Yuri Genenko obtained his PhD in 1987 and worked for the Donetsk Physical and Technical Institute until 1996. In 1993 he was awarded the national prize for young scientists for studies of layered superconductors and a DSc from the Institute for Metal Physics in Kiev for investigations of magnetic flux structures in low-dimensional superconductors (1995). He currently works at the Technical University of Darmstadt as a research professor. Hermann Rauh graduated from the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 1971. Following work on the electrical resistivity of dislocations in copper performed at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research afterwards, he obtained his PhD from the University of Stuttgart in 1975. Having obtained his habilitation in 1985, Rauh joined the Materials Department at the University of Oxford as a Visiting Fellow. With simultaneous affiliations to the Harwell Laboratory, he held a Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford. In 1994 Rauh became Professor of Theoretical Materials Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt.