Professor Barbara Webb is a pioneering researcher in the field of bio-robotics at the University of Edinburgh's School of Informatics, where she runs the Insect Robotics Group. Her highly influential work bridges the gap between biology and engineering by studying the relatively simple nervous systems of insects—such as ants, bees, and crickets—and implementing their behavioural and neural mechanisms into physical robotic models. By building these "insectoid robots," her research group has made significant breakthroughs in understanding the neural circuits that govern complex animal behaviours, most notably how foraging insects navigate and learn. Recognized for both her cutting-edge research and science communication, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2022. 

Professor Agoston E. "Guszti" Eiben is a pioneering figure in the fields of evolutionary computing and evolutionary robotics. Holding a chair as a Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and serving as a visiting professor at the University of York, he literally "wrote the book" on the discipline as a co-author of foundational textbooks used globally. Prof. Eiben's research is driven by a profound overarching thesis: because natural biological evolution successfully produced natural intelligence, artificial evolution holds the code to unlocking true artificial intelligence. His groundbreaking, often sci-fi-esque experiments—such as designing autonomous "EvoSpheres" and orchestrating the world's first instance of two physical robots dynamically "mating" to produce digital and physical offspring—have continually pushed the boundaries of artificial life and collective adaptive systems.