J. Marie Hardwick is the David Bodian Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology in the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. She received a PhD in Microbiology from the University of Kansas, and was a postdoctoral fellow with Eric Hunter at the University of Alabama Birmingham before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins. She is a Fellow of American Association for the Advanement of Science, and has received several honors and awards for her work on programmed-regulated cell death in viral pathogenesis, neurodegeneration, and more recently on fungal cell death mechanisms. Her research group discovered that apoptosis regulators govern viral virulence versus persistence, that anti-death proteins are converted to pro-death factors by caspase cleavage, and that pro-death factors have non-death day-job functions in regulating mitochondria, neuronal activity and more. Hardwick started the virology course that continues today at Johns Hopkins 25 years later, andshe serves on diversity, equity and inclusion committees. Currently her research focuses on cell death in neurodevelopmental disorders and within pathogenic yeast cells. Pierre M.

Durand is a Professor in the Evolutionary Studies institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and a Research Fellow in the Institute of Philosophy at the KU Leuven in Belgium. He completed his postgraduate studies at King's College, London (MSc.) and the University of the Witwatersrand (PhD), and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Arizona. His research focus is the evolution and the philosophy of the biology of death. He has published over 35 journal articles and is the author of a recent book entitled: The evolutionary origins of life and death (University of Chicago Press). His work has contributed to the changing paradigm in the philosophy of the biology of programmed unicellular death.