Jonathan Delafield-Butt trained in developmental neurobiology at the University of Edinburgh and in  developmental psychology in postdoctoral research at the Universities of Edinburgh and Copenhagen.  His work examines the psychobiology of feeling and movement in human infants and model organisms.  The bipolar mind-body nature of animal movement, perceptive of possible futures and concrete in motor expression, provides an insertion point for investigation of the role of mind in nature, and the place of feeling in guiding action.  Delafield-Butt pursued science-philosophy bridgework at Harvard University and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. 

Karin Moelling has studied retroviruses and oncogenes, first as research fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute, Berlin, then as Prof and Director at the Institute of Medical Virology, Zürich. She discovered the retroviral RNase H, required for viral replication, and the oncoprotein Mil/Raf Kinase, which became recently an important target for anticancer therapy. She described the striking dual role of Raf either as driver of growth or growth arrest (differentiation). Also the nuclear role and DNA binding of the oncoprotein Myc was detected by KM. She characterized the replication of HIV and developed a suicide mechanism to destroy the virus. KM suggests a scenario for early evolution with viruses as our oldest ancestors and demonstrated the similarities between viruses and antiviral defense. 

Baverstock’s primary career interest has been in the effects of ionising radiation on public health, both in terms of research and in practice with the World Health Organisation. In the early 90s radiobiological research revealed the phenomenon of radiation induced genomic instability. The past nearly 15 years has been spent in rationalising this phenomenon in terms of biology in general. Biology, as it is generally understood, has to change significantly to accommodate the phenomenon of genomic instability.

Westling has worked as professor of English and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon since 1985. An expert in modern British and American literature, she was one of the creators of the field of ecocriticism, an international interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities linked with evolutionary biology, animal studies, climate change, geography, and geology.  She utilizes the concept of Ecophenomenology derived from the philosophy of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty and engaged with the new field of Biosemiotics developed in Denmark and Estonia by Jesper Hoffmeyer and Kalevi Kull.  Westling is an advocate of non-Darwinian evolution and the relation of human semiotic and cultural behaviors to those of other animals with which our species co-evolved.

Villarreal has long been interested in virus-host interactions, especially with regard to viruses that persist either in the genomes or epigenomes of their host.  For the last 20 years, he has focused his study on the general role of virus evolution on Life. In the last decade metagenomic assessments of various habitats have led us to realize that viruses are the dominate biological entities of the biosphere and are the most numerous, diverse and dynamic genetic agents on Earth.  Viruses have had major influence on the genesis and evolution of life.

Szent-Gyorgyi’s remark that ‘life is interposed between two energy levels of an electron’ had inspired Mae-Wan since her undergraduate days; it predisposed her to reject vacuous neo-Darwinian explanations based on ‘selective advantage’. She began writing (often with Peter Saunders) on epigenetics, development, and evolution since the 1970s, moving eventually into quantum physics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics and beyond in her quest for the meaning of life. 

Mariusz Nowacki works as professor of RNA biology and Epigenetics at the University of Bern since 2010. His research focuses on the process of RNA-mediated genome editing in eukaryotes. His work on epigenetic inheritance in ciliated protozoa supports the idea that Lamarckian processes play crucial roles in evolution.

Sandín  held the position of full professor in the Biology department since 1977, specializing in Human Development and Human Ecology. Since 1995, evolution has been  his number one focus. He proposed a model of evolution by Integration of Complex Systems and is a critic of the Darwinian coception of evolution and life.

Joyner is a physiologist and anesthesiologist at the Mayo Clinic.  His research interests are focused on how “whole” humans respond to stressors including exercise, hypoxia, and the upright posture.  The ability of humans to maintain homeostasis during these challenges emphasizes the redundant nature of physiological control and the integration of adaptations and factors that range from cellular to behavioral.

Peter Corning taught in the Human Biology Program at Stanford University for many years, while holding research appointments in the Behavior Genetics Laboratory and the Engineering Economic Systems Department.  A major focus of his work has been the development of a theory – known as the Synergism Hypothesis – to account for cooperative phenomena and the “progressive” evolution of complexity over time.  In essence, it represents an economic theory of complexity, and it involves a radical paradigm shift away from the gene-centered focus of neo-Darwinism.

Luporini has worked as assistant professor in zoology at the University of Pisa and, since 1976, as full professor in zoology at the University of Camerino. Research interest on evolutionary biology, cell signalling, sexual phenomena, and adaptive evolution of protist ciliates; polar biology; taxonomy of gastrotrichs. Over 150 original research articles in academic journals including Nature, PNAS, J. Mol. Biol., J. Euk. Microbiol., and numerous chapters in books.

A critic of the Modern Synthesis, Raymond is joint author with his brother, Denis, of the best-selling book, Understanding Living Systems, published by Cambridge University Press, which has been described as a game changer challenging the gene-centric view of life.

From 1961 Vane-Wright worked as an entomologist at the Natural History Museum, London, retiring in 2004 as head of the former Department of Entomology. In 2006 he was appointed Honorary Professor of Taxonomy at the University of Kent. A specialist on tropical butterflies and an early practitioner of Hennigian phylogenetic systematics, Vane-Wright was also influenced by the work of C.H. Waddington, and has long held the anti-reductionist view that whole organism behaviour is a key factor in the process of adaptation. If purposive organismal agency is not taken into account, our understanding of evolution will always be inadequate.

The Robert H. Austin Research Group in Biophysics is a research group based in the physics department of Princeton University which probes the biological limits of evolving organisms under stress.

The group’s research focuses primarily on the use of microarrays and nanotechnology to further the physical understanding of biological processes, such as the dynamics of cells when subjected to stress. The ultimate goal is to understand, and possible guide, the evolution of microrganisms by culturing them inside custom-made micro-environments.

Robert Lickliter is currently professor of developmental science and cognitive neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Florida International University.  He has also worked as professor of psychology at Virginia Tech and as visiting professor in human biology at Stanford University.  An expert in developmental psychobiology, he applies a developmental systems perspective to the study of early perceptual, cognitive, and social development. He is particularly interested in the developmental origins of phenotypic variation and the links between developmental and evolutionary theory. He is an outspoken critic of neo-Darwinism and evolutionary psychology.

Dr. Gilbert pursues two areas of evolutionary developmental biology. The first is the origins of biological novelty, and he has worked since 1999 on the mechanisms by which developmental changes in the amniote embryo generate the turtle shell. The second concern involves the relationship of the developing organism to its environment, especially the co-development of host and symbionts to generate the holobiont.  He is pursuing questions that emerge when the holobiont (the host plus its persistent symbiotic communities) is considered as a unit of selection.  He is the author of Developmental Biology; Ecological Developmental Biology; and Bioethics: Springboard for Debate. 

Olsson has worked as professor in microbiology with speciality in fungal biology and fungal cell biology 1996-2016 and became among other things responsible for a newly started main Master course in Cell biology at University of Copenhagen. Thereafter he moved to get better opportunities to basic research. Olsson is expert in fungal cell biology, microbial ecology and fungal innate immunity with a special interest in comparative cell biology. Olsson developed the concept natural adaptation directed fast evolution (NADFE) of niche determinant genes, a Lamarckian-Darwinian synthesis. His latest paper defines and presents the NADFE possibilities in Eukaryotes from amoeba to human based on experimental data from fungi and phylogeny. 

Newman has contributed experimentally and theoretically to the understanding of morphogenesis and pattern formation in vertebrate and invertebrate systems. He has proposed explanations, based on physico-genetic interactions, for skeletal patterning of the vertebrate limb, the rapid emergence, with conservation of the developmental genetic “toolkit,” of animal body plans during the Ediacaran and Cambrian explosions, the origin of the animal egg, and the “embryonic hourglass” of comparative developmental biology.

Wheeler has researched and written on biosemiotics and culture since 2005 when she was introduced to the work of Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull, Søren Brier, Frederick Stjernfelt, John Deely and others. She has been particularly influenced by the work of Gregory Bateson in thinking about living communicative systems, and about how formal and organisational patterns and semiosis in nature are repeated in cultural and aesthetic forms and meanings. She is especially interested in the ways in which biosemiotic process systems theories can provide useful tools for research in the medical and the ecological humanities.

‘Life-blood’, or blood as the seat of vitality, is the viewpoint into evolution of inventor-heart surgeon and accidental evolutionary biologist Dr William Peters. Integrating William Harvey’s notion of blood as a one-way circuit (1628) with Linus Pauling’s discovery of the paramagnetic properties of de-oxygenated blood (1936), the closed circulation of blood in vertebrates is re-imagined as an electron-delivery circuit. Using basic physics principles, Dr Peters demonstrates how a single-looped fish circulation can evolve into a double-looped human circulation via a mixed, loop-in-loop reptilian transition. The blood circuit is adaptive throughout, somatomeric re-distribution and bodily precession maintaining a redox balance at any point in the transition. In this unidirectional blood-based electron-delivery model atmospheric oxygen is the driver, entering the circuit via the pharyngeal capillary bed (gills/lungs). The mitochondrion is the motor, consuming the oxygen to power the organism. The mitochondrial and nuclear genomes are thus posited as regulator or capacitor (or both).

Soen is a biophysicist interested in how robust organisms can be sufficiently plastic to cope with new problems, and how this plasticity might contribute to bridging ecological and evolutionary processes.