Dr. Richard Lockshin's doctoral thesis introduced the term and concept of programmed cell death, and his laboratory has been involved in several of the major advances in the field. Following his training at Harvard, he completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Edinburgh, and subsequently taught at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and St. John's University, where he is Professor of Biology. He has well over 100 publications on the subject, including five books. He has won several prizes for his work and has held several scientific offices, including the founding chair of the Gordon Conferences on Cell Death, and co-founder and first president of the International Cell Death Society.

Dr. Zahra Zakeri was originally trained as a geneticist and virologist and, following her post-doctoral training at Columbia University, working on germ cell development, embarked on the study of apoptosis. She has been a leader in the development of many ideas in the field, including identification of the correlation between the synthesis of growth factors and cell death, the role of cell death in congenital malformations, measurement of DNA fragmentation in situ, recognition of the role of lysosomes and macrophages in cell death and its measurement, and the relationship of cell cycle to cell death. She was a cofounder of the Gordon Conferences on Cell Death and the International Cell Death Society, of which she is currently President. She has been a featured speaker in more than 20 countries.