**About the Editors**

#### **Marina A. Dobrovolskaia**

Dr. Dobrovolskaia is the Laboratory Co-Director, Director of Operations, and the Head of the Immunology Section at the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL). She leads the NCL to provide preclinical nanoparticle characterization services to the nanotechnology research community, advance the translation of promising nanotechnology concepts from bench to clinic, and contribute to the education of the next generation of scientists in the field of preclinical development of nanotechnology-based products. In her role as the Head of the Immunology section, Dr. Dobrovolskaia leads a team conducting preclinical studies to monitor nanoparticles' toxicity to the immune system both in vitro and in vivo using a variety of immune function and animal models.

#### **Kirill A. Afonin**

Dr. Afonin is a full professor at the Department of Chemistry, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His expertise is in computational and experimental RNA biology. Dr. Afonin's research focuses on biopolymers, including both DNA and RNA, that can be programmed to fold into nucleic acid nanoparticles (NANPs) for beneficial uses in nanotechnology with broad applications. His team is using this promising technology to pursue several objectives in various fields, including nanodesign, immunology, delivery, biosensing, therapeutics, and dynamic structures. Dr. Afonin also serves as a founding council member and the vice-president of the International Society of RNA Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine. Among other awards, he is the recipient of two NIH Fellows Awards for Research Excellence (FARE), a prestigious NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA R35), and two NIH R01s.
