Guest Editors James D. Chalmers is a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in Respiratory Medicine at the University of Dundee, UK. He trained in Glasgow and Edinburgh, performing his PhD studies at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Inflammation Research in Edinburgh investigating the role of innate immunity in non-cystic fibrosis (CF) bronchiectasis. His research and clinical interests are in respiratory infections, particularly community- acquired pneumonia (CAP), bronchiectasis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). He now leads a research group at the University of Dundee investigating the mechanisms of pulmonary bacterial infections, supported by grants from the Wellcome Trust, MRC, Scottish Government and charities. James Chalmers has been awarded several prestigious young investigator awards, including from the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and British Thoracic Society (BTS). He has published widely on respiratory infections, with over 60 articles in peer reviewed journals since 2008. He is a member of the international advisory board of The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. He is heavily involved in international respiratory societies, being a current member of the BTS Science and Research Committee, the ERS Long-Range Planning Committee and the American Thoracic Society Microbiology, Tuberculosis and Pulmonary Infections Program Committee. Mathias W. Pletz, Professor for Infectious Diseases, is a board- certified physician for internal medicine, pulmonology and infectious diseases and the head of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Infection Control of the University Hospital in Jena, Germany. He also leads a clinical research group focusing on novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies against multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens, funded by the German Ministry for Science and Education. Mathias Pletz received his PhD in Virology at the University of Leipzig, Germany. During his thesis he worked as a guest researcher at the Food and Drug Administration Laboratory of Parasitic Pathology and Biochemistry in Bethesda, MD, USA. After his medical training at the University of Leipzig, Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX, USA) and the University of Basel (Switzerland), he started his residency at the Chest Hospital in Berlin, Germany. Subsequently, he spent 2 years as a postdoctoral researcher at Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA), working with Keith Klugman’s group on the spread of multi-resistant pneumococci. In addition he served as a guest researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, exploring the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemics. Eur Respir Monogr 2014 63: vii–viii. Copyright ERS 2014. DOI: 10.1183/1025448x.10000614 Print ISBN: 978-1-84984-048-4 Online ISBN: 978-1-84984-049-1 Print ISSN: 1025-448x Online ISSN: 2075-6674 James D. Chalmers Mathias W. Pletz vii