Ralf Herwig (born 1967) studied mathematics and physics at the TU Berlin and Free University Berlin and wrote his PhD on statistical clustering methods. He has been a group leader in bioinformatics since 2001 and works on several projects covering genomics, proteomics and systems biology.
Axel Kowald (born 1963) holds a PhD in mathematical biology from the National Institute for Medical Research, London. He has worked at the University of Manchester, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Budapest, and the Humboldt University Berlin. His current research interests focus on the mathematical modeling of processes involved in the biology of aging and systems biology.
Christoph Wierling (born 1973) studied biology at the University of Münster, graduating in 1999. Currently he is working as a PhD student on the modeling and simulation of biological systems and the development of computational tools for systems biology.
Hans Lehrach (born 1946) studied chemistry in Vienna and Braunschweig, receiving his PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine. He is director of the MPI for Molecular Genetics and was spokesman for the German Human Genome. Among others, he is a member of EMBO, on the project committee of the National Genome Research Network, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research interests focus on functional genomics, technology development and systems biology.
All the authors currently work at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin.