Wolfgang Pompe is retired professor of Materials Science at the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany. Having obtained his academic degrees in physics, he spent his main academic career in the Institute of Solid State Physics and Materials Research Dresden of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, and since 1991 at the Technische Universität, with a 1.5 year stay as a visiting professor at the University of California Santa Barbara, USA. Gerhard Rödel is Head of the Institute of Genetics at the Technische Universität Dresden. He obtained his academic degrees from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, where he worked as Post-doc before taking up the appointment for a professorship in Molecular Biology and General Pathology at the Univerisity Ulm, Germany. In 1994, Professor Rödel was appointed as Professor of Genetics at the Technische Universität Dresden. Since 2006 he is Speaker of the Dresden International Graduate School for Biomedicine and Bioengineering. Michael Mertig is head of the "BioNanotechnology and Structure Formation Group" at the Max Bergmann Center of Biomaterials at Dresden University of Technology. Having obtained his academic degrees in physics at Dresden University of Technology, he spent most of his career in low-temperature physics and nanotechnology. He started to work in the field of bionanotechnology in 1994. Hans-Jürgen Weiss has worked as a physicist in materials science at the Institute of Solid State Physics and Materials Research Dresden and at the Fraunhofer Institute of Materials and Beam Technology Dresden. He has approached various phenomena in fossils from a materials science viewpoint in order to obtain new insight in the sequence of fossilisation processes.

Molecular units
Molecular recognition
Cell adhesion
Whole- cell censor structures
Bio-hybrid silica-based materials
Biomineralization
Self- assembly