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Dr Alessandro Presentato received his BS degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Palermo (Italy) in 2008, and his MS degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Palermo in 2011. Then, he joined the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology of the University of Bologna as graduate student and obtained his PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology under the supervision of Professor Davide Zannoni in 2015. Subsequently, he worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Microbial Biochemistry group of Professor Raymond J. Turner at the University of Calgary (Canada) between 2015 and 2017. He is currently working as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Professor Giovanni Vallini’s research group (Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Biotechnology) at the University of Verona (Italy). His research is focused on (2) the study of biogenic nanomaterials made of elemental selenium and/or tellurium and their potential applications in biotechnology and (2) the study of microorganisms as catalysts for the biotic degradation of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl compounds.

Raymond J. Turner joined the University of Calgary in 1998 in the Department of Biological Sciences and is presently a Professor of Biochemistry and Microbiology (full professor since 2006). His PhD is in Biophysical Chemistry and he is a postdoctoral fellow in the area of antimicrobial resistance and bioenergetics at the University of Alberta. He has held the post of Associate Department Head and Graduate Program Director from 2013 to 2017. He has also been chair of various research cluster units over the past 10 years. He has held funding from the Canadian funding councils of NSERC, CIHR, Genome Canada and MITACS as well as industrial partners, and has received excellence in research and excellence in graduate student supervision awards. Professor Turner’s research interests are multi-disciplinary: bioinorganic and environmental chemistry of chalcogen metals, metal toxicity and resistance mechanism towards bacteria, the microbiology of metal nanoparticles, biofilm physiology and biochemistry, membrane protein structural biology, multidrug resistance transporters, protein chaperones for complex iron sulphur molybdoenzymes that use the twin arginine translocase and the photochemistry of novel fluorophores. He has contributed between 30 and 75 publications in each of these areas to the order of 250 contributions and holds 8 patents/licences.

Dr Claudio Vásquez received his biochemistry degree from the University of Chile (UCH) and his PhD in Biological Sciences from the Catholic University of Chile (CUC) in 1977 and 1983, respectively. After working at the University of Santiago de Chile (USACH) up to 1985, he moved back to UCH where he became Assistant Professor. Then he moved to Talca University (UTAL) where he stayed as Associate Professor until 1995. In the same year he returned to USACH and has been a Full Professor since then. In 2002, he had a sabbatical stay in Texas A & M University. Dr V´squez has published over 100 scientific articles and some book chapters that include topics such as soil microbiology, toxicant resistance mechanisms and bacterial restriction-modification systems.

Dr Vladimir Yurkov is a graduate of the M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia). He is a classically trained microbiologist with a PhD awarded by the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr Yurkov continued his postgraduate education and research as a postdoctoral fellow at Groningen University (The Netherlands) under the supervision of leading microbial ecologist Professor Hans van Gemerden; at Freiburg University (Germany) in the laboratory of Dr Gerhardt Drews, a famous microbial physiologist and genetics expert in microbial photosynthesis; in the Research Center Cadarache (France) under the guidance of Dr Andre Vermeglio, an expert in the biophysics and molecular biology of microbial photosynthesis; and at the University of British Columbia (Canada) in the molecular biology laboratory of Dr Thomas Beatty. Today, Dr Yurkov is the leading microbiologist and expert in the fields of environmental microbiology, bacterial photosynthesis performed by the aerobic anoxygenic phototrophs and microbial transformations of metalloid oxides. He is making great contributions into bacterial taxonomy. He discovered and taxonomically described many new species of bacteria and is an internationally recognised expert in the taxonomy of phototrophs. He was elected and serves as a member of the International Committee of Phototrophic Prokaryotes. Over the years, Dr Yurkov has published numerous scientific reviews, book chapters and research articles in professional journals. Currently Dr Yurkov is a Professor at the Department of Microbiology, University of Manitoba in Canada.

Davide Zannoni is Professor of Microbiology at the Department of Pharmacy and Biotechnology of the University of Bologna – Italy. He was a Research Fellow at the St Louis Medical School, St Louis, MO, USA from 1977 to 1978, and EMBO’s fellow at St Andrews University, Scotland, UK (1981), CNRS-CEA Saclay, France (1983) and University of Göttingen, Germany (1991). Professor Zannoni has served as President of the Italian Society of Microbiology/Microbial Biotechnology (2003–2006), Head of the Department of Biology at the University of Bologna (2004–2010), member of the Board of Directors of the University of Bologna (2015–2018) and was a delegate to the FEMS Council (from January 2018). His current research interests are microbial remediation of various organics and inorganics, microbial production of metal nanoparticles and bacterial respiratory mechanisms. Professor Zannoni is the author and/or coauthor of more than 150 publications and several textbooks.