TV Borchert, senior director of the Protein Optimization unit at Novozymes A/S, has more than 20 years of experience in applied protein engineering. He has co-authored more than 40 scientific papers in the field and holds more than 40 issued patents/patent application. Novozymes A/S is the largest producer of industrial enzymes in the world and with more than 30 launched engineered proteins on the marked, clearly a leading company in the utilization of protein optimization technology. Novozymes interacts with numerous academic groups specialized in protein engineering and has been an active member and coordinator of several EU projects.

T Schwede, head of bioinformatics at the Biozentrum in Basel, Switzerland. His department runs the PMP protein modelling portal. He was recently the judge for the homology modelling section of the CASP bi-annual world-wide structure prediction competition. With more than 20 years experience in protein structure bioinformatics, and extensive experience with bioinformatics service providing and user interfaces, T Schwede's participation in the SAC will be a valuable asset to the NewProt project.

JM van der Laan is Principal Scientist Protein Engineering at the DSM Biotechnology Center in Delft, the Netherlands. He has more than 20 years experience in the field of protein engineering in an industrial environment. DSM is an international manufacturing company active in nutrition, pharma, performance materials, polymer intermediates, and base chemicals and materials. Within the DSM Biotechnology Center more than 400 professionals in molecular genetics, bioinformatics, applied biochemistry, engineering, analytics, fermentation and down-stream processing develop innovative products and services for food, feed, health, pharma, and white biotechnology.