding, spectroscopy, protein-protein and protein-nucleic acid interactions and screening of protein aggregation inhibitors. From September 2011 to January 2016, she was vice-coordinator of the Graduate Program in Pharmaceutical Sciences (PPGCF) of the Faculty of Pharmacy, UFRJ. Since March 2016 she is the Coordinator of the PPGCF. She was a member of the World Academy of Sciences - TWAS (2010-2014) and an affiliate member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (2012-2016). Since 2017, Yraima is a TYAN member.