Prof. Victor Tybulewicz is an immunologist and geneticist at the Francis Crick Institute, where he runs the Immune Cell Biology Laboratory and the Down Syndrome Laboratory. He obtained his BSc from Imperial College London and his PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, followed by postdoctoral work at the Whitehead Institute, MIT.

A pioneer of mouse genetics, he was one of the first scientists to use gene targeting to inactivate genes in the mouse. His lab uses these approaches to study signal transduction in B and T lymphocytes, with key findings on the SYK and WNK1 kinases and the proto-oncogene Vav1. In a second strand of work, he and Elizabeth Fisher developed influential mouse models of Down syndrome, used to map dosage-sensitive genes underlying conditions such as congenital heart defects.

He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of EMBO.

Annemiek van Spriel is a Full Professor of Experimental Immunology at the Department of Tumor Immunology, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen. She studied Medical Biology at Utrecht University, where she also completed her PhD in Immunology in 2001, receiving the Talma Eykman Award for exceptional research quality. Following postdoctoral work at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Australia, she joined Radboud in 2004, where she has built an internationally recognized research program.

Her work focuses on tetraspanin proteins which are membrane-embedded molecules that organize immunoreceptors and signaling complexes into specialized nanodomains on immune cell surfaces. Among her key discoveries is the finding that tetraspanin CD37 acts as a tumor suppressor, with its absence leading to spontaneous B-cell lymphoma formation. She has also demonstrated that tetraspanins CD37 and CD53 are essential for optimal B-cell responses, and that CD53 plays a role in T-cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity.

Her research has been supported by numerous prestigious grants, including an ERC Consolidator Grant (2017), an ERC Proof-of-Concept Grant, multiple NWO awards, and several Dutch Cancer Society grants. She has authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications, supervised numerous PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, and currently serves as elected president of the Dutch Society for Immunology.

Marion Espéli is an INSERM researcher based in Paris. She completed her undergraduate and master's studies in Biochemistry in Marseille, before beginning a PhD in 2003 in the laboratory of Dr. Claudine Schiff at the Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille-Luminy, where she worked on the generation of B lymphocytes in the bone marrow. Following her doctorate, she moved to Cambridge, UK, where she worked with Professor Ken Smith on the mechanisms regulating B lymphocytes in autoimmune disease. 

She returned to France in 2014 to establish her own research group, obtaining a permanent INSERM position the following year. Since January 2019, she co-leads a team with Dr. Karl Balabanian at the Institut de Recherche Saint-Louis in Paris. Their team studies the mechanisms driving the localization, fate, and function of lymphoid cells at steady-state and in immune and hematological disorders, including WHIM Syndrome, Waldenström Macroglobulinemia, Sézary syndrome, and Myelodysplastic Syndrome. 

Key discoveries include novel insights into how CXCR4 signaling regulates the lymphoid potential of hematopoietic stem cells, the trafficking and differentiation of plasma cells, and the finding that regulation of endoplasmic reticulum function by Sec22b is critical for plasma cell survival. Her research has been supported by grants from the ANR, the Fondation ARC, INCa, and the Fondation Arthritis.