Mark Jobling is a Professor in the Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester, UK. Following a BA in Biochemistry and a DPhil in Genetics from the University of Oxford, he came to Leicester as an MRC Training Fellow in 1992, and has held a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship in Basic Biomedical Science since 1999. His research is in the area of human genetic diversity and the forces that pattern it, from mutation processes to cultural factors in human populations. He has a long-term interest in the Y chromosome and its many peculiarities.

Ed Hollox is a Lecturer in the Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester, UK. Following a BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and PhD in Genetics from University College London, he spent several years as a postdoc at the University of Nottingham before taking up his current post in 2006. His research interest is the natural genetic diversity of humans and other mammals, in particular the structural variation of genomes.

Matthew Hurles is a Senior Group Leader in Human Genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK. Following a BA in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford, he received his PhD in Genetics from the University of Leicester, and established his group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in 2003. His research interests are in medical and population genetics, with a long term interest in mutation processes and a current focus on the application of genome sequencing to the diagnosis of rare genetic disorders.

Toomas Kivisild is a Reader in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge, UK. He received his PhD from University of Tartu, Estonia, and his earlier research focused on mitochondrial DNA variation in human populations. His current research interests are in human evolution and evolutionary population genetics, with a particular focus on questions relating global genetic population structure with evolutionary processes such as selection, drift, migrations and admixture.

Chris Tyler-Smith heads the Human Evolution team at The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK. He studied Biochemistry at the University of Oxford and received a PhD form the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include genetic variation in humans and gorillas, and the insights these provide into our evolutionary histories and disease susceptibilities.