Professor David Rollinson is a Merit Research Scientist at the Natural History Museum in London, where he leads a research team in the Wolfson Wellcome Biomedical Laboratories and directs the WHO Collaborating Centre for schistosomiasis. He has had a long fascination with parasites and the diseases that they cause, this has involved him in many overseas projects especially in Africa. He is on the WHO Expert Advisory Panel of parasitic diseases, the editor of Advances in Parasitology and a former President of the World Federation of Parasitologists. His research group uses a multidisciplinary approach, which combines detailed molecular studies in the laboratory with ongoing collaborative studies in endemic areas of disease, to explore the intriguing world of parasites in order to help control and eliminate parasitic diseases. Prof. Russell Stothard is Chair in Medical Parasitology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK