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.

David Awschalom is the Liew Family Professor and Vice Dean of the Pritzker School for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, a Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, and Director of the Chicago Quantum Exchange. He is also the inaugural director of Q-NEXT, one of the US Department of Energy Quantum Information Science Research Centers. Before arriving in Chicago, he was the Director of the California NanoSystems Institute and Professor of Physics, Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California – Santa Barbara. He served as a Research Staff and Manager at the IBM Watson Research Center. He works in spintronics and quantum engineering, studying the properties of individual electrons, nuclei, and photons in semiconductors and molecules for quantum information processing. Awschalom received the APS Oliver Buckley Prize and Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize, the EPS Europhysics Prize, the MRS David Turnbull Award and Outstanding Investigator Prize, the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the International Magnetism Prize from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, and an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and the European Academy of Sciences. Dr. Awschalom recently received a US Secretary of Energy Achievement Award.

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.

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.

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.

Gerald Haug is a climatologist, geologist and paleo-oceanographer. Since March 2020, he is president of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Gerald Haug studied Geology at the University of Karlsruhe and received his PhD from the University of Kiel. After pursuing his postdoctoral research at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, he became a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and habilitated there. Haug then moved to the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) in Potsdam and was appointed professor at the University of Potsdam. In 2007, he became full professor at ETHZ and in 2015 Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz.
He studies the evolution of climate over the last millennia to millions of years and examines sediment cores that are bored out of the bottom of oceans and lakes. Thus, Gerald Haug reconstructed historical climatic conditions and their changes. He also explores the interactions between climate and cultures. From studies of sediment cores off the coast of Venezuela, he succeeded in providing historical periods of drought which correlated with the decline of Maya civilization.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. He is a member of boards of the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA) as well as 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.

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.