Russell Jones was born in Wales and completed his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Michigan State University before being appointed to the faculty of the Department of Botany at the University of California at Berkeley in 1966. He is now a Professor of the Graduate School at UC–Berkeley. 

Helen Ougham has a B.A. in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She has carried out research in plant science for over 25 years at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research and Aberystwyth University, and she teaches regularly on graduate courses in genetics and genomics at the University of Birmingham and in crop science at the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies, Zaragoza.

Howard Thomas studied at Aberystwyth University and is a DSc in the University of Wales. He was head of cell and molecular biology research and member of the management board at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research. He has held visiting professorships at the Universities of California, Bern and Zurich and is currently Emeritus Professor of Biology at Aberystwyth University.

Susan Waaland earned a B.A. in Biology at Earlham College in Indiana and a Ph.D. in Botany at the University of California at Berkeley. She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington and continued there as a faculty member in Botany and Biology. She spent a year in the Botany Department at the University of California at Davis through the NSF Visiting Professorships for Women Program. She is now an Emeritus Lecturer in Biology at the University of Washington.