David Robertson is Director of both the Clinical Research Center, and the Center for Space Physiology and Medicine at the Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA. In 1990 he established the Rare Disorder Network and has served on the FDA Consortium of Rare Diseases. A member of the Aerospace Medical Association, the Society for Neuroscience and the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Professor Robertson is a Fellow of the American Heart Association Councils on Circulation and Hypertension and was President of the American Autonomic Society between 1992 and 1994.

Italo Biaggioni is Associate Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. Having gained his MD from the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heradia, Peru, he went to the Tropical Medicine Institute and the National Institute of Health in Peru, before moving to the USA and Vanderbilt University, where he has held the posts of Research Fellow, Instructor and then Clinical Associate Physician. His area of interest is the cardiovascular system and its links with the autonomic nervous system.