Gamboa Vilela (PhD, 2008, Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, and University of Maastricht, The Netherlands) is professor at the Department of Cellular and Molecular Sciences, Faculty of Science and Philosophy (FACIEN), Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH), and member of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Alexander Von Humboldt (IMTAvH-UPCH). She is director of the Malaria Laboratory, belonging to both FACIEN and IMTAvH-UPCH. Her group carries out multidisciplinary studies on the dynamics of malaria transmission in the Peruvian Amazon with over 90 articles published, and more than 40 under and postgraduate students who have graduated with a thesis within her group. She has been a member of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) since 1996. She received the L’Oréal-UNESCO Fellowship in 2003, the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Award for Latin America & Caribbean (2013), and the L'Oréal-UNESCO-CONCYTEC-ANC National Award For Women in Science - Peru in 2015. She is a member of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and since 2013 she has also been a member of the Peruvian National Academy of Sciences (ANC).

Gambini is professor at the Instituto de Fisica, Facultad de Ciencias, in Montevideo, Uruguay. He is known for his development of non-perturbative techniques for the treatment of gauge theories in terms of Wilson loops, prediction of dispersion effects in the propagation of light due to the quantum structure of space-time, for his consistent discrete quantum gravity approach and for his analisys of the issue of time in quantum gravity. He has recently accomplished the first loop gravity quantization of Black Holes. He is president of the National Academy of Sciences of Uruguay; fellow of the American Physical Society; and member of the Argentinian National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences and the Latin American Academy of Sciences. He has won the Gravity Research Foundation Prize three times and the TWAS prize in 2003.

Gadagkar is Prof., Centre for Ecol. Scs., Ind. Inst. of Sc.(IISc); Chairman, Centre for Contemp. Studies (IISc); DST Year of Science Chair Professor; Hon. prof., Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Adv. Sci. Res., Bangalore; non-resid. perm. fellow, Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin; Member, Executive Board, International Council for Science (ICSU). His awards include: TWAS Award in Biology; Yg Associateship, Ind. Acad. of Scs (IAS); INSA Medal for Yg Scientists; SS Bhatnagar Prize; BM Birla Sci. Prize; Homi Bhabha Fell.; BP Pal Natl. Envrnmnt. Fell., JC Bose Natl. Fell.; 2014 AV Rama Rao Tech. Award, CSIR; Cross of the Order of Merit, Germany. He is a fellow of IAS; INSA; Natl. Acad. of Scs.; for. assoc., Natl. Acad. of Scs., USA; member, German Natl. Acad. of Scs. Leopoldina, 2012, Intl. Council for Sc. (ICSU).

Fu (PhD, 1989, in physical geography, Peking University) is professor at the Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China. He worked at RCEES as an assistant professor (1989-1990) and associate professor (1991-92) before his post-doctoral research training at the Institute for Land and Water Management, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (1992-94).He became full professor of RCEES in 1994, and deputy director in 1996. Fu was the director general of Bureau of Natural Resources and Environment, CAS 2001-2008. Since 2009 he is a Professor and Chair of Steering Committee in RCEES. He is an elected member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011, elected International Honorary Member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019 and Corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society Edinburgh UK in 2015. He is Vice President of International Geographical Union in 2018-2026 and Member of Science Advisory Committee of IIASA in 2017-2022. He is recipient of the National Natural Science Prize of China in 2005 and 2020, and The Alexander von Humboldt Medal of European Geoscience Union in 2020.

Fotuhi-Firuzabad obtained his BSc and MSc degrees in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology and Tehran University in 1986 and 1989 respectively, and MSc and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1993 and 1997 respectively. He is a professor of electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. His research interests include power system reliability, distributed renewable generation, demand response and smart grids. His scientific activities include more than 650 papers, and supervising more than 100 master's and doctoral theses. He is the recipient of several national and international awards including: World Intellectual Property Organization Award for the Outstanding Inventor (2003), and Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems (PMAPS) International Society Merit Award in 2016. Fotuhi-Firuzabad is a visiting professor at Aalto University, Finland. He served as the editor-in-chief of IEEE Power Engineering Letters from 2017 to 2022. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (2014) and Associate Fellow of the Iran National Academy of Sciences.

Fontes is a professor at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV), coordinator of the National Institute of Science and Technology in plant-pest interaction, and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Science and the National Order of Scientific Merit by the Brazilian Presidency. She was the coordinator of graduate programmes at UFV, head of the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department, scientific director of the Arthur Bernardes Foundation, and member of the CNPq Genetics Advisory Committee and Fapemig Agricultural Advisory Committee. She is a member of the CAPES Evaluation Committee of Graduate Programmes in biotechnology and serves as a monitoring and associate editor for scientific journals. She received numerous prestigious awards, including the Marcos Luiz dos Mares Guia Award, senior researcher category by the Secretary of Science and Technology of MG, Capes Thesis Advising 2021 Award and Honorable Mentions, Nano Cell Institute Award, Winner of the II Scientists and Entrepreneur of the Year, Fundação Arthur Bernardes Award for research achievement and Peter H. Rolfs Medal of Merit in Research by UFV.

Professor Shah Faruque works in the School of Life Sciences at Independent University Bangladesh (IUB). Previously he was a Professor of Microbiology and Biotechnology in BRAC University. He was also the director of the Genomics Centre at International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), and formerly director of the Centre for Food and Waterborne Diseases in icddr,b. He maintained a research team in Life Sciences for over two decades, and while staying in Bangladesh conducted cutting edge research. He obtained research grants from prestigious institutions including the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Harvard Medical School, USAID, Swedish International Development Agency, and the Wellcome Trust. Prof. Faruque obtained BSc (Hons) and MSc degrees in Biochemistry from Dhaka University, and a PhD. in Molecular Biology from the University of Reading in the UK. Prof. Faruque has authored numerous original research papers, reviews, and book chapters, and has edited a number of text books. His works have been published in top ranking international journals, including Nature, PNAS and Lancet. He was awarded the TWAS Prize in Medical Sciences in 2005.

Specializing in metabolomics, natural products chemistry, and plant biochemistry, Farag completed his PhD at Texas Tech University, USA, in 2003. In 2005, after spending time as a postdoctoral fellow at The Samuel Noble Foundation, USA, and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, USA, he became assistant professor in 2005 at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Cairo University, Egypt. Since 2009, Farag has been working as a part time visiting professor at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, to participate in teaching plant metabolomics and chemomterics modelling for master students, and in 2009–2010 he held the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship in Germany. Farag now works full time as a professor at the American University in Cairo (AUC) where his research work focuses primarily around applying innovative biochemical technologies (metabolomics) to help answer complex biological questions in medicine, herbal drugs analysis and agriculture. For his highly cited publications of close to 5000 citations and an H index of 32, Farag was selected as a top researcher in the field of plant biology in Africa by the American society of plant biology, United States.

Fang is professor and director of the Department of Agricultural Microbiology and Biotechnology, Institute of Microbiology (IOM), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He was the director of IOM from 2000 to 2004 and elected a member of CAS in 2003. He has made important contributions in plant virology and plant biotechnology. He has characterized the genomes of several plant viruses including cauliflower mosaic virus and rice yellow stunt rhabdovirus. He successfully developed the transgenic tobacco plants resistant to both tobacco mosaic virus and cucumber mosaic virus, which were planted as early as 1992 at the largest scale in the world at that time. He also analyzed and improved the CaMV 35S promoter which has been widely used in plant biotechnology. More recently, he developed an artificial miRNA approach to control plant virus infection.

Jean-Pierre EZIN is Emeritus Professor of mathematics of Université d'Abomey-Calavi. He held doctorat d'Etat in Geometric Analysis at Université Lille I, France. He has been Professor at Université Nationale, Bénin since 1982 ; senior lecturer at Université Lille I (1973-1982). He has been researcher at Abdus Salam ICTP,Trieste, Italy (1986-1988).He also was Commissioner of Economic Community of West African States for Education,Science and Culture from 2014-2016 and Commissioner of African Union for Human Resource,Science and Technology from 2008-2013. He is Founding Director of Institut de Mathématiques et de Sciences Physiques, Bénin from1988-2008. In between he was Recteur Université Nationale, Bénin (1990-1992).As other implications, he was member of Board of Council Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) of NSF, USA, and of Board of Council International Science Programme (ISP), Sweden from 2010-2013 and from 2011-2015 Chairperson of Agence Inter-établissement de Recherche pour le Développement (AIRD),France. He is initiator and founding member of Bénin Academy of Science. In 2014 he was honored by TWAS special Award " for building science capacity in Africa".

Erra-Balsells (PhD, 1979, University of Buenos Aires, UBA, Argentina) is consultant full professor, Departemento de Quimica Organica, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales, UBA and visiting prof. Faculty of Agriculture, Ehime University, Japan, and investigator (superior), Argentine National Research Council. She is member of the IMSF office board, representative of Central and South America. She was: vice-president and president, Argentine Society of Mass Spectrometry; secretary, vice-president and president, Argentine Organic Chemistry Society; editor and editor-in-chief, Journal of the Argentine Chemical Society (AQA). Her awards and honors include: AQA, Dr. P.A. Berdoy prize; AQA, Dr. L.C. Guglialmelli prize; Institute of Ibero-American Culture & Ministry of Education of Spain; V Centenary 1492-1992 Award; Japan Society for Promotion of Sciences, international research fellow; Konex foundation (Argentina) Konex Diploma in Organic Chemistry. She is fellow of the Latino-american Academy of Sciences (ACAL). Research interests: chemistry and photochemistry of MALDI matrices. Design of new MALDI matrices for biosystems analysis. Intact single cell MS analysis, at real time.

Eltahir is H. M. King Bhumibol Professor of hydrology and climate, and professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Eltahir made significant contributions defining the role of land surface processes in climate system. He has been actively engaged in projecting future impacts of global climate change at local and regional scales, with the objective of informing and hence enabling proactive adaptation by local communities. Examples for topics of his projections include: water in Nile basin, malaria in Africa, droughts over Mediterranean, and extreme heatwaves in Asia. Eltahir is the director of the UM6P-MIT Research Program at MIT with a focus on sustainable development in Africa. He is also the lead principal investigator in a large Climate Grand Challenges Project at MIT with the goal of reinventing adaptation to climate change. He was recently elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering. Eltahir is a recipient of the Kuwait Prize in Applied Science in 2000, an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2008, and a recipient of the Hydrologic Sciences Award in 2017, from AGU.

Ellis is professor emeritus of applied mathematics, University of Cape Town, South Africa. An astronomer and expert in tetrad methods to study cosmological dynamics and Bianchi Universes, he enunciated the dynamical systems approach to cosmology and nonlinear dynamics of cosmic microwave background anisotropies. He has written on the philosophy of cosmology, in particular the multiverse idea. He now works on complexity theory and the nature of the brain. He is a fellow (former president) of the Royal Society of South Africa, Royal Astronomical Society, Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), and Royal Society (London). He is former president of the Intl. Society of General Relativity and Gravitation. He has won: Star of South Africa Medal; Gold Medal, ASSAf; Natl. Science and Technology Forum Lifetime Award; and Templeton Prize. He is a founding member, Inter Academy Council.

El-Khozondar (PhD 1999, New Mexico State U., Postdoc 1999, Max Planck Institute, Germany) is professor, electrical engineering dpt., Islamic U. of Gaza. She got her B.Sc. in Physics and joined the Physics faculty at BirZeit U., Palestinian Territory in 1987. She is recognized for her research on the behaviour of optical fibre grating sensors under different stress effects, magneto-optical isolators, metamaterial devices, electro-optical waveguides, and the microstructural evolution of polycrystalline materials, with relevance to integrated optical devices and the performance of metals and ceramics. Her honours include Fulbright Scholarship, DAAD award; Alexander von Humboldt Scholarship; Erasmus Mundus; senior member at ICTP; Islamic U. Deanery Prize for applied sciences and the Arab U. Union Award, TWAS medal lecture 2015 and ISESCO Prize in Science and Technology 2014.