Dr Jean-Baptiste Ramond: Educated in France, Jean-Baptiste Ramond completed his PhD in Microbiology/Microbial Ecology in 2008. He then moved to South Africa for his postdoctoral research (2009-2012) to the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town) and a research fellowship at the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics (CMEG) of the University of Pretoria (2012-2019). In 2019, he was appointed Assistant professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and in parallel is an Extraordinary Lecturer of the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics & Microbiology of the University of Pretoria (NRF C2-rated since 2021) and a Visiting Academic in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Oxford Brookes University (UK). Using omics technologies, his research essentially aims at better understanding the adaptation of environmental microbial communities to extreme environmental conditions and climate change, particularly in deserts. Professor DonA. Cowan: Don Cowan was educated in New Zealand at the University of Waikato and completed a period of postdoctoral study there before moving to University College London as a Lecturer in 1985.  After 16 years in London, he accepted the position as Professor of Microbiology in the Department of Biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, where he became Senior Professor and Director of the 60-strong Institute Microbial Biotechnology and Metagenomics. He moved to the University of Pretoria in May 2012 in the dual role as Director of both the University of Pretoria Institutional Research Theme in Genomics and his research group, the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics. He is an NRF A1-rated researcher. Don Cowan's research activities in microbial ecology encompass several fields, but are mostly linked by the theme of ‘environmental extremes’. Since his  PhD studies, he has retained an interest in the ecology and enzymology of extreme thermophiles, organisms living in heated soils and hot water. For the past two decades he has worked on the microbial ecology of Namib Desert soils and at the lower end of the biotic temperature scale, studying the microbiology of the Dry Valleys of Eastern Antarctica in collaboration with researchers from all over the world.