David A. Bender was educated at North Ealing Primary School and Greenford County Grammar School in London and then studied biochemistry at the University of Birmingham in England from 1965 to 1968. He joined the Courtauld Institute of Biochemistry at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School as a research assistant in 1968, was appointed as a lecturer in biochemistry in 1970 and received his PhD (on the metabolism of aromatic amino acids) from the University of London in 1971. The Middlesex Hospital Medical School merged with University College London (UCL) in 1987, and he became a member of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UCL. He was appointed as senior lecturer in biochemistry in 1994 and professor of nutritional biochemistry in 2009. He retired from UCL in 2011, with the title of Emeritus Professor. From 1994 until retirement, he was the assistant faculty tutor to the medical students, and from 1998 he was the subdean (Education) and director of studies for the early years of the medical course at UCL. His research interests have been in the fi eld of amino acid and vitamin nutritional biochemistry, and he was a member of the working group on vitamins that formed part of the expert committee that produced the 1991 report on Dietary Reference Values for Food Energy and Nutrients for the United Kingdom, the European Union expert committee that produced the 1993 report on Nutrient and Energy Intakes for the European Community and the Food Safety Authority of Ireland working party on Safe Micronutrient Levels.

In addition to research publications, he has also written a number of books, including: * Nutritional Biochemistry of the Vitamins , 2nd Edition, 2003, Cambridge University Press. * Amino Acid Metabolism , 3rd Edition, 2012, Wiley- Blackwell. * Benders' Dictionary of Nutrition and Food Technology , 8th Edition, 2006, Woodhead Publishing, Oxford. * Dictionary of Food and Nutrition , 3rd Edition, 2009, Oxford University Press. For more information about David A. Bender, visit http:// david- bender.co.uk.

Shauna M. C. Cunningham was educated at Bank Street Primary School and Greenwood Academy in Irvine, Scotland, before undertaking undergraduate studies at Glasgow University. She moved to Aberdeen University in 1991 to study for a PhD. This was followed by a period of postdoctoral research at Aberdeen University and Kurume University Medical School, Japan, before she joined the Nutrition and Dietetics Teaching Group in 2001 as a lecturer in nutritional physiology and biochemistry at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. Shauna continues to teach student nutritionists and dietitians at Robert Gordon University, with a particular interest in metabolism and its relationship with diet.