?José M. Martín-Durán is a European Research Council Starting Grant Fellow and Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. He obtained his PhD in Genetics from the University of Barcelona, where he studied the embryonic development of planarian flatworms. After pursuing postdoctoral research at the Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, University of Bergen, he moved to Queen Mary University of London to establish a laboratory that combines his interests in developmental biology, animal evolution, and marine biodiversity. His lab applies genomic, epigenetic, and more classical developmental approaches to study the natural diversity in early embryogenesis found in spiralian lineages.
Bruno C. Vellutini is an EMBO Fellow and postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics. He obtained his MSc in Zoology from the University of São Paulo, and his PhD in Molecular and Computational Biology from the University of Bergen, where he investigated the evolution of larval forms in marine invertebrates. His research focuses on understanding how changes in embryogenesis are connected to the evolution of animal morphology. Currently, he is combining genetic and live-imaging techniques to reveal the mechanisms that govern tissue morphogenesis in the fruit fly embryo.