Vincenzo Manca is a Full Professor, since 2002, at the Computer Science Department of the University of Verona. He obtained his degrees from the University of Pisa, under the guide of Alfonso Caracciolo di Forino and Ennio De Giorgi, where he became Assistant Professor in 1980. E' was Associate Professor at the Universities of Udine and Pisa. His research interests cover a wide class of topics from mathematical logic, discrete mathematics, and theoretical computer science to informational analysis and computational models of biological systems. At present, his investigation is focused on "Natural Computing" (in particular DNA Computing and Membrane Computing, and Synthetic Computational Biology). He is author of more than 100 scientific publications, appearing in international journals and scientific series. He is reviewer for Mathematical Reviews and also referee for many scientific journals and conferences, has been member of PC in many international conferences and was visiting professor and "invited speaker" in many universities and international conferences. He is member of E.M.C.C. (European Molecular Computing Consortium) and directed several research projects in the field of natural computing, collaborating actively with several international research groups. He has advised 6 Ph.D students, and tutored more than 40 M.Sc. students. He is President of the Programme in Bioinformatics, at the University of Verona (the Faculty of Sciences).

Prof. Carlo Laudanna was born in Milan, Italy, the 12/10/1962. At the University of Verona, he received the doctoral degree in Medicine at Surgery in 1988, and the PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology and Pathology in 1995. He is associate professor of General Pathology. From June 1993 to July 1997 he was in the laboratory of Prof. Eugene C. Butcher, Stanford University, CA, USA, where he started studies regarding the molecular mechanisms regulating lymphocyte adhesion and migration by chemotactic factors, either in in vitro as well as in in vivo models. Prof. Laudanna main scientific activity regards the characterization of intracellular signaling mechanisms involved in the regulation of leukocyte recruitment under physio-pathological conditions; in this field he is author of several articles and reviews concerning regulation of integrin activation by signaling mechanism triggered in leukocytes by chemotactic factors. Prof. Laudanna is also supported by Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC) to study the signaling mechanisms controlling integrin triggering and mediated adhesion in neoplastic B- and T-lymphocytes isolated from CLL patients. Prof. Laudanna laboratory has developed several technologies to study integrin triggering and signaling mechanisms under physiological conditions, including the development of Trojan peptide technologies to study the role of mutated signaling proteins and of protein domains in the regulation of specific signaling pathways leading to adhesion and motility in mouse and human primary leukocytes without the need of DNA transfection. This technology is systematically coupled to intravital microscopy, developed at the University of Verona by dr. G. Constantin group, to accomplish a physiological analysis of signaling mechanisms involved in the regulation of lymphocyte homing in secondary lymphoid organs and of autoreactive lymphocytes in inflamed tissues. The increasing complexity of intracellular signaling networks regulating cell functions prompted the interest of prof. Laudanna for the principles and methods of Systems Biology. Prof. Laudanna is co-founder and President of the Center for BioMedical Computing, CBMC. The CBMC is an interdisciplinary joint initiative between the faculties of Medicine and of Science of the University of Verona. Its goal is to develop mathematical theories allowing abstraction and analysis of the topology and dynamics of intracellular signaling networks and, more in general, of biological networks, with particular focus on clinically relevant applications. The CBMC is fully supported by Fondazione Cariverona.

Since 2006, Mario R. Buffelli is an Associate Professor of Physiology, at the Department of Neurological, Neuropsychological, Morphological and Movement Sciences, University of Verona. He obtained his degree in Medicine and Surgery in 1987 and the PhD in Neuroscience in the 1995 under the supervision of Prof. Alberto Cangiano. During the PhD in Neuroscience he studied the trophic interactions between motoneurons and muscle fibers acquiring experience with electrophysiology (intracellular and extracellular recordings) and histochemical techniques. He became Assistant Professor in the 1998. He attended for two years (2000-2002) the laboratories of Joshua Sanes and Jeff Lichtman at the Washington University, Saint Louis (USA), Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology acquiring a broad experience in the application of imaging techniques and molecular biology to investigate, in vitro and in vivo, the phenomena of synapse elimination. He is author of several scientific articles regarding the role of activity in the development of nervous system. He is member of Italian Physiology Society, Italian Neuroscience Society and Society for Neuroscience. He is reviewer for several international scientific journals. At present, his research interests focus on the following topics: a) the molecular mechanisms underlying the axonal regeneration in the central and peripheral nervous system; b) molecular and structures that regulate the development of synapses in the peripheral and central nervous system; and c) synaptic plasticity in the nervous system in physiological and pathological conditions.

Giuditta Franco graduated in Mathematics from the University of Pisa and earned her PhD in Computer Science, with a dissertation entitled `Biomolecular Computing---Combinatorial Algorithms and Laboratory Experiments', at the University of Verona, where she currently holds a permanent research position (ricercatore). Her research interests lie between discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science, with a focus on computational models of biological systems and on biomolecular computing, in particular Membrane and DNA computing. Her work involves informational analysis of DNA sequences as well as dynamic modelling, by means of membrane systems, of immunological processes and of cellular tissue healing. The results of her analytical and experimental (in molecular biology laboratories) study of biomolecular algorithms include: novel methods of DNA extraction and recombination; the discovery of informational and computational principles characterizing DNA molecular structure; and new theoretical models for the generation of DNA three-dimensional structures via self-assembly. Dr Franco spent several periods abroad, specifically in the United States (at the University of South Florida and at the SUNY Binghamton) and in the Netherlands (at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science). She has given talks in numerous international workshops and has been on the program committee for various conferences. She is a co-author of several scientific papers, which have appeared in prestigious international journals (such as Mathematical Biosciences, TCS, Natural Computing, Biosystems, The Journal of Logic and Algebraic Programming), and is a reviewer for several international journals, including journals of the American Mathematical Society. She is currently a member of both the European Molecular Computing Consortium (EMCC) and the International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computing and Engineering (ISNSCE).

Alberto Castellini (http://www.albertocastellini.tk) graduated in Computer Science in 2006 and earned his PhD in Computer Science, with a dissertation titled "Algorithms and Software for Biological MP Modeling by Statistical and Optimization Techniques", at the University of Verona. He is currently a postdoc research associate at the Center for BioMedical Computing in Verona.

His research interests focus on complex system modeling (simulation, prediction, etc.) by unconventional computation models, mathematical optimization by traditional end evolutionary strategies, and data analysis, with particular applications to systems biology and bioinformatics. Alberto's recent work mainly involved the development of biological models based on membrane computing, by means of statistical (e.g., regression, variable selection), machine learning (e.g., neural networks) and optimization (e.g., genetic algorithms) tools. He has also developed software tools for the majority of the research problems investigated (e.g., MetaPlab) and he is co-author of scientific papers on these subjects which gained the appreciation in international journals and congresses.

During his PhD Alberto visited for five months the Automated Scheduling Optimization and Planning (ASAP) group at the Nottingham University (UK), and for one month the Science of Complex Interaction Lab (SCI-LAB) at the Nagoya University (Japan). He also partecipated to courses and PhD schools on bioinformatics and bio-inspired calculus.

During his master degree he spent a period at the Heriott Watt University of Edinburgh, where he developed evolutionary optimization algorithms for applications in computer vision. After his graduation he did an internship at the Italian Space Agency where he developed software for the strategical analysis of data related to space products.

Roberto Pagliarini graduated in Computer Science at the University of Verona in 2007, with a dissertation titled "Esperimenti per la determinazione computazionale dei parametri regolativi nei P sistemi metabolici". He's currently a Ph.D student at the Department of Computer Science in Verona. His research interests focus on System Biology and modeling of biological systems by means of Membrane Computing. In particular he investigates the possibility of obtaining efficient and systematic methods for defining membrane models from experimental data of given processes. He is a collaborator of the biochemistry and vegetal physiology group at Scientific and Technological Department of Verona University, in order to investigate computational models for crucial events related to photosynthetic organisms.

Luca Marchetti graduated in Computer science at the University of Verona in 2006 with a thesis titled "Applications of the metabolic algorithm in models of biological dynamics", he has now a fellowship at the Center for BioMedical Computation (CBMC) of Verona as a Phd student of the University of Verona. Currently he is one of the developers of the simulator of biological dynamics MPsim and his research mainly concerns the development of JAVA interfaces for simulators of biological dynamics and thestudy of applications of P systems in the field of Bioinformatics. He is co-author of different scientific articles and, recently, he has participated at the IEEE CEC07 (Congress on Evolutionary Computation)that had been held in Singapore since 25 to September 28th 2007.

Luca Bianco graduated in Computer Science at the University of Verona in 2003 and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the same University at the beginning of 2007 (doctoral thesis’ title: “Membrane models of biological systems”). The aim of his research has been the design and implementation of algorithms for the calculation of the dynamics of biological regulatory networks. Within his Ph.D., Luca had also a training period at the University of Sheffield (UK) and actively took part in several conferences both in Europe (Italy, Austria, Spain, United Kingdom, Romania, Holland and Greece where he has been “Invited Speaker” at the 8th International Workshop on Membrane Computing) and in USA (Stanford - CA). Since April 2008 he is research officer within the bioinformatics group of the University of Cranfield (UK). His work is sponsored by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and it first involved the improvement of a proteomics pipeline to analyze tandem mass spectrometry data. He recently started a new project in quantitative proteomics. Luca is module manager of two modules of the MSc course in Bioinformatics held at Cranfield: Applications of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology. He is involved in the teaching of two short courses in Proteomics as well. He is a member of the British Society for Proteome Research (BSPR) and of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB).

Simone Zorzan graduated in Computer Science at the University of Verona with a thesis on symbolic representation of biological oscillation and in 2010 he received, from the same University, a Ph.D. title in Molecular, Industrial and Environmental Biotechnologies, discussing a thesis entitled “Protein-protein interaction dynamics in photosynthetic membrane: biochemical and in silico comparative analysis”. His research activity is focused on development and applications of bioinformatics techniques to biological investigations. During his Ph.D. he developed microarrays data and electron microscopy analysis tools. He collaborated with the group of Prof. Nicolas Le Novére at the European Bioinformatics Institute to the development of coarse-grained molecular dynamics software “Meredys” and to its application in the modeling of photosynthetic organism’s membrane dynamics. He is currently working in the Center for BioMedical Computation (CBMC) in Verona as a Research Associate and his activity is focused on the bioinformatic study of the mechanisms of neuronal plasticity. Simone is co-author of several peer-reviewed journal articles and conference acts and is member of Società Italiana di Biologia Vegetale (SIBV) and of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB).

Giovanni Scardoni graduated in Computer Science at the University of Verona and in 2010 he received, from the same University, a Ph.D. in Computer Science discussing a thesis entitled "Computational analysis of biological networks". His research activity is focused on network science, particularly the development and implementation of algorithms for extracting information from biological networks. He is currently working as a Research Fellow at the Center for BioMedical Computing (CBMC) in Verona. He developed several Cytoscape plugins: Pesca, for the shortest path betweenn nodes, Metabolica, a network motifs finder, and CentiScaPe a software for calculating network centralities and integrating network analysis with experimental data. He is author of journal articles and conference acts and gave talks in international workshops and conferences. At presents he is working on "centralities interference", a notion to measure how networks rearrange after nodes deletion and on the next release of the CentiScaPe plug-in.