Adaption of Microbial Life to Environmental Extremes

Helga Stan-Lotter has studied general and clinical microbiology as well as biochemistry at the Technical University of Munich; she received her PhD at the Max-Plack Institute in Martinsried, Germany and worked as Post Doctoral Assistant at the Universities of Vancouver and Calgary in Canada. During her post doctoral training Helga Stan-Lotter analysed effects of antibiotics on bacteria and studied bacterial membrane proteins. She received a Fellowship from the USA National Research Council to analyse the evolution of energy transfer at bacterial membranes, which led to a still lasting cooperation with the NASA at the SETI Institute, University of Santa Cruz. She was Lecturer and Project leader at the University of Vienna and was appointed Professor in Microbiology at the University of Salzburg in 1994.

Sergiu Fendrihan was born in Campina, Romania in an intellectual family. He graduated at the Faculty of Biology from Bucharest University in 1979, and then worked in a factory of Pharmaceuticals and after this occupied different research positions in several research institutes in Romania, working part time as assistant professor of plant protection and plant pathology at a private university in Bucharest. He was guest scientist at the University of Salzburg Austria for many years and he is the founder of the first Bio Resource Centre in Romania, in order to establish the national collections of micro-organisms and cell lines. Sergiu Fendrihan is author of many books and articles in microbiology, plant protection and cultural heritage protection.