Simone Schürle is researching in the field of biomedical engineering and Assistant Professor for Responsive Biomedical Systems at ETH Zurich. She graduated in 2009 from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Industrial Engineering and Management with specialization in micro/nanosystems. She then joined the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) where she focused on magnetic manipulation techniques for biomedical applications. She was awarded with the ETH medal for her doctoral thesis and with fellowships from the SNSF, DAAD and the Society in Science for her postdoctoral studies at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was researching as postdoctoral fellow from 2014-​2017. Besides activities in public outreach work and education, she is serving as Global Future Council for the World Economic Forum. She is also co-​founder of MagnebotiX, a young spin-​off from ETHZ.

University Professor Dr. Marianne Braig studied at the Free University of Berlin and at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in Mexico City; she has held a professorship in political science with a focus on Latin America since 2002. Her research interests are: Political Sociology; Political Culture of the State in Latin America; Social Transformation and Development; Interdependent Inequalities in a Global Context; Processes of Violence and Governance; Gender Relations, Labor Market, and and Social and Educational Policy in Latin America. From 2009 - 2020, she was vice chair of the Board of Trustees and a member of the Excellence Council of Freie Universität; since January 2021, she has been vice president for research and promotion of young scholars. In 2013 she received the Margherita von Brentano Award of Freie Universität for outstanding achievements in promoting women's studies and gender research.