Dellagostin obtained his PhD in 1995, from the University of Surrey (UK), and is now full professor of biotechnology at the Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil. His research focuses on the development of recombinant vaccines and biotechnological innovations for the prevention of infectious diseases in animals. He has trained numerous Master of Science and PhD students and led high-impact research projects. He is currently president of the Research Foundation of the State of Rio Grande do Sul and chair of the board of directors of the Centre for Strategic Studies and Management. He served two terms as president of the Brazilian National Council of State Research Funding Agencies, where he played a leading role in shaping public policy for science, technology and innovation in Brazil. He has represented Brazil in international scientific partnerships and serves on advisory boards and evaluation committees nationally and abroad. In 2018, he was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Science for his contributions to science and policy in Latin America.

Desiraju obtained his BSc (1972) from the U. of Bombay and PhD (1976) from the U. of Illinois, Urbana. He was in the U.of Hyderabad between 1979 and 2009. In 2009, he joined the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore. He is a very well known structural chemist. His books on crystal engineering (Elsevier, 1989) and the weak hydrogen bond (OUP, 1999) are now standard works with 4000 and 6000 citations respectively. He co-authored a textbook in crystal engineering in 2011. He is on the past or present editorial advisory board of Angewandte Chemie, Chem. Communications and the J. of the American Chem. Soc.. He is a Past President of the International Union of Crystallography. He received the Humboldt Forschungspreis in 2000 and an Honorary Doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba in Argentina in 2013. He received the ISA Medal for science of the University of Bologna in 2018. He is one of the most highly cited Indian scientists with an H-index of 101.

Dhar obtained his MSc in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur and PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology. He has been at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai since 1978. He has worked on the problems in disordered systems, in particular relaxation in disordered magnets. His most influential work has been in the area of self-organized criticality, finding models which can be solved exactly. He is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, and of the National Academy of Sciences. He is recipient of the Young Scientist Award, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Physics, the JR Schrieffer Prize of the ICTP, TWAS prize in Physics, and the SN Bose medal of the Indian National Science Academy.

Diab is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Sciences at the Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal, the former Executive Officer of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) and currently serves as Special Advisor to GenderInSITE. She obtained her PhD from the University of Virginia, USA, in 1983. She is a fellow of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the South African Geographical Society, the African Academy of Sciences and TWAS, and a member of ASSAf. She was a Fulbright Senior Scholar and has served on numerous international committees such as the International Ozone Commission. She currently chairs the Gender Advisory Committee of TWAS. She serves on the African Union High-Level Panel on Emerging Technologies and was recently Co-Chair of an OECD Expert Group on Reducing the Precarity of Young Researchers’ Careers.

Sandra Díaz is Professor of Ecology at Córdoba National University, senior member of the Argentine National Research Council and Visiting Professor at the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University. She is interested in plant functional traits and syndromes, their effects on ecosystem properties and their interactions with global change drivers. She has advanced theory and practical implementation of the concept of functional diversity and its effects on ecosystem properties and benefits. She combines her ecology studies with interdisciplinary work on how different societies value and reconfigure nature. She founded Núcleo DiverSus on Diversity and Sustainability, and co-founded the Global Communal Plant Trait Initiative TRY. She co-chaired the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. She is a member of the Academies of Sciences of Argentina, USA, France, Norway, Latin America and the Developing World, and Foreign Fellow of the British Royal Society. Her awards include; Margalef Prize in Ecology, Gunnerus Award in Sustainability Science, Kew International Medal and BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge.

Dikshit has made significant contributions to molecular pharmacology with special emphasis on redox/NO biology and metabolism. In the area of neutrophil biology she enhanced our understanding of how nitric oxide modulates neutrophil differentiation, survival, free radical generation, NETosis, chemotaxis, and microbicidal activity. She has investigated the role of iNOS in metabolic regulations and insulin sensitivity. She led the anti-thrombotic drug discovery team at Central Drug Research Institute, and one of their new chemical entities has received permission for phase I clinical trial in India. She initiated a programme on drug and biomarker discovery in the area of fatty liver disease at the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute, with significant contributions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, under a Department of Biotechnology - Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH) project, she undertook preclinical and pharmacokinetic evaluations of AYUSH herbal formulations for mitigating SARS- CoV2 and associated pathologies. Dikshit has published 200+ papers, 23 reviews, and 8 patents, edited 3 books, and has supervised 37 PhD and 10 MD theses.

Prof. Jian Ding is a renowned Chinese cancer pharmacologist and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and he’s made extraordinary contributions to research and development of new drugs. He is currently a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, and was Director of SIMM(2004-2013). Prof. Ding serves as the editor-in-chief of Acta Pharmacologica Sinica and editorial board member of several international academic journals such as Eur J Pharmacol and Mol Pharmacol. Focusing on biomarkers and drug resistance mechanisms of anti-tumor drugs, Prof. Ding is the co-inventor of more than ten innovative drug candidates, and all of which are currently at clinical trials with one of them has been conditionally approved in China and Japan and 4 of them running additional clinical tests in U.S, Japan & Australia. More than 340 papers have been published in journals including Cell、Cancer Cell etc. Over 150 patents have been authorized. Multiple awards have been bestowed to Prof. Ding to acknowledge his tremendous contribution to the area of cancer treatment, including but not limited to, 2 Second degree of National Natural Science Award.

Djeffal is professor, University of Batna-2, Batna, Algeria. His contributions to materials science, solid-state devices and artificial intelligence (AI) have gained substantial research acclaim in the field of electronic device modeling and fabrication, specifically in the area of development of new high-performance and low cost microelectronic devices for renewable energy and environmental sensing applications, as evidenced by the number of citations for his published papers in a short span of time. In the context of microelectronic devices for renewable energy and environmental sensing applications, Djeffal has successfully developed new approaches and design techniques of microelectronic devices using soft-computing and AI-based methods. These approaches are now widely used by several scientific centers. He has published more than 300 journal articles and conference papers and is the author of some books and book-chapters in the field of photovoltaic devices/environmental sensors and soft-computing. Member of the African Academy of Sciences, he has received the Shoman Award for Arab Researchers, Africa Award for Young Researchers and Microsoft-TWAS-AAS Award, among others.

Djimde received a pharmacy doctoral degree from the Ecole Nationale de Médecine et de Pharmacie of Bamako, Mali in 1988. He conducted post-doctoral research at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) under the supervision of Thomas E. Wellems in the Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases. While at the NIH, he started new training under the supervision of Christopher V. Plowe for a PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA, which he obtained in 2001. During his PhD project he conducted seminal studies describing the first reliable molecular marker for chloroquine resistance and proposing a model for field monitoring of drug resistance using molecular markers, resulting in first-author publications on the New England Journal of Medicine and on The Lancet. He returned to Mali to start his own laboratory at the Malaria Research and Training Center (MRTC-Parasito), at the University of Science, Techniques and Technologies of Bamako, Mali. The primary goal of his research is antimalarial drug resistance, genetics, antimicrobial resistance and clinical drug development. With his team and collaborators he conducts field and laboratory based studies.

Drissi is a Moroccan African scientist who has made significant achievements in quantum science, exploring critical phases of matter and quantum fields with a focus on nanostructures for advanced energy, environment, health, and spintronics applications. A resident member of the prestigious Hassan II Academy of Science and Technology, she leads African efforts in advanced materials and physics education reform, chairing an African nanotech network and representing Morocco in the African Strategy for Fundamental and Applied Physics. Drissi is deeply engaged in mentoring, teaching, and coordinating degree programmes, and in the organization of high-impact scientific events. As lead coordinator of Morocco’s Falling Walls Lab, she empowers young Moroccan innovators. Her research work has earned national honors, besides international awards, including membership at the International Centre of Theoretical Physics in Italy, membership in the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany, the Georg Forster Research award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Guardian of Sciences award for a research security tour with Harvard University.

Dube is Emeritus Scientist of Indian National Science Academy and Csir JC Bose National Fellow, Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India. Her research focus is on the endemic organism Leishmania sp., a protozoan parasite causing Kala-azar, a neglected tropical disease and a major health problem in pockets in the Indian sub-continent. She identified novel vaccine and drug targets using functional genomics and proteomics, leading to the development of indigenous protein vaccines. This also led to the detection of new biomarkers for drug resistance in Leishmania. She developed and established the first non-human primate model for preclinical evaluation of a potential antileishmanial drug/vaccine, and generated fluorescent Leishmania organism for rapid drug screening which were recognized nationally and internationally. Member of the three Indian science academies, she has received awards such as Sir J.C. Bose National Fellowship, Indian Council of Medical Research Kshanika Oration, and Dr. B.N. Singh Memorial Oration among others.

Egamberdieva is the Head of the research group at the Faculty of Biology, National University of Uzbekistan. She received her PhD in agricultural sciences from the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. On the national level she has played a leading role in the implementation and evaluation of the national programmes and projects in agricultural research for sustainable development, and acts as a Chair of the Executive Committee of the OWSD Central Asia National Chapter, and Vice-Chair and National Focal Point Representative to the UNESCO-STEPAN (Science and Technology Policy Asian Network). Egamberdieva is also involved in science policy, and served on the advisory committee of the German Council of Science and Humanities (WR). She currently serves on the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE), the science-policy interface of the UN Committee on World Food Security, and also acts as the Country Ambassador for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). She is a member of the Global Young Academy (GYA). In 2023 she has been awarded with UNESCO Carlos Finley Prize for Microbiology.

El-Beltagy served as Egypt’s Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. He is currently Chair, International Drylands Development Commission (IDDC); Professor, Arid Land Agricultural graduate studies & Research Institute (ALARI), Ain Shams University; Chair, Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt, Board Member of the Egyptian Academy for the Scientific Research & Technology; Chair, Food and Agriculture Research Council, Egyptian Academy of Science; Former President, governing board, CIHEAM; Chair, Global Forum for Agric. Research (GFAR); DG, ICARDA; The Golden Medal of CIHEAM & France Commander of the Order of Agric. in recognition of enhancing the Ag development in the Mediterranian ; Member of: Russian Acad. of Agric. Sciences, Moscow; Tajik Acad. of Agric. Sciences; Kyrgyz Agrarian Acad.; and Scientific Council, Azerbaijan Agric Acad. Awards include: Fellow of Univ. of Wales, UK; Al-Istiklal Medal, HM King Abdullah II bin Hussein of Jordan; Golden Medal Award, Armenia; hon. DSc, Univ. of Khartoum, Sudan; and member, Sultan Qaboos ‘first class’ order for Culture, sciences&Arts for enhancing Develop.of Ag in the Dry Areas.

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.

Eleuch is a professor of physics and a leader of the quantum information, quantum simulation, and quantum processing research group at the University of Sharjah, UAE. He received his PhD in quantum physics in 1998, from Kastler Brossel Laboratory at the École Normale Supérieure and the University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris), France. He has visited and worked at several prestigious institutions such as Texas A&M University, Max Planck Institute, Princeton University, McGill University, the University of Auckland, and the University of Montreal. Eleuch has authored more than 300 papers and holds 19 US patents. He has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Max Planck Society, and the International Center for Theoretical Physics. He is a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, a member of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Honor Society (US), and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Academy of Scientists. He has been ranked among the top 2% of scientists, according to Stanford University's rankings, both in career-long and annual categorises, since 2019. In 2024, he received the Abdul Hameed Shoman Prize for Arab Researchers in Science.

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.

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.