Dr. Michael R. Knowles is a Professor of Pulmonary and Critical Care medicine at the University of North Carolina. He has over three decades of clinical research experience that spans across the disciplines of biology, physiology, and design of clinical trials in both the academic and private sectors. He is currently the head of two large multicenter studies: 1) Genetic Modifiers of Disease phenotype (severity) in cystic fibrosis lung and liver disease, which also includes a recently formed International Consortium doing a whole genome scan; and 2) a Consortium with 8 sites in North America to study rare genetic disorders of mucociliary clearance. He received his B.A. and M.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, completed his Residency in Internal Medicine at Duke University, Durham, NC, and finished his Fellowship in pulmonary diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Knowles has authored over 100 papers over the course of his career.

Dr. Charles N. Serhan is the first Endowed Distinguished Scientist at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and since 1995 has served as Director of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury (CET&RI) at BWH. He is a full Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, is affiliated with its Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, and is also the Simon Gelman Professor of Anesthesia, Perioperative and Pain Medicine (Biochemistry & Molecular Pharmacology) at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Oral Medicine, Infection and Immunity at Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Dr. Serhan is a leading authority in inflammatory resolution and was the first to identify the role of anti-inflammatory cellular mediators such as resolvins and lipoxins in the pro-inflammatory pathway. He serves as the Director and Principal Investigator of the Serhan Laboratory at CET&RI and as the program director of a federally supported National Institutes of Health Program Project grant on the Resolution Mechanisms in Acute Inflammation: Resolution Pharmacology. He is also Principal Investigator on the NIH research grant entitled, Blood Cell Lipoxygenase Products: Formation and Action, funded since 1987, and is honored with a MERIT Award and has authored over 400 papers.

Dr. Serhan received his Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from Stony Brook University New York and his doctorate in Experimental Pathology and Medical Sciences from New York University School of Medicine. He completed his post-doctoral training in Physiological Chemistry at the Karolinska Institute Medical University in Sweden with Professor Bengt Samuelsson, the 1982 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, and later received an honorary degree from Harvard University.

Dr. Nishimura is Chief of Pathology at San Francisco General Hospital. He also serves as an Endowed Chair and Professor in the Department of Pathology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Nishimura is an expert in pulmonary pathology, specializing in interstitial lung disease and lung cancer. He is currently investigating the regulation of cell behavior related to development, cell signaling, tumor growth, metastasis, blood vessel formation and differentiation, and wound repair. Dr. Nishimura earned his medical degree from the University of Vermont's Larner College of Medicine. He then completed a residency in anatomic pathology and laboratory medicine, as well as a fellowship in molecular and cell biology, at UCSF. He also completed a fellowship in pulmonary pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Dr. Nishimura has received numerous honors and awards from organizations including the American Lung Association, UCSF Academic Senate and American Cancer Society. He is a member of the American Society for Cell Biology and American Society for Investigative Pathology.