Dr. Heidi Cullen is the Director of Communications as well as a Senior Research Scientist at Climate Central, a non-profit research and communications organization headquartered in Princeton, NJ. Climate Central combines sound science and vivid media to increase public understanding and attention to the climate challenge. Dr. Cullen currently provides reports on climate for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Before joining Climate Central, Dr. Cullen helped create Forecast Earth on The Weather Channel, the first weekly television series to focus on issues related to climate change and the environment. Dr. Cullen worked as a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. She received a bachelor's degree in engineering/operations research from Columbia University and went on to receive a doctorate in climatology and ocean-atmosphere dynamics at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.

Thomas Rosswall, Professor emeritus. Chairman, CGIAR-ESSP Challenge Programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security. His work as a microbiologist focussing on carbon and nitrogen cycling, and the microbial production of greenhouse gases, has ranged from microcosm studies to the globe and has been able to link deep process understanding to modelling efforts of entire systems at all scales. He has published more than 100 refereed articles and edited 12 scientific volumes. He has recently retired as Executive Director of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and is the previous Rector of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He has also been Director of the International Foundation for Science (IFS). He was the founding Director of the International START Secretariat and Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). He is an elected member of seven learned societies, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS).

Shourong Wang joined the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) in 1978 and been has been Deputy Administrator since 2004. He is vice-president of the WMO Commission for Climatology and a member of the WCC-3 International Organizing Committee.

He received his Master’s degree in Management Science at Fudan University in 1991 and his PhD from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2001. He is a supervisor of PhD candidates at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology.

Mr Wang chaired or participated in several key national and sectoral scientific research projects, such as the Study on China’s Short-term Climate Prediction; Experiment on Artificial Precipitation Enhancement in Stratiform Cloud System; Studies on Climate- Vegetation-Soil-Hydrological Coupled Model and Its Application to the Xinan River Basin; Studies on Ecological and Climatic Environment Monitoring and Prediction Methodologies in Northwest China; South China Sea Monsoon Experiment; Studies on the Global Climate Change and Environment Management Policies, etc. The first two projects won the first and second Awards for National Science & Technology Advances, respectively.

Mr Wanag has published more than 30 scientific papers (lead author of 12) and four monographs.

Vicky Pope is currently is currently Head of Climate Change Advice. She is responsible for the Met Office Hadley Centre’s £20M Integrated Climate Programme (ICP) funded by DECC, Defra and MOD. In this role the focus is on the provision of climate change advice to underpin policy development. . An important part of her role is communicating the science to policy makers and other stakeholders, including the public, through the media. The Met Office ICP contributed some of the key science to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and to the Climate Change Committee set up to scrutinise government policy on climate change. UKCP09, the new set of comprehensive climate projections for the UK, were provided by the Met Office ICP and launched by Defra on 18th June 2009.
Vicky has worked at the Met Office since graduating from Cambridge in the early 1980’s and worked initially on stratospheric research. She became a manager in 1991 and moved to climate model development in 1996. She has been a programme manager in climate research since 2002.

Dr. Zebiak is Director-General of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, which uses a science-based approach to enhance society's ability to understand, anticipate and manage climate risk to improve human welfare. As Director-General, he leads an inter-disciplinary team of over 40 scientists specializing in climate prediction, agriculture, health, water, economics and development policy. Dr. Zebiak has worked in the area of ocean-atmosphere interaction and climate variability since completing his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He and Dr. Mark Cane authored the first dynamical model used to predict El Niño successfully. He has published extensively in journals such as Science, Nature, the International Journal of Climatology, and has served as an advisor to a range of US and international climate science research programs. Dr. Zebiak was named Fellow of the American Meteorological Society in 2006.

José Achache is the Executive Director of GEO since 2005. Of French nationality, Prof. Achache graduated from the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris. He obtained a doctorate in geophysics in 1979 and a doctorate in physical sciences in 1984. He was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University from 1979 to 1980. José Achache began his career at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. In 1989, he became a Professor and created the Department of Space Studies. In 1996, he joined BGRM, the French Geological Survey, as Chief Scientist. In 1999, he joined CNES, the French Space Agency. In 2000 he became Deputy Director General. In 2002, Prof. Achache becamed Director of Earth Observation at ESA, the European Space Agency, where he designed the GMES programme.
José Achache is the author of “Les Sentinelles de la Terre” on the benefits of Earth observation for adaptation to environmental changes and informed decision-making. He has published more than 70 scientific papers.

Daniel K. Keuerleber-Burk is the Director of the Federal Office of Meteorology and Clima-tology MeteoSwiss and permanent Swiss representative of the World Meteorological Organi-zation (WMO). From 1998 to 1999, he was Head of the Information Technology Department and Internal Services, MeteoSwiss, Zurich. In 1998, he was Head of the Project Office of a strategic IT project for Zurich Insurance, Switzerland. From 1992 to 1998, he was Head of Controlling and Head of the Planning/Coordination/Controlling staff unit at the University of Basel, Switzerland. From 1984 to 1991, he worked at the Union Bank of Switzerland, Basel, as the Head of the Organization Section, Deputy Project Head for Strategic Planning and As-sistant to the Head of the Services Department. Other positions include mathematics and physics teacher at the Swiss School in Mexico City; planning engineer, Federal Office of Sig-nal Troops, Bern; and officer responsible for management information, Swiss Bank Corpora-tion, Basel. Daniel Keuerleber holds a diploma in experimental physics from the University of Basel.