Tjalf Ziemssen, MD, graduated with a doctor of medicine from the medical schools of Bochum, Bern, and London in 1998. Between 1998 and 2000, he started his postgraduate neurological training in the Department of Neurology, University Clinic Dresden, Germany. In 1999 he completed his doctoral thesis in the laboratory of Prof. Michael Krieg, Institute of Clinical Chemistry, Laboratory Medicine, and Transfusion Medicine, University of Bochum. For this work, he received the Young Investigator award at the NIH Symposium for the "Biology of Prostate Growth" in 1998, the research award of the German Society of Laboratory Medicine, and the award from the medical faculty of the Ruhr-University in Bochum for the best doctoral thesis in 1999. Between 2000 and 2003, Dr. Ziemssen was postdoctoral fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Max Planck Society (MPG) at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Department of Neuroimmunology, within the groups of Prof. Reinhard Hohlfeld, Prof. Hartmut Wekerle, and Dr. Antonio Iglesias. Dr. Ziemssen is currently head of the autonomic lab, which he founded in 2001; head of the new neuroimmunological laboratory; and staff member of the MS clinic in the Department of Neurology, University Clinic Dresden, Germany.

Dr. Ziemssen"s immunological research is focused mainly on the dual role of inflammation in the brain, monitoring of immunomodulatory therapies, and mechanisms of autoimmunity and tolerance in MS and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.

Hans-Peter Hartung, MD, received his undergraduate training at the Universities of Dusseldorf, Glasgow, Oxford, and London. After graduation as a doctor of medicine in 1980, he served an immunology fellowship at the University of Mainz. He started his career in neurology at the University of Dìsseldorf, where he became Assistant Professor in 1987. He was appointed Professor and Head of the MS clinical research group at the University of Wurzburg in 1990 and moved in 1997 to Graz, Austria, to become Chairman of the University Department of Neurology. He is currently Chair of the Department of Neurology at the Heinrich Heine University Dìsseldorf.

Professor Hartung"s clinical and research interests are in the field of basic and clinical neuroimmunology and, in particular, multiple sclerosis. He has authored or co-authored more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited six books. He has been involved as member of the Steering Committee in numerous international multicenter therapeutic trials. He serves on the executive boards of ECTRIMS, the European Charcot Foundation, WHO Working Group MS, GBS Foundation International, the Medical Advisory Board of the German MS Society, and the International Society of Neuroimmunology, among others. He is also a member of the editorial board of a number of international journals. Professor Hartung is a Corresponding Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and Corresponding Member of the American Neurological Association.