Mr. Liu is a Professor and Executive Director General at the Institute of Crop Sciences of CAAS.  He is now the Chief Scientist of the China Wheat Research System, Chief Scientist of the National Aerospace Breeding Program and Chief of the National Outstanding Talents and Innovation Team of Agricultural Research.
Mr. Liu has a long track record of research on methodology of induced mutations and biotechnology for crop improvement. He has also been involved with the IAEA RCA Program on plant breeding since 2002 and served as an IAEA expert on numerous occasions.
He is the Winner of the Outstanding Achievement Award in Plant Mutation Breeding by the FAO and IAEA in September 2021.

Mr. Manu serves as the CEO at the Ministry of Agriculture Food and Forests of Tonga since 2016.
Mr Manu’s career in the public service began in 1982 at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forests. At the Ministry, he served in various positions including Senior Soil Chemist (1991), Principal Soil Scientist (1994), Chief Plant Pathologist (2001) where he continued to serve prior to his appointment as the CEO.
Mr. Manu holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Soil Science (2001) from the University of New England, Australia. He holds a Master of Science (second class Honours) in Analytical Chemistry (1989) from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and has also attained a Bachelor of Science majoring in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry (1982) from Massey University, New Zealand.

Mr. Alberto Nussenzveig is a Professor of Physics at Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP), working on mostly experimental quantum optics and quantum information science. He earned a PhD from Ecole Normale Superieure / Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, in Paris. He is an Optica Fellow and received a special mention in the Nature Awards for Scientific Mentoring, in 2021. Currently, Paulo is Provost for Research and Innovation at USP.

Mr. Patrick Okori is currently the Executive Secretary of RUFORUM - a network of 163 Universities in 40 countries of Africa.
Patrick was until 2022 a Principal Scientist with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT) crop improvement and was the Deputy Director of ICRISAT's Global Research Programme on Accelerated Crop Improvement. As a science leader, Patrick established one of the largest multi-disciplinary research programmes at Makerere University.
Mr. Okori has a doctoral degree from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala in 2004. He received BSc Agriculture and MSc Crop Science degrees from Makerere University in Uganda in 1994 and 1997 respectively.

Ms. Esteban Rodrigo is the Director of the Spanish National Institute for Agricultural and Food Research and Technology (CN, INIA, CSIC) since 2019.
She is Member of the Board of Trustees of the Partnership for Research and Innovation in the Mediterranean Area (PRIMA), member of the Directive Council of FONTAGRO, National Representative for SCAR at the EU, Chair of the Global Research Alliance (GRA) during the 2023 Spanish Presidency, National Contact Point for G20 MACS (Meeting of Agricultural Chief Scientists of G20 States).
She is Agricultural Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and PhD at the University of Córdoba (SP) in 1998. 

Ms. Torstensen is the CEO and Managing Director of Nofima – a leading food research institute from Norway.  
For 16 years, she worked at the Nutrition and Seafood Researchers (NIFES), and prior to that at MOWI – Norway’s largest salmon farming company.  Ms. Torstensen is a member of the board of directors of EAS (European Aquaculture Society; board member 2018-2026, President 2022-2024), NCE Seafood Innovation Cluster (board member 2022-2024) and board member in the HAV (Ocean) portfolio board of the Research Council of Norway until 31.12.2023. 
She holds a Cand Scient (1996) and Dr scient (2000) in Nutrition biology from the University of Bergen and NIFES.