Jean-Luc Wertz holds degrees in chemical civil engineering and in economic science from the Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, as well as a PhD from the same university in applied science, specializing in polymer chemistry. He has had various international positions in R&D, including Spontex where he was the worldwide Director of R&D. He holds several patents related to various products. In his last job before his retirement in 2016, he was a project manager in biomass valorization at ValBiom and worked more than eight years on biobased products and biorefineries. He also wrote four books: Cellulose Science and Technology in 2010, Lignocellulosic Biorefineries in 2013, Hemicelluloses and Lignin in Biorefineries in 2018 and Starch in the Bioeconomy in 2020.

Serge Perez holds a Doctorate es Sciences from the University of Grenoble, France. He had international exposure throughout several academic and industry positions in research laboratories in the U.S.A., Canada, and France (Centre de Recherches sur les Macromolecules Végétales, CNRS, Grenoble, as the chairperson and as Director of Research at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility). His research interests span across the whole area of structural glycoscience, emphasizing polysaccharides, glycoconjugates, and protein-carbohydrate interactions. He has a strong interest in the economy of glycoscience, and e-learning for which he created the www.glycopedia.eu, and is actively involved in scientific societies, as President and past-president of the European Carbohydrate Organisation. He is the author of more than 300 research publications, among which several have received a large number of citations and references.