Thomas W. Kuyper, the Netherlands

Thomas is a professor emeritus in fungal ecology and diversity at Wageningen University and a visiting scientist at Naturalis Biodiversity Centre, Leiden. He obtained his PhD in fungal taxonomy at Leiden University in 1986, subsequently worked as an assistant professor at the Biological Station Wijster (1985-2000) before moving to Wageningen. He has studied both saprotrophic and mycorrhizal fungi in natural and agro-ecosystems in temperate and tropical areas. He has served the Netherlands Mycological Society in a number of functions (secretary; chairman; chair of several committees including the committee on vernacular names for Dutch fungi).

Meritxell Riquelme is a Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology at the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada (CICESE), Baja California, Mexico, where she has been on the faculty since 2004. She obtained a BA degree in Biology at the University of Barcelona, Spain. She received a MSc degree in Plant Pathology and a PhD in Microbiology from the University of California, Riverside. During her PhD thesis in S. Bartnicki-Garcia’s lab, she investigated the role of the Spitzenkörper in hyphal morphology and growth. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, in the lab of L. Casselton, where she worked on the receptor and pheromone mating type genes of Coprinopsis cinerea. Her current research focuses on understanding basic aspects of hyphal morphogenesis in fungi.  By combining advanced microscopy and molecular biology she investigates the biochemical role and secretory routes of vesicles involved in the polar apical growth of hyphae of Neurospora crassa. Additional research interests have led her to study the ecological distribution of the human pathogen Coccidioides spp., a fungus that causes Coccidiodomycosis or Valley Fever in the semi-arid regions of Baja California. More recently she has studied the fungal diversity of deep-sea sediments of the Gulf of Mexico.

She is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. In 2018 she received the B. O. Dodge award for her contributions to the Neurospora research community and in 2019 she was elected Fellow of the Mycological Society of America. She is editor of the journals Fungal Genetics and Biology, The Cell Surface, Communications Biology, and Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. Previously she was editor of Fungal Biology. She has served in the Mycological Society of America (MSA) as member of the Karling Lecture Committee (2005-2008, chair 2007-2008), of the Genetics and Cell Biology Committee (2008-2010, chair 2009-2010), and as councilor for Cell Biology/Physiology (2014-2016). She served as member of the Neurospora Policy Committee (2008-2012), the Fungal Genetics Policy Committee (2013-2019), the International Fungal Biology Conference Steering Committee (since 2014), and the Executive Committee of the International Mycological Association (since 2014).

Håvard Kauserud, is Professor in Biology at the University of Oslo, and has a broad focus on fungal ecology and biology. One main research avenue has been to assess how fungal communities are affected and structured by environmental variability and change, and how fungal traits influence on community assembly. In most studies, fungal communities have been surveyed by DNA metabarcoding analyses, but he has also used historic sporocarp observations to assess how fungal communities and fungal life-history events changes through time.

Duke University, USA

Jolanta a Senior Researcher at Duke University, Department of Biology. She received her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Gdansk in Poland in 1999 and completed five years of postdoctoral research at Duke University. She is a systematist interested in biodiversity, taxonomy, phylogenetics and evolution of lichenized Ascomycota, with a special emphasis on cyanolichens from the genus Peltigera and their cyanobacterial photobiont Nostoc. She also studies the eco-evolutionary mechanisms and factors shaping interactions among lichen symbionts using peltigerous lichens as a model system. Her research integrates traditional specimen-based revisionary methods (morphology-, anatomy-, and chemistry-based approaches) and molecular phylogenetic tools, including genomic data, focusing on both the fungal and Nostoc partners. Jolanta is also part of the NSF-funded GoLife project exploring biodiversity, ecological factors and biogeographical patterns in endolichenic and endophytic communities associated with lichens and plants.

Judith Berman is Professor and Nathan Galston Chair of Antimicrobial Drug Research at Tel Aviv University and Distinguished McKnight University Professor Emerita at the University of Minnesota. Her laboratory group studies basic mechanisms that underlie rapid phenotypic responses to stress, using yeasts, especially Candida albicans and Candida glabrata.  Her work is focused on genomic and epigenetic/metabolic responses to antifungal drugs, with a focus on ploidy shifts and antifungal tolerance. Her lab also studies the contributions of chromosome components including centromeres, telomeres, origins of replication and repeated DNA regions to genome stability and stress responsiveness.  Berman and colleagues have developed and adapted many widely-used resources for the community of Candida researchers including the use of epitope and fluorescent protein tags and a range of tools for analysis and visualization of the genome structure of individual isolates.  Prof. Berman did her Ph.D. in yeast molecular biology with Ada Zamir at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel and as a post-doctoral fellow with Bik-kwoon Tye at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.  She has been a Professor at Tel Aviv University in Ramat Aviv, Israel since 2012 after 25 years at the University of Minnesota. She is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Hanna Johannesson is a Professor in Evolutionary Genetics at Uppsala University, Sweden. She established her own independent research group at Uppsala University in 2005, after a PhD at the Swedish Agricultural University and a postdoc at University of California at Berkeley. She achieved an Associate Professorship (docentur) in 2006 and between 2007 and 2013 she held a senior research position (rådsforskartjänst) funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR). Since December 2013 she is a full professor. Hanna’s research interest lies in the interface between mycology and evolutionary biology. Her group uses fungi as models to explore general evolutionary questions such as natural selection operating at multiple levels in the biological hierarchy, the causes and consequences of symbioses and switches in reproductive mode. For most of the work, she is having a Genomics approach. In particular, with funding from VR and the European Research Council (ERC) she was given the opportunity to dive deep into the causes and evolutionary consequences of meiotic drive: spore killing.

Han Wösten, Netherlands

Han obtained his PhD from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) in 1994. He was appointed assistant professor at the same university in 1998 after post-doc positions at the universities of Munich (Germany) and Groningen. In 2001, he obtained a chair in Microbiology at the University of Utrecht (The Netherlands). Han’s research focuses on fungal growth and development. He is interested to use fungi in the transition to a sustainable and circular economy.

Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Robert obtained his PhD in Natural Sciences from the University of Ulm (Germany) in 1994. After a visiting professorship at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife (Brazil), in 1998 and a postdoc to obtain his habilitation in Botany at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) in 2001, he became Collections Manager & Adjunct Curator (Lichens & Fungi) at the Field Museum, Chicago, where he worked until 2015. Since 2015, Robert is Curator (Lichens, Fungi, Bryophytes) at Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Robert’s research focuses on tropical lichens (taxonomy, systematics, evolution, ecology, biogeography, uses) and more recently on fungal evolution, systematics, and nomenclature.