Tony Southall is a senior lecturer at Imperial College London. Southhall previously worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Andrea Brand at the University of Cambridge. He earned his BSc in genetics from the University of Nottingham and his PhD in calcium signaling from the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on the development of the brain, in particular the transcriptional and epigenetic programs that drive the differentiation and maturation of neurons.

Ki-Jun Yoon is an assistant professor in the department of biological sciences at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Yoon earned his BS in biology and PhD in developmental genetics from Pohang University of Science and Technology, in Korea, and completed postdoctoral training with Hongjun Song and Guo-li Ming, from the University of Pennsylvania. His laboratory is focusing on the molecular mechanisms controlling RNA metabolism in neural stem cells during normal development and how alterations in RNA regulatory programs lead to human brain disorders.

Zhuzhu Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow on Joseph Ecker's team at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. She received her MS in developmental biology from Purdue University and completed her PhD in computational biology and bioinformatics as well as MS in statistics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Zhang’s research focuses on epigenetic regulations in the brain, particularly the epigenetic mechanisms defining neuron cell types and connectivities in both healthy and disease states.

Christie Fowler is an assistant professor in the department of neurobiology and behavior and director of interdepartmental neuroscience program at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to joining the faculty there, Fowler received her PhD from Florida State University with Zuoxin Wang and conducted postdoctoral research with Paul Kenny at The Scripps Research Institute. Her research focuses on elucidating the neurobiological mechanisms underlying tobacco and nicotine dependence. Her laboratory is working to define the signaling mechanisms and brain circuitries involved in mediating the development and maintenance of nicotine dependence, with a focus on identifying novel targets for therapeutic development.