Dr Alan Bernstein is the inaugural Executive Director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, an international alliance committed to accelerating the development of an HIV vaccine. An internationally known cancer researcher, Dr Bernstein was previously the founding president of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Canada's national agency for the funding of health research. He is the recipient of many awards and honours, including the ASMR national lectureship and was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2002.

Professor Peter Donnelly is Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre of Human Genetics and Professor of Statistical Science at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on the genetics of common human diseases and on the development of statistical methods for analysing genetic data. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a former Rhodes Scholar and undergraduate at The University of Queensland.

Professor Ashley Dunn received his PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK, and undertook postdoctoral studies at Cold Spring Harbor, USA and at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany. In 1982, he took up a position as Head of the Molecular Biology Program at the Melbourne Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. In 1984, Professor Dunn and colleagues molecularly cloned GM-CSF, a cytokine currently used clinically to aid recovery of bone marrow in cancer patients following chemotherapy treatment. He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1996, served as Associate Director of the Ludwig Institute until 2004 and is currently an Honorary of the Department of Surgery at the University of Melbourne. Professor Dunn is now a science consultant and serves on a number of Boards and Advisory Boards within the biotechnology sector.

Since 1997, Professor Ian Caterson has been Boden Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Sydney. He has just relinquished the headship of the School of Molecular & Microbial Biosciences at the University and was previously Director of Clinical Endocrinology at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. At the University he is establishing an Institute of Obesity, Nutrition & Exercise. Professor Caterson is a Director of the Prevention Research Centres at the University of Sydney. He is a past president of both the Australian Diabetes Society and the Australasian Society for the Study of Obesity and was regional vice-president (Asia-Oceania) for the International Association for the Study of Obesity. He is also on the management committee of the International Obesity Task Force.

Professor Jim Watson received his PhD from the University of Auckland in 1967 and was a postdoctoral fellow at Syntex Corporation in Palo Alto, California and the Salk Institute, USA. He has held Professorships at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Auckland, serving as Head of the Department of Molecular Medicine from 1983 to 1993. Professor Watson was a co-founder of Genesis Research and Development Corporation Ltd in 1994 and served as Chief Executive Officer until 2004. He was a Director of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology from 1999 to 2002 and President of the Australasian Society of Immunology in 2001. From 2004 to 2006, Professor Watson was the President of the Royal Society of New Zealand and is currently a Member of the Government’s Growth and Innovation Advisory Board and a Trustee of the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research.