About the authors

Christophe J. Echeverri

Christophe Echeverri is the CEO/CSO and lead founder of Cenix BioScience (Dresden, Germany). He completed a Ph.D. in cell biology (1998) at the University of Massachusetts (Worcester, Massachusetts, USA), focusing on the role of microtubule-based motors in a wide range of cellular processes including cell division. In 1998, he joined the laboratory of Anthony Hyman at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Heidelberg, Germany) as a postdoctoral research scientist, where he co-directed the first genomic RNAi screening project with Pierre Gönczy. Since 1999, he has led Cenix in applying genome-driven high-throughput RNAi for a wide range of diseases.

Norbert Perrimon

Norbert Perrimon is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator (Massachusetts, USA). His thesis, with Madeleine Gans as adviser, was on Drosophila genetics. He moved to Case Western Reserve University (Ohio, USA) as a postdoctoral research fellow with Anthony Mahowald and became a Lucille P. Markey scholar in biomedical sciences. He then assumed his current position at Harvard Medical School. In 2004, he received the George W. Beadle Award from the Genetics Society of America. His laboratory uses functional genomic approaches to dissect the organization of signalling pathways that are involved during development and morphogenesis.