作者: Michele Vendruscolo

Ugo Bastolla is researcher in the laboratory of bioinformatics of the Centro de Astrobiologia in Madrid (Spain), on leave to the Centro de Biologia Molecular of the Spanish CSIC. Since his degree in physicswith Luca Peliti he has always been interested in biological topics, above all evolution. He got is Ph D in Rome with Giorgio Parisi workingon disordered dynamical systems inspired to biology and was postdoc in Julich (Germany) with Peter Grassberger, studying statistical mechanicalmodels of polymers, in Berlin (Germany) with E.W. Knapp studying simpleprotein models, in Golm (Germany) with Michael Laessig, studyingecological models, and finally in Madrid (Spain) in the bioinformaticsgroup of Alfonso Valencia. His main research interest consists in combiningsimple models of protein thermodynamics and evolution. Markus Porto is professor of Theoretical Solid State Physics at the Institut fur Festkorperphysik at the Technische Universitat Darmstadt(Germany). He received his Ph D at the Universitat Giessen (Germany). Hisresearch interests cover many aspects of solid state and statisticalphysics, including transport and relaxation in disordered systems andbiophysics, as well as applying methods of statistical physics to modelmolecular evolution. H. Eduardo Roman is Research Fellow at the Department of Physics of the University of Milan-Bicocca. He earned his Ph.D at the International Schoolfor Advanced Studies, Trieste (Italy), and has been Privat Dozent at the Universities of Hamburg and Giessen (Germany). His research interests covermany aspects of Statistical Physics, from fractals to stochastic phenomena, biophysics, proteins and evolution, and ab-initio electronic calculations inmolecules. Michele Vendruscolo is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge. He received his Ph D in Condensed Matter Physics in 1996 at the International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste (Italy). His research is mainly focussed on understandingthe biophysical principles regulating the behaviour and the evolution ofproteins.