Since 2005, Edward Hill has been the Director of the National Oceanography Centre and professor of oceanography at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. From 1999 to 2005, he was Director of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory and visiting professor of earth sciences, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. From 1986 to 1999, he was a lecturer and senior lecturer in oceanography, University of Wales, Bangor, Wales. He chaired the Governing Board of the UK National Centre for Ocean Forecasting and the Oceans 2025 Executive Board. He was also Vice Chairperson of the European Science Foundation Marine Board. Ed is a member of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Executive Board, NERC Science and Innovation Strategy Board, Steering Group of the Global Climate Observing System and Inter-Agency Committee for Marine Science and Technology. A physical oceanographer, Ed is primarily interested in the circulation and mixing of shallow continental shelf and shelf-edge seas. He has worked particularly on dense water overflows from continental shelves and on seasonal density driven jets and gyres associated with bottom fronts and “cold-pools.” He holds a Bachelor of Science from Sheffield , United Kingdom and both a Master of Science and Ph.D. from Wales . He is a Chartered Marine Scientific Fellow of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology.

Martin received his PhD from Kiel University, Germany, in Physical Oceanography on research about deep ocean convection in 1993. During a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his research interest focused on the interaction of ocean eddies and deep convection regions and their respective heat and density transport. As a Research Scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Associate Professor at Columbia University, New York, his interest shifted to more general aspects of the ocean's role in the climate system, including work on the North Atlantic Oscillation and Deep Water formation off the Antarctic.Since October 2004 he has held the chair in Physical Oceanography at the Leibniz Institute for Marine Sciences at the University in Kiel.

His current research is concerned with ocean and climate variability and change with particular emphasis on the circulation of the sub-polar North Atlantic, climate-biogeochemical interactions in the tropical ocean, observations of ocean circulation and mixing, using modern robotic platforms including profiling floats and gliders, and development of ocean observatories for long-term observations in the water column. He has served on several national and international committees. He is Speaker of the Kiel Cluster of Excellence The Future Ocean.

Nathan Bindoff is Professor of Physical Oceanography at the University of Tasmania and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization’s Marine Research Laboratories, Director of the Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing and Project Leader of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre’s Modelling Programme. He is a physical oceanographer, specializing in ocean climate and the Earth's climate system.

He was coordinating lead author for the ocean chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report. With colleagues, he documented some of the first evidence for changes in climate change signals in the Indian, North Pacific, South Pacific and Southern Oceans and showed some of the first evidence of changes in the Earth’s hydrological cycle. Nathan has published more than 52 scientific papers and 30 reports. He established the programmes and experiments that determined the total production of Adelie Land Bottom Water Formation and the Antarctic Bottom Water Formation and contributed to the development of some of the largest and highest-resolution model simulations of the oceans. He has been deeply involved in oceanographic data and data management as tchairman of the Data Products Committee for the World Ocean Circulation Experiment and International Polar Year. In his spare time he has led nine oceanographic voyages on the Aurora Australis in the Southern Ocean.

Ralph Rayner is Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics in the Centre for Analysis of Time Series (United Kingdom) and a Vice-President of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology. He is also responsible for advocacy and outreach for the Integrated Ocean Observing System at the United States Consortium for Ocean Leadership.

Ralph serves as a non-executive director with a number of specialist ocean science and technology businesses and is sector director, energy and environment, for a group of companies in the private sector. He previously held the position of Deputy Director of Ocean.US, following more than 25 years global experience in commercial operational oceanography.

He chairs the Global Ocean Observing System Scientific Steering Committee, is a member of the Marine Technology Society Ocean Observing Systems Committee and the expert committee of the European Marine Observation and Data Network. He contributes to a number of international research programmes concerned with understanding the role of the oceans in climate.

He has authored numerous marine scientific papers and reports and is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Operational Oceanography.