Maiken Nedergaard is Dean’s Professor and Co-Director of the Center for Translational Neuromedicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) in Rochester, NY and Professor of Glial Cell Biology at the Center for Neuroscience at the University of Copenhagen (KU), Denmark. Her interests span from neuron-glia interactions to the role of astrocytes in aging, small vessel disease, stroke, and cerebral blood flow. Dr. Nedergaard is an elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, Royal Academy of Pharmacy of Spain, and Academia Europaea. In 2023, she received the 21st Perl/UNC Neuroscience Prize and the Andres Jahre’s Award for Medical Research.

Carolin Schneider completed her medical studies at RWTH Aachen with support from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. Her many honors and awards for her outstanding achievements include the Springorum Commemorative Coin. She completed her doctoral degree in the genetics of liver diseases at the Medical Clinic III of RWTH Aachen under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Pavel Strnad. During her postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, she deepened her research on the genetics and prevention of metabolic diseases with funding from a Walter Benjamin Fellowship from the German Research Foundation (DFG). Since 2023, she has been Junior Professor for the Prevention and Genetics of Metabolic Liver Diseases at RWTH Aachen; she also holds an adjunct assistant professorship at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, Schneider is active in international consortia, including working groups concentrating on metabolic disease research.