Zahid Hassan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology at Jagannath University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He completed his Ph.D. in Molecular Microbial Ecology at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and his M.Phil. in Molecular and Immunovirology at the University of Dhaka. He was a senior research officer at virology lab icddr,b and an adjunct faculty at East West University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Currently, he is involved in collaborative research work and writing scientific manuscripts with icddr,b and Prof. Dr. Hans V. Westerhoff at VU Amsterdam. His research interests are focused on different areas including microbial ecology, bioremediation, and emerging food- and air-borne viral pathogens.

Hans V. Westerhoff is a long-time researcher of how dynamic interactions between components of biological systems generate function. He started this in bioenergetics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and metabolic control analysis. After a Ph.D. at the University of Amsterdam and stays at the University of Padova, the US National Institute of Health, and the Netherlands Cancer Institute, he is now an emeritus Professor of Synthetic Systems Biology at the University of Amsterdam, emeritus Professor of Systems Biology at the University of Manchester, and emeritus Professor of Microbial Physiology at VU University Amsterdam. He is one of the drivers of the Silicon Human Initiative and the Infrastructure for Systems Biology Europe (ISBE). He has been involved in determining molecular biochemistry properties of bacteriorhodopsin, DNA gyrase, and various glycolytic enzymes of yeast and E. coli, as well as control and regulation aspects in microbial and mammalian cells. He has been a driving force behind >six systems biochemistry models that integrate the molecular biochemistry of multiple enzymes into the biochemistry of pathways with various emergent properties.