Joris Messens is group leader of the Redox Signaling lab within Flanders Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) and professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. After several years in Biotech-industry as a Master of Sciences in Biochemistry, he became an expert in protein purification. He obtained his PhD from the John Moores University of Liverpool (UK, 2003) with structural and functional work on arsenate reductase from Staphylococcus aureus. He is author or co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications. Most of his studies focus on protein conformational changes induced by thiol-based reaction mechanisms, and the identification of redox-sensitive proteins in plants. Joris Messens is also frequently invited as speaker, session leader, chair and co-chair on international meetings, like GRC, ESF, EMBO, and he is member of the reviewing board for the DFG priority program 'Dynamics of thiol-based switches in cellular physiology'.

Jean-François Collet is Welbio Investigator, Senior Research Associate of the FRS-FNRS and Professor at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL). During his doctoral work at the de Duve Institute in the lab of Emile Van Schaftingen, he discovered a large family of phosphotransferases that form a phosphoenzyme on an aspartate residue. Then he moved to the lab of James Bardwell at the University of Michigan to work on the proteins that catalyze the formation of protein disulfide bonds in the bacterial periplasm. In 2004, he established his lab at the de Duve Institute of the UCL in Brussels. He is author or co-author of more than 90 peer-reviewed publications, most of which focus on disulfide bond formation and protein folding in the periplasm and the detection of envelope stress.

VUB | VIB | de Duve Institute

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Frank Van Breusegem is since 2001 group leader of the Oxidative Stress Signaling group at the VIB Center for Plant Systems Biology and professor at Ghent University. Since his early studies under the supervision of em. Prof. Marc Van Montagu, he focuses on the molecular impact of oxidative stress on plant cells. He obtained his PhD from Ghent University (Ghent, 1997) with work on “Engineering Stress Tolerance in Maize”. Nowadays, the primary objective of the Van Breusegem lab is still the identification and functional analysis of regulatory gene and protein networks involved in the oxidative stress response in plants. Ultimately, he aims to translate this knowledge into biotechnological crop efficiency concepts. The lab has played a pioneering role in determining transcriptome based networks in the H2O2 response in plants. The Van Breusegem lab is internationally recognized mainly because of its successful multi-omics driven approaches that allowed to identify some key players in the oxidative stress response. Frank Van Breusegem has published over 110 peer-reviewed publications, is a frequent invited speaker and is monitoring editor of the leading plant journal “Plant Physiology. He is recognized as a highly cited researcher (Tomson Reuters).