Born in Faenza, Italy, in 1973, Marco Bandini received his BSc in chemistry from the University of Bologna in 1997 and his PhD in 2000 under the supervision of Prof. Achille Umani-Ronchi. That same year he was appointed an assistant professor in the university's Department of Chemistry "G. Ciamician". He has been a visiting researcher at the North Carolina University at Chapel Hill and at the Clean Technology Centre of the University of York, as well as a recipient of the C.I.C.O. Junior Award in 2002 and the "G. Ciamician" Medal in 2005. Dr. Bandini's scientific interests current focus on the development of new chiral homogeneous as well as heterogeneous catalysts for asymmetric transformations.

Achille Umani-Ronchi graduated in chemistry in 1960 from the University of Rome, Italy, and has been a Full Professor at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Bologna since 1980.
From 1961 to 1969 he was an assistant at the Politecnico di Milano, before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Bari, carrying out research in organic synthesis with Professor G. Cainelli. In 1964-65 he worked with Professor Duilio Arigoni at ETH, Zurich on enzymatic reactions, and with Professor Jack Lewis at the University of Cambridge on Organometallic chemistry. He was a scientific committee member of I.A.S.O.C. since its foundation until 1990 and in 2002 received a "Premio alla Ricerca" grant from the Italian Chemical Society for the relevant results obtained in the area of synthetic organic chemistry followed by the "Piero Pino" gold medal from SCI for excellent results in asymmetric catalysis in 2007. Professor Umani-Rochi's current research is centered on the synthesis of new chiral Ligands and their applications to homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis.