Biological Oceanographer with over two decades of experience. Since 2001, I've served as a lecturer at the Institute of Marine Engineering and Sciences (ISECMAR) within the Atlantic Technical University. Presently, I hold the position of Director of the Master's Program on Climate Change and Marine Science in the framework of the WASCAL program (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use). My research expertise predominantly lies in the ecology and conservation of coral communities within Marine Protected Areas, with focus on coastal oceanography, especially the interactions among environmental factors in these ecosystems. Additionally, I serve as a marine and coastal environmental consultant.

Nicolas Arnaud is Senior of Researcher at CNRS, Director of the National Institute for Earth and Space Sciences. Author of more than 75 international articles, he is the founder and former director of the Montpellier Mediterranean Environmental Research Observatory, dedicated to the observation of Mediterranean natural environments and their evolution under the effect of climate change. He has been regularly involved in the animation of national and international programs dedicated to the observation of the earth and the effects of global change.

Oliver Benson is Professor for Experimental Nano Optics at Humboldt-University Berlin. He received his PhD in 1995 at LMU München and MPI for Quantum Optics, Garching. He turned to solid-state quantum optics during his postdoctoral stay at Stanford University from 1997 to 1999. He led an Emmy-Noether Junior Group at Konstanz University, before he went to Berlin in 2001. His research interest are quantum optical model systems involving atoms and solid-state quantum emitters coupled via photonic nanostructures. His group demonstrates first steps towards photonic quantum technology.

Dr. Broz has responsibility for leading IBM Quantum’s quantum-centric supercomputing programs and adoption of advanced quantum computing capabilities. He also is responsible to BD and Sales in the public and academic markets. Joe joined IBM Quantum in March 2021 after serving as the founding Executive Director of the federally chartered quantum economic development consortium (QED-C) under the National Quantum Initiative Act. He has supported DOE, DOD, Air Force, Army, Navy, DHS, NIH, NIAID, DOJ, and other departments through agency research, consulting contracts, and advisory boards. Prior to the QED-C, he served as Vice President of Applied Sciences at SRI, where he led laboratories in applied science, government business development, technical and business strategy. He also served as VP of Business Development and Research at Titanium Metals, and Laboratory Director of Tenneco, Inc., where he was responsible for product development, manufacturing operations, quality, technology, and environmental management across corporate divisions worldwide. He served as a White House Fellow for the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the administration of George H.W. Bush. He was a British American Fellow at Johns Hopkins SAIS, and a Senior Fellow for National Security and Energy at NORC at the University of Chicago. Broz has a B.S. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute (ETH) in Zurich.

Kimberly S. Budil sets the strategic vision for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and exercises broad delegated powers to ensure successful execution of programs and operations to enhance national security through application of cutting edge science and technology and to maintain an outstanding and diverse workforce. She leads the development and implementation of the Laboratory’s scientific vision, goals and objectives and serves as the Laboratory’s highest-level liaison with the Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, the LLNS Board of Governors, the University of California and other government, public and private organizations.
Budil leads a workforce of more than 8,700 employees and manages an annual operating budget of approximately $3 billion. Along with the directors of Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories, she shares the responsibility of providing the United States government with an annual institutional assessment of the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile and enterprise. She is the 13th director of the Laboratory and serves as president of Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC.
Budil has held roles of increasing management responsibility at the Laboratory, most recently serving as principal associate director for Strategic Deterrence. Budil served as a detailee twice in Washington, D.C and was Vice President for National Labs at the University of California Office of the President. She currently serves on several boards and participates in numerous professional and community outreach activities.
Budil holds a Ph.D. in engineering and applied science from the University of California, Davis, where she was a Hertz Fellow, and a B.S. in physics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Dr. Michael Campbell is an internationally known expert in Inertial Fusion, High Energy Density Physics, high power lasers and their applications and advanced energy technologies including Generation IV nuclear fission reactors and biofuels. He has won numerous awards including Department of Energy’s E. O. Lawrence Award, the American Nuclear Society’s Edward Teller Award, the American Physical Society’s John Dawson Award, the Department of Energy’s Excellence in Weapons Research Award, and the Leadership Award of Fusion Power Associates. He has received an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Rochester. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Optica (formerly OSA). He has published over 250 articles in scientific journals and holds 3 patents. Campbell has worked in various scientific and leadership positions at both federal laboratories and the private sector including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he was the originator of the National Ignition Facility, General Atomics, Logos Technologies, and Sandia National Laboratory. He has received his degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and the University of Western Sydney. He is presently a adjunct Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and a Professor in Residence at the University of California-San Diego.

Eleni Diamanti is CNRS research director at the LIP6 laboratory of Sorbonne University in Paris. She received her Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 2000 and her PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2006. She then worked as a Marie Curie postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Optics Graduate School in Palaiseau before joining the CNRS in 2009. Her research focuses on experimental quantum cryptography and communication, and on the development of photonic resources and applications for quantum networks. She is a recipient of a European Research Council Starting Grant, coordinator of the Paris Centre for Quantum Technologies, and was awarded the CNRS silver medal in 2024. She is also cofounder and scientific advisor of the start-up company Welinq that specializes in quantum interconnect technology.

Born in Würzburg, Germany; Studies in Psychology at University of Würzburg, Humboldt University Berlin & University of Bonn, Germany; Studies in Computer Science, Bonn; PhD in Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany (2005); Research Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, ICN & Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College London, UCL, London, UK (2004); Senior Research Fellow, ICN & Institute of Neurology, UCL (2006); Associate Professor & Principal Investigator, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands (2010); Professor of Medicine (Neuroscience), Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway (2016); Director, The Egil and Pauline Braathen and Fred Kavli Centre for Cortical Microcircuits, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, NTNU (2017); Director, Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany (2018). Honorary Professor of Psychology (Learning & Memory), Leipzig University, Germany (2019). Managing Director, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany (2020-2023). Honorary Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning and Memory, Technical University (TU) Dresden, Germany. Vice President of the Max Planck Society (2023-).

Helmut Dosch, born in 1955, is a solid-state physicist and Chairman of the Directorate of the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg. After studying and obtaining his doctorate in physics in Munich and working at Cornell University and the University of Wuppertal, among other places, he was Director at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart before moving to Hamburg in 2009. He is an expert in the use of synchrotron radiation for researching surface and interface phenomena. Dosch became internationally known for his pioneering work in the field of phase transitions at surfaces, especially for his work on the surface melting of ice and on critical phenomena at alloy interfaces. Dosch received several awards for his research work, including the Röntgen plaque of the city of Remscheid. Helmut Dosch is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Physical Society (DPG), the European Physical Society (EPS) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). He also serves as an advisor to the Board of Governors, Argonne National Laboratory, University of Chicago and BESAC Committee of the Department of Energy (DOE) Washington, among others. Prof. Dosch is Vice President of the Helmholtz Association for the Research Field Matter.

Professor Edith Heard obtained her PhD from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (later Cancer Research UK), London. Thereafter, she spent nine years at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, before undertaking a one-year sabbatical at Cold Spring Harbor in the USA. In 2001, she set up her group at the Institut Curie and in 2010 she became Director of the Institute’s Genetics and Developmental Biology Unit. Edith was appointed as a Professor of the Collège de France in 2012, holding the Chair of Epigenetics and Cellular Memory. Since January 2019, Edith has been Director General of EMBL.
Edith’s laboratory focuses on understanding how chromatin and chromosome organisation participate in gene regulation in development and disease. Her group was among the first to show that the epigenetic process of X-chromosome inactivation (XCI), whereby one of a female’s two X chromosomes is silenced during development, is remarkably dynamic. Her lab has worked out many of the molecular mechanisms underlying X-chromosome inactivation and she uses this model to explore fundamental principles of gene regulation, chromatin and epigenetic processes in general. Edith’s group was one of the first to uncover the epigenetic dynamics of XCI during mammalian development and they have provided insights into the regulation and molecular action of the Xist non-coding RNA that triggers XCI. Edith and her laboratory have been recognised by many prizes, most recently the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Award and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society, an EMBO Member, and a Foreign Associate member of the National Academy of Sciences (US), an International Member of the National Academy of Medicine (US), a Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, a Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy in Denmark, an Elected Member of Académie des Sciences, Institut de France, and she has an Honorary Degree Doctor of Science Honoris causa at the University of Cambridge, an Honorary Professor Degree at the University of Heidelberg and an Honorary Doctor Degree at the University of Uppsala.
Edith has participated in numerous scientific boards and is currently a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Crick Institute (London, UK), Institute Curie (Paris, France), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (USA), and the WHO Science Council.

Beate Heinemann received her PhD at the H1 experiment at DESY's HERA accelerator and worked, among others, at the CDF experiment at Fermilab and ATLAS at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, employed initially at the University of Liverpool (UK) and later at the University of California, Berkeley (USA). In 2017, she became a leading scientist at DESY and a professor of experimental particle physics at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg. Beate Heinemann has been Director of Particle Physics since February 2022.

Prof. Heuer is an experimental particle physicist and most of his scientific work has been related to the study of electron-positron reactions, development of experimental techniques, as well as construction and running of large detector systems. He was research scientist at the University of Heidelberg and then 15 years staff member at CERN. In 1998, he was appointed to a chair at the University of Hamburg and in December 2004, he became research director for particle and astroparticle physics at the DESY laboratory. Prof. Heuer has been CERN Director-General from January 2009 to December 2015. His mandate is characterised by the start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 2009 as well as its energy increase 2015, the discovery of the H-Boson and the geographical enlargement of CERN Membership. From April 2016 to April 2018, he was President of the German Physical Society. He is President of the Council of SESAME (Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) and was the Chair of the European Commission’s Group of Chief Scientific Advisors until November 2020.

Initially engaged in plasma physics at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics (Garching), his later focus switched to inertial fusion using large particle accelerators. He was coordinator of a European Study on "Heavy Ion Driven Inertial Fusion (HIDIF)" (1994-98) with GSI, CERN and others, chair of the EURATOM "Inertial Fusion Keep-in-touch Group" (2008-13) and chair of the Beam Dynamics Panel of the "International Committee of Future Accelerators" (2019-21).
Hofmann has been part of the first "IFE generation" in Germany. A few years after a PHD in magnetic fusion plasma physics in the IPP/Garching, started HIF-work at LBL Berkeley. He switched to GSI in 1983 to help build up capacity in this emerging field. GSI phased out of it for various reasons around 2000, when another "big science project" - the FAIR project got initiated at GSI. Hofmann retired in 2008, but continued part-time until 2021, initially in applying laser proton acceleration to therapy, then continuing in high intensity beam dynamics in big accelerators. As an accelerator physicist his ground of activity has always remained beam dynamics in "big science" devices, from the Oakridge SNS and European ESS to similar projects in China and Japan, where he had opportunities to contribute as a visitor

Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu is Assistant Director-General at the Health Emergencies Programme of the World Health Organization.
Prior to this, Dr Ihekweazu was the first Director General of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) and led the agency between July 2016 and October 2021, where he built up this national public health agency from a small unit to a leading public health agency in Africa, working closely with the Africa Centres for Disease Control. He acted as Interim Director of the West Africa Regional Centre for Surveillance and Disease Control through 2017.
Dr Ihekweazu trained as an infectious disease epidemiologist and has worked in leadership positions in several national public health agencies, including NCDC, the South African National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), the UK's Health Protection Agency (HPA), and Germany’s Robert Koch Institute (RKI). Dr Ihekweazu led several short-term engagements for WHO, mainly to build surveillance systems and in response to major infectious disease outbreaks around the world. He was part of the first WHO COVID-19 international mission to China, in February 2020.
Dr Ihekweazu is a graduate of the College of Medicine, University of Nigeria and has a Master in Public Health (MPH) from the Heinrich-Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship for the European Programme for Intervention Epidemiology Training (EPIET) and subsequently completed his Public Health specialisation in the UK (FFPH). He has over 150 publications in medical peer review journals mostly focused on the epidemiology of infectious diseases.
He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc) awarded by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK, the National Productivity Order of Merit (NPOM) of the Order of the Niger (OON) awarded by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, for his service to Nigeria.

Eric D. Isaacs is a condensed matter physicist and the 11th president of the Carnegie Institution for Science, a private, nonprofit research organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. As president of Carnegie Science, Dr. Isaacs leads the Institution’s investigators in forefront research in plant biology, developmental biology, Earth and planetary sciences, astronomy, and global ecology.
Dr. Isaacs came to Carnegie from the University of Chicago, where he served as the Robert A. Millikan Distinguished Service Professor in Physics and Executive Vice President for Research, Innovation and National Laboratories. In that role, he provided direct oversight of Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. He also led the University’s founding-partner relationship with the Giant Magellan Telescope project. He previously served as ssProvost of the University of Chicago.
Dr. Isaacs spent five years as Director of Argonne, one of the nation's largest science and engineering research centers. As Argonne’s Director, Dr. Isaacs earned a reputation as a nationally recognized institutional strategist and advocate for scientific research and its importance in driving the U.S. economy. He joined the University and Argonne in 2003 as the founding director of the Center for Nanoscale Materials, where researchers study and create materials at the atomic and molecular scales.
He began his career as a postdoctoral fellow at Bell Laboratories, where he went on to serve as director of the semiconductor physics research and materials physics research departments.
Dr. Isaacs holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree from Beloit College. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the National Academy of Inventors. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 scholarly publications.

Katherine Jungjohann is a group manager at NREL. She joined NREL in 2021, after starting her career within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nanoscale Science Research Centers, including the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies and the Center for Functional Nanomaterials. Her research began with liquid-cell scanning/transmission electron microscopy (S/TEM) of nanoparticle synthesis and catalytic nanoparticles. During her tenure at Sandia National Laboratories, she worked heavily on lithium metal anode characterization using in situ electrochemical S/TEM and cryogenic electron microscopy methods. In addition, she led the development of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) device fabrication to advance in situ S/TEM capabilities, which resulted in a patent. Jungjohann has supported research on an array of user projects that required in situ S/TEM (electrical biasing, electrochemistry, heating, heating in liquids, and cryogenic, straining, and environmental TEM). She now supports her group’s role in providing advanced analytical microscopy and imaging characterization to NREL and NREL’s collaborators.

Dr. Rebecca Spyke Keiser is the Chief of Research Security Strategy and Policy (CRSSP) at the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Keiser is the first CRSSP, a position established in March 2020 to ensure the security of federally funded research while maintaining open international collaboration. In this role, Keiser provides the NSF director with policy advice on all aspects of research security strategy. She also leads NSF’s efforts to develop and implement efforts to improve research security and the agency’s coordination with other federal agencies and the White House.
Until March 2020, Keiser was the head of the Office of International Science & Engineering (OISE) at NSF. Keiser had served as head of OISE since coming to NSF in 2015. The office promotes an integrated, international strategy and manages internally focused programs that are innovative, catalytic and responsive to a broad range of NSF and national interests.
Prior to NSF, she was a special advisor to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator and an executive-in-residence at American University. She held several positions with NASA, including associate deputy administrator for strategy and policy, associate deputy administrator for policy integration, and executive officer to the deputy administrator.
Keiser also served as assistant to the director for international relations at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, where she provided policy guidance to the president's science advisor. Her experience covers science and technology policy, agreements and other cooperative efforts. She is a board member of Women in Aerospace and a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science. She has a bachelor's degree in Japanese studies from Wellesley College; a master's degree in politics of the world economy from the London School of Economics; and a doctorate in international studies from the University of South Carolina. She speaks Japanese and Spanish.

Young-Kee Kim, an experimental particle physicist, is the Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor of Physics and chair of the department of physics at the University of Chicago.
Young-Kee Kim is currently the APS president-elect. She served as APS vice president in 2022.
She has devoted much of her research work to understanding the origin of mass for fundamental particles by studying the two most massive particles (the W boson and the top quark) and the Higgs particle that gives mass to elementary particles. Between 2004 and 2006, she was the co-spokesperson (scientific leader) of the CDF experiment at Fermilab’s Tevatron, a collaboration with more than 600 physicists from around the world. Between 2006 and 2013, she was deputy director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). She is currently working on the ATLAS experiment at the LHC at CERN. She devotes some of her time on accelerator physics and in educating the next generation of accelerator physicists. She has served on numerous national and international advisory committees, councils and boards.
Kim was born in South Korea and earned her B.S. and M.S. in physics from Korea University, in 1984 and 1986, respectively, and her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Rochester in 1990. Her postdoctoral research was done at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She was an assistant, associate and full professor of physics at University of California, Berkeley. In 2003, she moved to the University of Chicago.
She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Sloan Foundation. She received the Ho-Am Prize, the Women in Science Leadership Award from the Chicago Council of Science and Technology, South Korea’s Science and Education Service Medal, the University of Rochester’s Distinguished Scholar Medal and Korea University’s Alumni Award.

Prof. Lise Korsten is currently the Co-Director within the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), National Research Foundation (NRF) Centre of Excellence Food Security in Pretoria, South Africa. She is responsible for the food safety research program within the Centre. Prof. Korsten has focused her research mainly on complementary fields of postharvest pathology, plant health and food safety as related to fresh produce, market access and international trade. Prof. Korsten has addressed the South African Parliament on the development of a national food safety authority and has developed a national food control framework and country profile to enhance regulation and control.
She has trained 87 MSc and PhD and 60 BSc Hons postgraduate students and has published more than 200 peer reviewed papers, chapters or books and 150 popular papers. She currently has an H-Index of 50 and i10-index of 154 and has been cited 10387 times and counts within the top 2% of scientists in the specified subject field among the scientists in the AD Scientific Index in the World (https://bit.ly/3iwFsio). In recognition of some of her work she has received the Water Research Commission: Winner of the Human Capital Development Award in the Water and Science Sector and the MT Steyn prize from the South African Academy of Science. She is an elected Fellow of the South African Society for Plant Pathology and of the Academy of Science of South Africa. She is also involved in the InterAcademy Partnership (IAP) in several sub committees i.e., Capacity Building, Education and Outreach. Prof. Korsten is also a senior editor for the Springer journal Crop Protection, an associate editor for CABI Agriculture and Bioscience, Frontiers Horticulture and Nature Africa.
She chairs the International Society for Plant Pathology Task Force on Global Food Security. Prof. Korsten was previously the Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence (ARISE). She is currently the newly elected President of the African Academy of Science. Her vision is to transform the Academy to a more inclusive, representative, gender balanced, globally recognised leading academy and champion for sciences and excellence on the continent.

Professor Dr. Oliver Kraft was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1964. He studied materials science and graduated in this discipline at the University of Stuttgart. He was a guest scientist at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of Stanford University, USA, and worked as a group leader in the field of “Mechanisms of Deformation in Thin Metal Layers and Small Volumes” at the Max Planck Institute of Metallurgy in Stuttgart.

Since 2002 he has been Professor and Head of the current Institute of Applied Materials of the KIT. Kraft is the scientific co-author of more than 200 articles; between 2006 and 2011, he was the spokesman of a collaborative research center. Between 2006 and 2009, he was Chairman and Deputy Chairman, respectively, of the Scientific-technical Council of the former Karlsruhe Research Center. In 2011, Kraft was granted the Professorship for Nanostructured Functional Materials funded by the Bosch Group. From 2012 to 2015, he was one of the spokespersons of the Helmholtz Programme Science and Technology of Nanosystems (STN).

On January 01, 2016, Oliver Kraft started activity as Vice-President Research. His second term of office started on January 01, 2022 and will end on December 31, 2027.

Dr. Harriet Kung is the Acting Director of the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy. She also serves as the Deputy Director for Science Programs and is the senior career official providing scientific and management direction and oversight for the SC research programs, including Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Basic Energy Sciences, Biological and Environmental Research, Fusion Energy Sciences, High Energy Physics, and Nuclear Physics, as well as other supporting functions and offices. Dr. Kung served in various leadership roles in Basic Energy Sciences, the largest program in the Office of Science, from 2002 - 2020. Before joining DOE in 2002, Dr. Kung was a technical staff member and a project leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Her research focused primarily on nanoscale materials and high temperature superconductivity.
With over 20 years of service in the Department of Energy, Dr. Kung led and cultivated one of the Nation’s premier physical sciences programs. During her tenure, she developed a new basic research paradigm in team-science approach to advance DOE’s science and energy missions by spearheading a decade-long strategic planning initiative to assure timely, science-based solutions. She also positioned the Office of Science as a National Quantum Initiative leader by establishing strategies to capitalize on strong synergy between disciplines such as physics, biology, materials, and engineering, as well as the world-leading scientific user facilities. She has chaired and co-chaired high-level interagency working groups to develop and implement national science priorities.
Dr. Kung received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Presidential Meritorious Executive Rank Award in 2009 and the Distinguished Executive Rank Award in 2022.

Thomas (Thom) Mason is the President and CEO of Triad National Security, LLC (Triad) and serves as the Director of Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Most recently he was the Senior Vice President for Global Laboratory Operations at Battelle where he had responsibility for governance and strategy across the six National Laboratories that Battelle manages or co-manages.
Prior to joining Battelle, Thom worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) for 19 years, including 10 years as the Laboratory Director. Under his leadership, ORNL saw significant growth in programs, new facilities, and hiring while achieving record low safety incident rates.
Before becoming Laboratory Director, he was Associate Laboratory Director (ALD) for Neutron Sciences, ALD for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), and Director of the Experimental Facilities Division.
During his time in Oak Ridge, Thom was active in the community serving as Chair of the Oak Ridge Public Schools Education Foundation as well as Innovation Valley, the Knoxville-Oak Ridge area regional economic development organization.
He moved to ORNL from the University of Toronto where he was a faculty member in the Department of Physics and previously worked as a Senior Scientist at Risø National Laboratory and a Postdoc at AT&T Bell Laboratories.
For the past 30 years, he has been involved in the design and construction of scientific instrumentation and facilities and the application of nuclear, computing, and materials sciences to solve important challenges in energy and national security.
Thom has a Ph.D. in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics from McMaster University and a BSc in Physics from Dalhousie University.

Dame Julie Maxton is the Executive Director of the Royal Society, the first woman in 350 years to hold the post. Before taking up her position at the Royal Society in 2011 Julie was Registrar at the University of Oxford, the first woman in 550 years in the role.
She is an Honorary Fellow of University College Oxford, a Bencher of the Middle Temple and a Freeman of the Goldsmith’s Company. She is Chair of the Ada Lovelace Institute and of the Kalisher Trust. In the past she has also been on the Boards of the Alan Turing Institute, Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford, Haberdasher Aske’s School (Elstree), Engineering UK, Charities Aid Foundation, The Faraday Institute and Sense about Science.
Originally trained as a barrister at the Middle Temple, Julie combined a career as a practising lawyer with that of an academic, holding a number of senior academic positions, including those of Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Academic and other recognition Julie has received include a CBE (2017), a DBE (2023), and Honorary Degrees from the Universities of Huddersfield, Warwick, Canterbury, Hull, Bristol and Brunel. She is the author of numerous articles concerned with trusts, equity, commercial and property law.

Alberto Di Meglio is Head of Innovation in the IT Department at CERN, Coordinator of the CERN Next Generation Triggers project, former Coordinator of the CERN Quantum Technology Initiative, and former Head of CERN openlab. Alberto is an Aerospace Engineer (MEng) and Electronic Engineer (PhD). He joined CERN in 1998 and took part since its early stages in the development of the worldwide High-Energy Physics computing infrastructure. Alberto has designed and led the CERN Quantum Technology Initiative from 2021 to 2023, a programme to define and implement collaborative R&D projects between CERN, academia, and industry on quantum computing and technologies for fundamental research applications.

At the Annual Membership Meeting of AmCham Germany on June 25, 2021, Simone Menne was elected as President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany e.V. (AmCham Germany). She was re-elected for another two-year term in early July 2023.
Simone Menne started her career for ITT Inc. and joined Deutsche Lufthansa in 1989. At Lufthansa, she held several positions and was appointed as CFO in 2012 and stayed in this position until 2015. She also worked as CFO at Boehringer Ingelheim from 2016 to 2017. At both companies, she was responsible for the foundation of the digital lab. Additionally, Ms. Menne serves as non-executive board member for Henkel, Johnson Controls International, Russell Reynolds, and Siemens Energy. She also owns an art gallery in Kiel, Germany.

Lia Merminga began her tenure as director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in April 2022. She holds overall accountability for the performance of the laboratory and fulfillment of the expectations set by the DOE and sets the overall scientific strategy for Fermilab. She represents the laboratory to external communities, and is the chief spokesperson as well as an “ambassador” for U.S. particle physics to other countries. Merminga has held major scientific leadership roles at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California; TRIUMF in Vancouver, Canada; and the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia. Merminga earned a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Athens, in Greece, master's degrees in physics and mathematics and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. She is an internationally renowned accelerator physicist, a Fermilab Distinguished Scientist, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and a graduate of the Department of Energy's Oppenheimer Energy Science Leadership Program. She has served on numerous international scientific committees and was one of the authors of the 2014 Particle Physics Project Prioritization Project (P5) plan.

Jürgen Mlynek studied physics in Germany and France before he moved into research management. Main fields at research are experimental quantum optics, atomic physics, surface physics. He served as Vice-President of the German Research Foundation and later as President of the Humboldt-Universität in Berlin. From 2005 until 2015, he has been President of the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, the largest association of research centres in Germany. For his own research, Mlynek was awarded the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.
Among his offices are Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Falling Walls Foundation, Chairman of the Foundation Board at the "Haus der kleinen Forscher", Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Foundation Brandenburger Tor, board member of the Wilhelm und Else Heraeus Foundation, as well as member of various university and science committees. Furthermore, he is a board member of the Holtzbrinck publishing group, of the company Carl Zeiss and WISTA-Management GmbH.
In 2019 Jürgen Mlynek has been appointed as chair of the Strategic Advisory Board (SAB) for the Quantum Technology FET Flagship. The Strategic Advisory Board for the Quantum Technology Flagship has been set by the European Commission to provide advice for strategic decision-making to the Quantum Technology FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) Flagship, with a long-term impact across the whole initiative.

Michael H. Moloney is the ninth CEO of AIP. Since joining AIP in early 2018, Moloney has been leading a strategic transformation effort for the Institute in preparation for its centennial anniversary in 2031. At the core of the transformation is AIP’s commitment to supporting its Member Societies to broaden their impact and achieve results beyond their individual missions and mandates, and to advancing the physical sciences at large through independent research in social science, policy and history.
Prior to joining AIP, Moloney was the director for space and aeronautics at the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. For more than 15 years at the Academies, he was study director or senior staff on about 100 reports on space science, engineering and technology, aeronautics, materials science and engineering, and physics and astronomy.
Previously, Moloney was a foreign service officer for the Irish government for seven years. An experimental physicist by training, Moloney holds a doctorate from Trinity College Dublin, in Ireland. His undergraduate degree in experimental physics is from University College Dublin—where, on graduation, he was awarded the Nevin Medal for Physics.
Moloney is a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a fellow of the American Physical Society and a fellow of the London-based Institute of Physics. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the organization that manages the International Space Station (ISS) US National Laboratory. He also sits on the Science, Technology Assessment and Analytics (STAA) Inaugural Polaris Council at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Moloney is a recipient of a distinguished service award from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

Paweł Rowiński is a professor in Earth sciences at the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences. His research interests include mathematical methods in geophysics, environmental hydrodynamics and experimental studies of hydrological processes. He is Editor in Chief of Springer book series GeoPlanet and he serves as Associate Editor for several prominent scientific journals and publications. He is the Chair of the Europe Division Leadership Team of the International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research IAHR. Earlier he served as its Vice Chair. Since June 2024, he assumes the role of President of the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) and he is a board member of SAPEA - Science Advice for Policy by European Academies. He served as Vice-President of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2015-2022). Starting from the 1st of September of 2023 he is the director of the Institute of Geophysics, PAS; he also served as its director from 2008 to 2015.

John Sarrao became SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s sixth director in October 2023. The lab’s ~2,000 staff advance the frontiers of science by exploring how the universe works at the biggest, smallest, and fastest scales and invent powerful tools used by scientists around the globe. SLAC’s research helps solve real-world problems and advances the interests of the nation. SLAC is operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. It is home to three Office of Science national user facilities: the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world’s most powerful X-ray laser; the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL); and the Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests, (FACET-II). SLAC hosts thousands of users each year and manages an annual budget of ~$700M. In addition to his role as lab director, John is a professor of photon science at Stanford University, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Precourt Institute, and dean of SLAC faculty.
John came to SLAC from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, where he served as the deputy director for science, technology, and engineering. In that role, he led multiple directorates, including chemistry, earth and life sciences, global security, physical sciences, and simulation and computation. He also stewarded technology transitions and served as LANL’s chief research officer in support of its national security mission. Before becoming deputy director, he served as associate director for theory, simulation, and computation and division leader for materials physics and applications at LANL.
John’s scientific research focus is superconductivity in materials. He studies the synthesis and characterization of correlated electron systems, especially actinide materials. He won the 2013 Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and LANL. John received his PhD and master’s degree in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a bachelor’s degree in physics from Stanford University.

Prof. Dr. Dr. hc. mult. Sebastian M. Schmidt, born in 1967, grew up in Greifswald and started his scientific career at the University of Rostock and at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna. He completed his doctorate in theoretical physics in Rostock in 1995. After a scholarship at Tel Aviv University and as a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at Argonne National Laboratory (USA), he took over the leadership of an Emmy Noether junior research group sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG), at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in 2000. In 2001, he completed his habilitation at the Universities of Tübingen and Rostock. From 2002 to 2006, Sebastian M. Schmidt was first a staff member, then managing director of the Helmholtz Association's office in Berlin. From 2007 to 2020, he served as a member of the Board of Directors at the Forschungszentrum Jülich for the areas of matter and information. Since 2012 he holds a professorship for physics at RWTH Aachen University. As of October 2023 Sebastian M. Schmidt was elected to the National Academy of Science and Engineering - acatech.
Prof. Sebastian M. Schmidt has been Scientific Director at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf since April 1, 2020.

Joe Simmonds-Issler is the Chief of Staff, and Executive Director for the Governance, Strategy and Portfolio division, at CEPI.
Joe joined CEPI in 2017 as Chief of Staff and has played a key role in the evolution of CEPI as it has grown from 20 to more than 280 members of staff. Joe acted as incident response lead for CEPI during the 2019 Ebola outbreak in DRC and played a major role in CEPI’s response to COVID-19. This included supporting CEPI’s early fundraising and designing rapid governance processes. He was instrumental to the development and running of COVAX.
In 2021, Joe also took on leading the strategy, portfolio management, CEO office, and governance teams. Joe oversees central strategic functions that help drive progress and direction towards CEPI’s mission, analysis and learning, and effective decision-making. Joe acts as strategic lead on governance.
In 2023, Joe secured funding from the Government of Canada to enable CEPI to define its role in the biosecurity space as a core part of CEPI’s strategy. Biosecurity is also a critical part of the 100 Day Mission, which aims to respond to the next Disease X threat in with a new vaccine in just three months.
Before CEPI Joe worked at Wellcome working on governance and on the development of a new strategy, completed an Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Fellowship (Johns Hopkins University), and studied War Studies and History at Kings College London (UK).

Matthias H. Tschöp is the CEO and Spokesperson for the Management at Helmholtz Munich since 2018 and ‘Alexander von Humboldt’ Professor at the Technical University of Munich since 2012. His vision is to position the region Munich as a world leading hub for biomedical research in order to efficiently find new solutions to the health challenges facing our rapidly changing world. He is realizing this by advancing excellence in basic biomedical research and accelerates its translation into personalized prevention and new precision therapies.
Matthias Tschöp (*1967), the physician, scientist and science manager, has made pioneering discoveries in the diabetes and obesity research fields. His achievements include the discovery of the hunger hormone ghrelin as well as the discovery of gut hormone polyagonists, a group of active agents that can significantly improve weight reduction in obesity as well as blood sugar control in type 2 diabetes. The drug Tirzepatide (Mounjaro), produced by Lilly, was the first polyagonist, which was approved for use back in May 2022 (previously in the USA) and another 10 polyagonists are on their way to approval in clinical trials.
Born in Munich and a family man, he knows the different perspectives between medicine and research from his own experience: After obtaining his license to practice medicine from the Ludwig Maximilian University Hospital, he moved to the United States to work in diabetes research for a pharmaceutical company, co-founded a start-up and headed a research institute at the University of Cincinnati as a professor and research director before returning to Germany after more than ten years abroad. He turned the Helmholtz Diabetes Center into a world-leading research institution as its founding director and launched the Helmholtz Pioneer Campus before he joined the executive board.

Since 2015, Otmar D. Wiestler is President of the Helmholtz Association, the largest association of research centers in Germany. A neuropathologist by profession, Professor Wiestler worked at the UC San Diego and the University Hospital Zurich in the 1980s and 90s. From 1992 to 2003, he served as chair of the Department of Neuropathology at the University of Bonn, where he also was the head of the German Brain Tumor Reference Center and Medical Director of the biomedical company Life & Brain. From 2004 to 2015, Professor Wiestler headed the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg as Chairman and Scientific Director.

Anatoly ZAGORODNY (born January 29, 1951) is a Ukrainian theoretical physicist in the field of statistical theory of plasma and plasma-molecular systems, dusty plasma physics and condensed matter physics. Corresponding Member of the European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Humanities (2004); Full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2006); Corresponding member abroad of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2012). IIASA Honorary Scholar (2020); Honorary Doctor of many Ukrainian and foreign universities (Dr.h.c.mult.). State Prize of Ukraine on Science and Technology (2005). Honored Leader of Science and Technology of Ukraine (2012).
Graduated from Kharkiv State University (1972); Ph.D in theoretical physics from the Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics (1978); Dr. Habil. in plasma physics (1990); Professor of Theoretical Physics (1998).
Since 1978, on research positions at the Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics. Professor of Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (1991-2021). Professor of the National University “Kyiv-Mohyla Academy” (1992-2005). Director of the Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics (2002-2024). Chief Scientific Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2009-2011). Vice President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2011-2020). President of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (2020-present).
Editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian Journal of Physics; Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Karazin Kharkiv National University. Chairman of the Committee for the Paton National Prize of Ukraine (since 2021).
Author and co-author of seven books and more than 200 research papers on the theory of plasma, statistical physics and kinetics.