Dr Bas Defize (1955) is managing director of a molecular and cell biology research group on developmental embryology and is responsible for the current educational programme at the Hubrecht Laboratory.
Bas Defize studied biology at the University of Utrecht and acquired his PhD on the mechanisms of signalling a growth-factor receptor at the Hubrecht Laboratory. In 1990 he led his own research group within the field of stem cell differentiation in developing embryos. They attempt to unravel the mechanisms of signalling, migration and communication, which ultimately determines the specialisation of stem cells. His name became familiar to the Dutch public, as a result of his appearances as an expert in a series of popular television science quizzes.

Dr Frank JMF Dor, MD (1976) is a surgeon at the Department of Surgery of the Erasmus MC.
Frank Dor studied Medicine at the Rijks Universitair Centrum Antwerpen in Belgium for a year and continued his medical studies at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1995. In 1998 he worked in the Royal Free Hospital in London at the Department of Chemical Pathology & Human Metabolism. Later that year, he became a student research fellow at the departments of Cardio-thoracic Surgery and Transplantation of the University Hospital Rotterdam, where he was involved in heart valve transplantation in rats until 2001. In November 2001 he started his PhD project at the Transplantation Biology Research Center/ Massachusetts General Hospital/ Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA, where he performed his experimental work until January 2004. In April 2004 he started his surgical residency at the Department of Surgery, Erasmus MC and will continue his training in surgery at the Sint Fransiscus Gasthuis Rotterdam in April 2006.