Zhang (PhD, 1995, U. of Reading) is a UNEP senior staff and Director, UNEP-International Ecosystem Management Partnership (UNEP-IEMP), a joint center between the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and UNEP. She is leading the implementation of a UNEP flagship programme focusing on the nexus of climate change, ecosystem services and sustainable development. She used to be a professor and Deputy Director at Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP), Chinese Acad. of Sciences (CAS). Most of her previous research has concentrated on policy-relevant studies on rural development in China, particularly on poverty alleviation. In recent years, her team has also focused on action research in rural health, nutrition and education to assess effectiveness of policies and interventions. She has published more than 300 papers in natl. and intl. journals, and presented more than 30 policy suggestions to government. She received numerous awards, incl. Fudan Management Excellence Award (2014), TWAS Celso-Furtado Prize in Social Sciences (2013), "Ten Most Outstanding Women in Science" award, CAS (2012), "100 Talent" award, CAS (2007), "Outstanding Young Scientist" Award, NSFC (2003).

Tan is Professor & Director, Center for Research on Intelligent Perception and Computing, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China. He received his BSc in electronic engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China in 1984, and his MSc and PhD degrees in electronic engineering from Imperial College London, UK in 1986 and 1989 respectively. He worked at the University of Reading, UK (1989-97) until he joined the Natl. Lab. of Pattern Recognition (NLPR), CAS Institute of Automation, as full professor. He served as Dir. Gen. of the Institute (2000-07), Director of NLPR (1998-2013), Dep. Sec.-Gen.(2007-2015) and Vice President (2015-2016), CAS. His current research interests include biometrics, image and video understanding, and information forensics and security. He is a Fellow, CAS; Internatl. Fellow, UK Royal Academy of Engineering; Corresponding Mem., Brazilian Aca. Sci.; Fellow, IEEE; Fellow, Internatl. Assoc. of Pattern Recognition.