Gerhard Gompper received his Ph.D. in Physics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, he returned to Munich for his habilitation. From 1994 to 1999, he held a staff scientist position at the Max-Planck-Institute for Colloid- and Interface Science in Berlin-Teltow. Following this, he was jointly appointed as a director at the Institute for Solid State Physics at the Research Center Juelich and as a full professor at the University of Cologne. He was recently honored with the Erwin-Schroedinger-Award.

Michael Schick obtained his Ph.D. in Physics at Stanford University. After a post-doctoral position at Case Western Reserve University, he joined the faculty of the University of Washington in 1969. He has been honored with a Fellowship in the American Physical Society and a Humboldt Foundation Research Award, which he spent at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich.