Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan is an Indian geneticist and international administrator, renowned for his leading role in India's Green Revolution a program under which high-yield varieties of wheat and rice seedlings were planted in the fields of poor farmers. He is known as "Indian Father of Green Revolution" for his leadership and success in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat in India. He is the founder and chairman of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation. His stated vision is to rid the world of hunger and poverty. He is an advocate of moving India to sustainable development, especially using environmentally sustainable agriculture, sustainable food security and the preservation of biodiversity, which he calls an "evergreen revolution". From 1972 to 1979 he was director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. He was Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture from 1979 to 1980. He served as Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (1982-88) and became president of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1988.

Ilan Chet is recognized as a pioneer in the field of biological control of plant pathogens which cause major crop losse and received he received the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 1998. He has published more than 380 articles in international scientific journals, edited five books in his field, and holds 38 patents He has also been awarded with Rothschild Prize in Agriculture (1990), Max-Planck Award for Distinguished Research (1991), Japanese Arima Prize for Applied Microbiology (1996), Israel Prize in agriculture (1996), Solomon Bublick Award of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2001). He served as the Founding Director of the Otto Warburg Minerva Center for Agricultural Biotechnology (1983 - 1986), as Dean of Hebrew University's Faculty of Agriculture in Rehovot (1986 - 1989) and as Vice President for Research and Development of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1991 - 2001). In the years 2001-2006 he served as the President of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and was nominated Institute Professor at the Weizmann Institute in 2005. After he finished his term he returned to the Hebrew University as a professor. He was a visiting professor at Harvard, Colorado State, Cornell, and Rutgers Universities in the United States and at the University of Goettingen and Lund University in Europe. Chet also served as senior scientist at DuPont, Delaware, USA and as a member of the scientific advisory committees of both the European Union and NATO. He was appointed Deputy Secretary General for Higher Education and Research in the Secretariat of the Union for the Mediterranean (2010).

Spiros Paramithiotis graduated from the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition of the Agricultural University of Athens, Greece, in 1996. In 1998 he received a scholarship for post-graduate studies from the State Scholarship Foundation of Greece and in 2002 he received the PhD degree in Food Microbiology from the Agricultural University of Athens. In 2003, he joined the Agricultural University of Athens, Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Laboratory of Food Quality Control and Hygiene as a member of the scientific personnel where he works until today. His research interests lie mainly in the field of food fermentations, with particular emphasis on microbial taxonomy, metabolism, physiology, symbiotic patterns and the underlying molecular mechanisms. He has participated in several research projects funded by the EU, the Greek Secretariat of Research and Technology as well as food industries. He has co-authored 40 publications in peer-reviewed journals, 22 book chapters, over 80 publications in national and international conference proceedings and has received more than 700 citations.

Dr. Purnendu Vasavada is a Professor Emeritus of Food Science, University of Wisconsin - River Falls and Principal and managing member of the PCV & Associates, LLC. He is recognized internationally for his teaching, applied research, innovative training programs and active consultations in Food Science and Technology, especially, Food Safety and Microbiology and Rapid methods and Automation in Food Microbiology. Since his retirement from the University of Wisconsin - River Falls, He a 2 year assignment as the FDA-ORISE Fellow and is involved in the Food Safety Preventive Controls Alliance (FSPCA) - a broad-based public-private alliance consisting of key industry, academia and government stakeholders designed to help food industry comply with the Preventive Controls regulations for implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

He provides customized educational seminars, workshops and presentations on Food Safety Trends and Issues, Food Microbiology, Emerging Pathogens, HACCP and Prerequisite programs, Environmental Monitoring, Rapid Methods in Food Microbiology, Milk and Dairy Products Quality and Safety, Food Protection and Defense, and other contemporary food industry topics for a wide variety of audiences, including consumers and educators. He also provides consulting and assistance to the food industry in planning, development and management of special projects involving food safety and microbiology, food quality assurance. He is the author or co-author of over 100 publications including peer reviewed papers technical abstracts and book chapters and is the co-editor of the book, Beverage Technology (2003).

Ashok Kumar Patra is a Director, ICAR-Indian Institute of Soil Science, Bhopal, India since 2014. He did his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Soil Science & Agricultural Chemistry from ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. As a Scientist, earlier he had served ICAR-Indian Grassland & Fodder Research Institute, Jhansi; ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai and ICAR-IARI, New Delhi. He has made outstanding contribution on various aspects of nitrogen cycling, its ecology and biodiversity in different agro-ecosystems. He has contributed more than 200 publications and served as editorial advisor for several international journals. He is currently Associate Editor of the European Journal of Soil Science. He is a recipient of several national/international awards/recognitions. He was a Vice President, Indian Society of Soil Science (2016 & 2017) and President of Agriculture & Forestry Sciences Section of the Indian Science Congress Association (2016-2017). He is a Fellow of Indian Society of Soil Science, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and Range Management Society of India. On the World Soil Day 2017, the Food Tank USA recognized Dr. Ashok Kumar Patra as one of the 13 soil scientists from around the globe for his rich contribution to soil research and education for food security.

Genhua Niu is an Associate Professor of Environmental Horticulture at the Texas AgriLife Research Center at El Paso and Department of Horticultural Sciences. Her areas of special expertise are in environmental stress physiology, plant production in controlled environment, and photoautotrohic micropropagation. Her current research areas include identifying drought and salt tolerant low water use plant materials for urban landscape, quantifying growth and physiological responses of crops to drought and salt stresses, and determining the minimum water requirement for urban landscape plants (trees, shrubs, and ground covers) for maintaining a healthy landscape while conserving water. In addition, she is evaluating the salt and drought tolerance of a range of bioenergy crops for semi-arid regions. She received a Ph.D. in Horticulture from Chiba University, Japan.
Prior to joining Texas AgriLife Research, she worked at Michigan State University on ornamental crop production under controlled environment, the USDA-ARS Alternate Crops and Systems Lab on modeling water stress and elevated carbon dioxide concentration effects on corn plant growth and development, and a private company on micropropagation and nursery crop production in South Carolina.

Keith Virgo has extensive background of rural development and land use planning techniques for irrigation, agriculture, tree crops, soil conservation, salinity control and drainage, with emphasis on community-based, gender-sensitive programs. He is expertise in project co-ordination, management and operation of multi-discipline teams, including administration, technical and participatory planning, monitoring, impact evaluation and review; institutional development and liaison with funding agencies, government organizations and NGOs. Skilled in report writing and editing, process documenting, newsletters and publicity materials and provision of relevant training. He has over 15 years experience in senior management posts on rural development/livelihoods programs, including acting as Local Development Consultant and UK Coordinator on the Koshi Hills Development Program, Nepal (DFID 1987-93), TA Team Leader on the Doon Valley Watershed Management, India (EC 1992-01) & Consultancy Team Leader on the W India Rainfed Farming Project (DFID 1999-2006). He worked on agricultural planning, project identification, feasibility studies (Project Preparation Unit, GARPAD, Egypt 1984), Review Missions (EC Egypt 1999 & 2004; EC India 2002); Project Formulation (IFAD, India 2002) and Preparation (ADB, Afghanistan, 2005); Project Completion Reporting (ADB, Sri Lanka, 2006). He worked on irrigation development, small-scale farming and settlement projects in N Africa, S Africa, Middle East and Thailand.

Mario Javier Miranda research focuses on computational modeling of stochastic and dynamic economic systems with applications to agricultural risk management, catastrophic insurance and reinsurance, agricultural and environmental policy, and microfinance and insurance in developing countries. Research has produced one book, more than 40 peer-reviewed articles, and several major computational modeling and risk management software packages. He has also won numerous university research and teaching awards. Miranda currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Society for Computational Economics, and is an associate editor of both the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, and the Journal of Computational Economics. Miranda has been consultant to the World Bank, numerous private corporations, and several USDA branches, including the Office of the Chief Economist, the Economic Research Service, Risk Management Agency, and the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation. He joined the department in 1988. He is an expertise on Computational Economics, Agricultural Finance and Risk Management, Catastrophic Insurance and Reinsurance, Agricultural and Environmental Policy, Microfinance, Microsavings and Microinsurance in Developing Countries.

Manish Roorkiwal is Scientist - Genomics and Molecular Breeding, at ICRISAT, based in Hyderabad, India. With a basic background in molecular genetics and applied genomics, Manish obtained his PhD in Biotechnology from GGSIP University, Delhi. He has over 10 years of research experience. At the core of his work is the improvement of crop productivity of legumes in marginal environments in Africa and Asia using modern genetics and breeding approaches, including genomic selection and GWAS. After joining ICRISAT, he has been working in the area of genomics and molecular breeding with special emphasis on next generation sequencing technology including SNP genotyping and whole genome re-sequencing. He has been using modern breeding approaches such as genomic selection to address the issue of low productivity in chickpea. In his current role, he has been working as an interface between the Genomics and Breeding programs to deploy markers in routine breeding and to work towards the initiation of forward breeding at ICRISAT. He is an expertise Genomics, forward breeding, next generation sequencing, modern breeding approaches such as genomic selection and Marker Assisted Backcrossing

Prasanta Kumar Kalitais an Associate dean for Academic Programs and professor on soil & water resources engineering. He got Ph.D. from Agricultural Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa and did M.S in Agricultural Engineering, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand He leads the Agricultural Education Program in the College of ACES. He oversees the budget, hires faculty and staff, oversees promotion and recognition, recruits students, and manages educational programs within the unit. He is an expertise on soil and water resources engineering. His research interests on Water quality, environmental protection, water resources Watershed water-quality management and non-point source pollution control Soil erosion, chemical and microbial transport processes modeling. He received several awards like Sheth Distinguished Faculty Award for International Achievement, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015. Fellow Award from American Society of Agricultural & Biological Engineers (ASABE), in 2013 and Paul A. Funk Recognition Award, College of ACES, University of Illinois in 2013 and many more.

My goals are to ameliorate the harmful effects of plant disease through both research and teaching. I have taught Introductory Plant Pathology to undergraduates in a relatively applied course, and to beginning graduate students in a more theoretical course. Additionally I have taught plant disease epidemiology to graduate students. My extension teaching has primarily involved the management of potato late blight and was stimulated by an urgent need during the 1990s to deal with a crisis caused by the presence of exotic strains of Phytophthora infestans (the pathogen causing potato late blight) throughout the United States. The exotic strains had characteristics that we had not previously seen, and growers needed information about how to respond. My research has investigated the basic biology and management of potato late blight and its pathogen, Phytophthora infestans. Initial activities emphasized disease management and epidemiology, to be followed by population genetics studies, genetics and now host pathogen interactions using genomics approaches. My laboratory is vertically organized going from very applied studies in the field to very theoretical ones in the laboratory.

Dr. Akira Ito is a Professor Emeritus and Visiting in Asahikawa Medical University from April 2012.His career has been dedicated to two parts. One is immunology (serology) with molecular biology in zoonotic cestodiases (echinococcosis and neurocysticercosis). The other is international collaboration through the transfer of technology for encouragement of junior colleagues in endemic countries. These two parts fused very well each other. These cestodiases are two major causes of human morbidity and mortality, particularly affecting people in the world's poorest countries. His research group with M Nakao, T Yanagida and M Okamoto has re-analyzed the taxonomy of the family Taeniidae, mainly the genera of Taenia and Echinococcus. These two approaches could only be possible through international joint projects sponsored by the Ministry of Education (MOE), Japan from 1994 until 2015 and the US-NIH R01 project (PI: PS Craig, 2000-2008). The major field work in cestode zoonoses was in China with 89 joint papers and in Indonesia with 48 joint papers. Using additional several special funds from MOE, Japan, I could invite a total of more than 200 junior and less than 50 senior collaborators to Asahikawa from 1998 until 2015.
He dedicate his sincere thanks for PM Schantz, PS Craig, Ana Flisser, ZS Pawlowski, GF Mitchell, JD Smyth, Lord Soulsby, MD Rickard, MW Lightowlers, DP McManus, P Giraudoux, JH Cross, PC Fan, YH Liu, JM Qiu, C Tang from foreign countries, for F Sendo, I Tada, Y Aoki, K Yoshimura, K Okamoto, H Ohtomo, Y Kubo, and his beloved wife Hikari Ito from Japan