Isabelle obtained her B.Sc in Pharmaceutical and Biological techniques in1997 at KaHo St-Lieven in Gent. She graduated in 1999 from the Larenstein International Agricultural College (Velp, Netherlands) as Industrial engineer in Laboratory Science with specialization in Plant Biotechnology. She worked for 2 years at Bayer Cropscience in the area of molecular assisted breeding of oilseed rape before joining the VIB in 2001. At the VIB, she first joined the group of Prof. G. Gheysen mainly doing whole-mount RNA in-situ hybridization of plant parasitic nematodes. After 2 years, she joined another group to check the presence of previously selected cDNA-AFLP tags in 50.000 genes of a MJM-treated BY2 cDNA library under supervision of Dr. Pierre Hilson and Prof. Alain Goossens. Subsequently, she worked on the identification of genes involved in sexual differentiation of P. monodon and the development of a genetic map of P. monodon in the group of Dr. Frank Van Breusegem. In 2007, she joined the group of Dr. Russinova and she is currently involved in research on brassinosteroids in Arabidopsis.
 

Qian obtained his doctoral degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2011, under the supervision of Professor Qifa Zhang at the National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement in Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, China. During his PhD study, his research interest was focused on the dissection of the role of gibberellin metabolism and signaling in the biological basis of rice heterosis. Due to his interest in phytohormone research, especially at the interface between biology and chemistry, he joined Stéphanie Robert's group in Umeå Plant Science Center in Sweden as a postdoctoral researcher in 2012, working on the mechanistic understanding of phytohormone-mediated differential growth in Arabidopsis using a chemical biology strategy and the apical hook as a model. In June 2019, he joined the lab of Jenny Russinova to continue the chemical biology research to identify the targets for small molecules and the potential BR binding proteins.
 

Jenny Russinova has studied Biotechnology in Sofia University, St. Kliment Ohridski and obtained her PhD at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. Subsequently, she performed postdoctoral studies at Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands in the lab of Sacco de Vries, where she worked on understanding the function, mechanisms of activation and the subcellular compartmentalization of plant receptor-like kinases called SERKs. In 2006, she started her own research group focusing on brassinosteroid signaling regulation in plants.