Guest Editors I. Horvath I. Horvath works at the Dept of Pulmonology of the Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary. She trained as a physiologist and then as a specialist in pulmonology and worked in the National Institute of Health (Bethesda, MD, USA) and at the Imperial College (London, UK). She currently works as a pulmonologist within a busy practice and teaches at Semmelwis University. She is Head of the research programme on chronic inflammatory airway diseases, which includes biomarker discovery studies for disease diagnosis and monitoring and also translational research in asthma and COPD patho- mechanism, in collaboration with other national and international centres. Her major focus is exhaled biomarkers including exhaled nitric oxide, exhaled breath condensate and electronic smell prints. I. Horvath is a reviewer for many international scientific journals including the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, European Respiratory Journal, Chest, Thorax and the Journal of Applied Physiology among others. She is also on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Breath Research. From September 2010, I. Horvath takes up the position of Secretary of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Inflammatory Airway Diseases and Clinical Allergy Assembly. She is also a member of the HERMES Examination Committee and one of the organisers of the popular ERS School course on monitoring airway diseases. I. Horvath has received national and international awards for her scientific achievements including, in 2006, the UNESCO-Loreal Hungary Scientific Award. She is a member of the consortium that received the EU Innovative Medicines Initiative grant on severe asthma in 2009. J.C. de Jongste J.C. de Jongste is Professor of Paediatrics and Head of the Dept of Paediatric Respiratory Medicine at Erasmus University Medical Center - Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He is currently actively involved as a clinician, teacher and clinical researcher. His PhD thesis was concerned with the pharmacophysiology of human airway smooth muscle, for which he was awarded the Steven Hoogendijk Prize of the Batavian Society for Experimental Philosophy and the Jaap Swieringa Prize of the Netherlands Society for Pulmonology and Tuberculosis. He was founder of the specialty clinic ‘‘KinderHaven’’ for paediatric atopic diseases in Rotterdam. His main research interests are paediatric asthma, exhaled biomarkers of inflammation and asthma epidemiology. He was Chair of the ERS Scientific Group on Paediatric Asthma and Allergy and was a member of the ERS Long Range Planning Committee and was once the ERS National Delegate of the Netherlands. He is currently a member of the ERS Standing Scientific Committee. He was European editor of Paediatric Pulmonology and was an Editorial Board member of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and Mediators of Inflammation. He is a reviewer for many respiratory journals and several general scientific journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. He has participated in many scientific advisory boards including those of the Dutch Asthma Fund and the Netherlands Cystic Fibrosis Association. He is a member of the Netherlands’ Health Council, Chair of the Netherlands Paediatric Respiratory Group, and has chaired and participated in numerous ERS, American Thoracic Society and Netherlands’ Health Council task forces. Eur Respir Mon 2010. 49, v. Printed in UK – all rights reserved. Copyright ERS 2010. European Respiratory Monograph ISSN: 1025-448x. DOI: 10.1183/1025448x.00011210 v