Manfred Einsiedler studied mathematics at the University of Vienna and has been a Professor at the ETH Zürich since 2009. He was an invited speaker at the 2008 European Mathematical Congress in Amsterdam and the 2010 International Congress of Mathematicians in Hyderabad. His primary research area is ergodic theory with connections to number theory. In cooperation with Lindenstrauss and Katok, Einsiedler made significant progress towards the Littlewood conjecture.

Thomas Ward studied mathematics at the University of Warwick and is Deputy Vice-Chancellor for student education at the University of Leeds. He works in ergodic theory and number theory, and has written several monographs, including Heights of Polynomials and Entropy in Algebraic Dynamics with Graham Everest and Ergodic Theory: with a view towards Number Theory with Manfred Einsiedler.