Stefanie Pöggeler (born 1963) studied Biology at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum (Germany). In 1993, she graduated with a thesis on intron-encoded polypeptides in plastids and mitochondria under the supervision of Prof. Ulrich Kück. She later on completed her "Habilitation" at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in 2000 and was awarded the Venia Legendi in Botany. Between 2001 and 2003 she had a stand-in assistant professorship in Botany at the Wilhelms Universität in Münster (Germany). In 2006 she was appointed as professor for Genetics of Eukaryotic Microorganisms at the Georg-August Universität Göttingen (Germany).
Her work is focused on the analysis of mating type genes and autophagy in sexual development of filamentous ascomycetes. In a second line of research, she is interested in the evolution of fungal inteins.

Timothy Y. James (born 1973) studied Biology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina (United States of America) in the lab of Prof. Rytas Vilgalys. He graduate in 2003 with a thesis on the evolution of mating-type genes in mushroom forming fungi. He completed postdoctoral fellowships at Duke University, Uppsala University (Sweden), and McMaster University (Canada) before starting as an assistant professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan (U.S.A.). He is the Curator of Fungi at the University of Michigan Fungarium (MICH) and is the Lewis E. Wehmeyer and Elaine Prince Wehmeyer Chair in Fungal Taxonomy. His work is focused on resolving the fungal tree of life, in particular discovering the hidden phylogenetic diversity of the tree by analysis of zoosporic and unculturable lineages of fungi. He is also interested in the evolution of ploidy and mitotic recombination.

Evolutionary roots of fungi

*Martin Carr* (M.Carr@hud.ac.uk) University of Huddersfield , GB

The protistan origins of animals and fungi

*Christina Schilde* (C.Schilde@dundee.ac.uk) University of Dundee, College of Life Sciences, GB

Evolution of signalling and morphogenesis in the Dictyostelids

*Brandon Hassett (brandon.hassett@uit.no), UiT - The Arctic University of Norway

*Vassili N. Kouvelis (kouvelis@biol.uoa.gr), Dept. Genetics & Biotechnology

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Mitochondrial genome evolution in fungal lineages

*Kensuke Seto (kseto@umich.edu), Department of Ecol. And Evol. Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.

Aphelids: what their traits tell us about the early evolution of fungi

Evolution of pathogenic strategies

*Soo Chan Lee (Soochan.Lee@utsa.edu), University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

Role of dimorphism in pathogenicity of Mucoralean fungi

*Daniel Croll (daniel.croll@unine.ch), University of Neuchâtel,CH

The genomic architecture of pathogen genomes

*Marco Thines (Thines@bio.uni-frankfurt.de), Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Goethe University, Germany

Host switching and geographic expansions in plant pathogens

Evolution of mutualistic interactions

*Jillian Myers (jimyers@umich.edu), Tim James. University of Michigan, USA

Mycoviruses

Jessie Uehling (uehlinje@oregonstate.edu), Oregon State University; USA

Endohyphal bacteria of Mucoromycota and their extended phenotypes

Toby Spribille (spribill@ualberta.ca), University of Alberta, CA

What's in a lichen? Unraveling the complex symbioses in lichen thalli

Falk Hillmann (Falk.hillmann@leibniz-hki.de), Hans Knöll Institute (HKI), Jena, Germany.

Fungi and environmental phagocytic predators

Petr Baldrian (baldrian@biomed.cas.cz), Institute of Microbiology of the CAS, Prague, Czech Republic

Global fungal diversity estimated from high throughput sequencing
Matthew Smith (trufflesmith@ufl.edu), Department of Plant Pathology, University of Florida; USA;

Biogeography and symbiosis in southern hemisphere mycorrhizal fungi

Evolution of metabolism in fungi

Evolution of Special Metabolism in Fungi: Concepts, Mechanisms, and Pathways

Axel Brakhage (axel.brakhage@hki-jena.de), Hans Knöll Institute (HKI), Jena, Germany.

Induction of silent fungal gene clusters

Isheng Jason Tsai (ijtsai@sinica.edu.tw), Biodiversity research center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Evolution of bioluminescence in mushrooms

Antonis Rokas (antonis.rokas@vanderbilt.edu), Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, U.S.A.