Founding Executive Director, University of California, Davis; President Emeritus, Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St. Louis, MO; Professor, Department of Biology, Washington Univ., St. Louis. Former director Natl. Inst. of Food and Agriculture, US Dept. of Agriculture. Education: BA in biology (1966) Goshen College, Indiana; PhD in plant pathology (1973) Michigan State Univ., East Lansing. Previous academic positions: Washington Univ., St. Louis, Missouri; Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA. Member, US National Academy of Science; Fellow, AAAS and Academy of Microbiology; Foreign Fellow, National Academy of Sciences of India and Indian National Science Academy. Awards include the Wolf Prize in Agriculture; Dennis Robert Hoagland Award, American Society of Plant Biologists; Scientist of the Year, R and D Magazine; and Ruth Allen Award, American Phytopathological Society.

Chu and colleagues were the first to achieve superconductivity above liquid nitrogen temperatures with YBaCuO (90 K). Such and related work has established him as a leader in the field of high temperature superconducting oxides. He is Founding Director and Chief Scientist, Texas Center for Superconductivity; Professor of Physics and T.L.L. Temple Chair of Science, University of Houston; President Emeritus and University Professor Emeritus, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; and Honorary Chancellor, Taiwan Comprehensive University System. He has received the U.S. National Medal of Science and numerous international awards, as well as 10 honorary doctorates and 7 honorary professorships. He is a fellow/member of the American Physical Society, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Academia Sinica, National Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other organizations.

Clegg's research in evolutionary genetics combines statistical analyses with modern molecular techniques. Major accomplishments include characterizing the dynamics of linkage disequilibrium in plant and animal populations, showing that plant chloroplast gene evolve slowly, pioneering the use of DNA sequence data in plant phylogenetic inference and using molecular data in the study of crop domestication. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He has been awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship, Darwin Prize from Edinburgh University and the Award of Distinction from UC Davis, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Eltahir is H. M. King Bhumibol Professor of hydrology and climate, and professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Eltahir made significant contributions defining the role of land surface processes in climate system. He has been actively engaged in projecting future impacts of global climate change at local and regional scales, with the objective of informing and hence enabling proactive adaptation by local communities. Examples for topics of his projections include: water in Nile basin, malaria in Africa, droughts over Mediterranean, and extreme heatwaves in Asia. Eltahir is the director of the UM6P-MIT Research Program at MIT with a focus on sustainable development in Africa. He is also the lead principal investigator in a large Climate Grand Challenges Project at MIT with the goal of reinventing adaptation to climate change. He was recently elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering. Eltahir is a recipient of the Kuwait Prize in Applied Science in 2000, an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2008, and a recipient of the Hydrologic Sciences Award in 2017, from AGU.

Garruto is prof. of biomedical anthropology and neurosciences and Dir. of the Biospecimen Archive Facility, State Univ. of New York, Binghamton. He received his PhD from Penn State Univ. and joined the Natl. Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1973 as a research scientist. He has done fieldwork in Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, and Latin America. His honours include: Commendation Guam Legislature, 1987; Alumni Fellow, Penn State Univ., 1987; NIH Directors Award, 1993; Gorjanovic-Krambergeri Medal, Croatian Anthropological Society, 2000; Burroughs-Welcome Foundation Visiting Professorship, Basic Medical Sciences, 2001; Franz Boas Distinguished Achievement Award, Human Biology Assoc., 2005; National Honor Plaque of Panama, National Secretariat for Science,Technology and Innovation, 2011. He is a member of the US Natl. Acad. of Sciences and a fellow of AAAS.

Gross (PhD 1966, UC Berkeley) is permanent member, Kavli Inst. for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara, where he was director (1997-2012). He was Thomas Jones Prof. of Mathematical Physics, Princeton U. Gross has made important contributions to particle physics and string theory, incl. the discovery of asymptotic freedom and development of quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the nuclear, strong force; and the discovery and development of heterotic string theory. His awards include: MacArthur Prize; Dirac Medal; Oscar Klein Medal; Harvey Prize; EPS Particle Physics Prize; Grande Medaille d'Or; Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004. He holds hon. degrees from the US, Britain, France, Belgium, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Israel,Brazil and Argentina. He is a member of: US Natl. Academy of Science; American Academy of Arts and Sciences; American Philosophical Society; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Indian Academy of Science; Russian Academy of Sciences.

Gumel is a professor of mathematics and the Michael and Eugenia Brin Endowed E-Nnovate Chair in mathematics at the Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland, College Park. His research work focuses on using mathematical approaches—modelling, rigorous analysis, and data analytics—to gain insight and provide understanding on the transmission dynamics of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases of public health significance. He has authored more than 170 peer-reviewed research articles, supervised many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and written four edited books. He is the editor-in-chief of Mathematical Biosciences, one of the premier journals for mathematical biology research, and the recipient of numerous awards and honours, including the 2021 Bellman Prize. He was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Mathematical Society, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, African Academy of Sciences, Nigerian Academy of Science, African Scientific Institute and presented the 2021 Einstein Public Lecture of the American Mathematical Society.

Gunatilaka (PhD and DIC 1970-74, Imperial College, London) is professor and director of the Natural Products Center, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, U. of Arizona (UA). His was previously: Academic visitor, Imperial College, London; research associate at Stanford, USA; professor and head, Dept. of Chem., U. of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka; visiting professor and Snr. research scientist at Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State U., USA. His awards include: Bikaji Framji Kahn Gold Medal for Academic Excellence, U. of Ceylon; Inst. of Chem. (Ceylon) Gold Medal; Sri Lanka President's Gold Medal for Scientific Achievement, UA Asian American Assoc. Outstanding Faculty Award, and UA Leading Edge Researcher Award for innovative research. He is a fellow of the Natl .Acad. of Sciences, Sri Lanka. He has published +250 peer-reviewed papers and delivered +100 invited lectures in 18 countries.

Hildebrand is Regents Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He received his AB (biology) from Harvard University and PhD (biochemistry) from Rockefeller University. After 16 years of faculty service at Harvard and Columbia Universities, he moved to Arizona in 1985 as Founding Head of the Division of Neurobiology (1985–2009), later the Department of Neuroscience (2009–2013). Research fields: insect neurobiology and behavior, olfaction, chemical ecology, and arthropod vector biology. A past President of: Association for Chemoreception Sciences; International Society of Chemical Ecology; and International Society for Neuroethology. Elected member: National Academy of Sciences (currently International Secretary); American Academy of Arts and Sciences; American Philosophical Society; Brazilian Academy of Sciences; German National Academy of Sciences ‘Leopoldina’; Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters; Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters. Honorary Fellow: Royal Entomological Society (UK). Fellow: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Entomological Society of America, and International Society for Neuroethology.

Hussain (PhD, Stanford, 1969) is President's Dist Chair in Engr and Science, and Snr Adv to the President, Texas Tech Univ (TTU), Mech Engr Dept. He was post-doc at Johns Hopkins, then moved to U. of Houston (UH) in 1971, where he became Prof (76), Dist Univ Prof (85), Cullen Dist Chair (89) before moving to TTU in 2013. His honours include: Eckhart Prize for Outstandg Dissertation, Stanford; Freeman Scholar and Fluids Engr Awards of Amer Soc of Mech Engr (ASME); Fluid Dyn Prize of Amer Phys Soc (APS); Fluid Dyn Award of Amer Inst of Aero and Astro (AIAA); Sigma Xi, Farfel, and other Research Excell Awards of UH; Gold Medal, Bangladesh Soc of Mech Engrs; and Inst of Engrs Bangladesh Medal. He is a Fellow of APS, ASME and AIAA; member of Natl Acad of Engr, Bangladesh Acad of Sci, and Johns Hopkins Soc of Scholars; Hon Prof of Peking Univ and Dean of Houston Methodist Research Institute.

Jain earned his PhD in 1973 from The Ohio State University, USA. He is Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. His area of research includes pattern recognition, machine learning, computer vision and biometrics. He was a member of Defense Science Board and of the Forensics Science Standards Board, both US institutions. He was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Humboldt Research Award, the Fulbright Fellowship and the King-Sun Fu Prize. He was Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. Jain holds eight patents, US and Korean, and was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Jain and his students' work is focused on unconstrained face recognition and the development of fingerprint matching solutions, which have applications.

Jamshidi is LB Endowed chaired prof. of ECE and dir., ACE Lab., U. of Texas, San Antonio, regents prof. em., U. of New Mexico, Albuquerque and hon. prof., Birmingham U. (UK) 2012-2017. He was adv., NASA, and sr. res. adv., US Air Force Res. Lab and US DOE. Awards include: IEEE's Norbert Wiener Res. Award; Centennial Medal; CSS Dist. Member Awd., and IEEE-USA Sys Engr. Awd.; member, 5 honor societies; Best Res. Awd., Min. of Sci. and Higher Ed., Iran; Edison Natl. Res. Awd., Min. of Energy, Iran; Dist. Res. of the Year, UNM College of Eng.; and 3 hon. doctorates from u. in Azerbaijan, Canada and Greece. NASA Natl. service awd.. His membership includes: fellow of IEEE, ASME, NYAS, AAAS; assoc. fellow, AIAA; Hungarian Acad. of Eng.; Russian Acad. Nonlinear Sci.; U. of Texas System Chancellor’s Council (2011-). He has published 730 pieces of work including 68 books, some translated into Russian, Mandarin among others.

Kailath was educated in India (BE, 1956) and MIT (SM, 1959; ScD, June 1961). He then worked at the Jet Propulsion Lab., before joining Stanford University in January1963, where he is currently Hitachi America Prof. of Elec. Eng., Emeritus. His major awards include: US National Medal of Science, presented by President Barack Obama; IEEE Medal of Honor; IEEE Educ. Medal; IEEE Kilby Signal Proc. Medal; IEEE Claude Shannon Award; Silicon Valley Eng. Hall of Fame; BBVA Foundation Prize in ICT; Padma Bhushan Award from the President of India; Guggenheim,Churchill and Humboldt Fellowships; Hon. D.Sc. from universities in France, Greece,India, Israel, Scotland, Spain and Sweden. Member US Natl. Acad. of Eng., US Natl. Acad. of Sciences, Amer. Acad.of Arts and Sciences;For. Mem., Royal Society of London, Royal Spanish Acad. of Eng., TWAS, Indian Nat’l Acad. of Eng., Indian Natl. Science Academy, Indian Acad. of Sciences, Natl. Acad. of Sciences,India; Fellow,IEEE, AMS,SIAM,Inst Math Statistics

Khush is adjunct professor at UC Davis. He obtained his PhD at UC Davis in 1960. After serving as assistant geneticist at the same university for seven years, he joined the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines as plant breeder. He retired as principal plant breeder and head of the division of plant breeding, genetics and biotechnology in 2002. His honours include 14 honoris causa doctorates and several awards including the Japan Prize, World Food Prize, Rank Prize, Wolf Prize, Golden Sickle Award, Mahathir Science Award and the Padma Shri Award by the President of India. He is a member of 9 science academies including Indian National Science Academy, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences, the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences.

Kim is professor of Graduate Studies in the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. He has held a variety of academic and research positions including: Fulbright Fellow (1962); Guggenheim fellow (1985-86); and visiting professorships at Beijing University (1982), University of Paris (1986), and Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea (2011- ), and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (2016- ). He has also received many awards including: Earnest O. Lawrence Award, USA (1987); Princess Takamatsu Cancer Foundation Award, Japan (1989); Ho-Am Prize in Science, Samsung foundation, Korea (1994); Korean Academy of Science and Technology Prize (2000); and Legacy Laureate Award, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA (2005). He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences; fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; Korean National Academy of Sciences; and fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology.

Klein is Carnell Professor of Science and director of the Institute for Computational Molecular Science, at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. He was Hepburn professor of physical science and director, Lab. for Research on the Structure of Matter, Univ. of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Philadelphia. After his PhD (Univ. of Bristol) and postdoctoral work in Italy, England, and USA, he joined the National Research Council of Canada. In 1987, he joined UPenn where he established the Center for Molecular Modeling. He is member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, a fellow of: Royal Society of London; Royal Society of Canada; and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Awards include: American Physical Society Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics; American Chemical Society Debye Award in Physical Chemistry; and Bernie J. Alder CECAM Prize, European Physical Society.

Kumar is a Regents Prof, University Distinguished Prof, holds the O’Donnell Foundation Chair I, and is a Prof in the Dept of Elect and Comp Engg., Texas A and M Univ. He obtained his BTech from IIT Madras (1973) and DSc from Washington U., St. Louis, (1977). He has worked on game theory, adaptive control, simulated annealing, machine learning, queueing networks, security, information theory, wireless networks, cyberphysical systems, manufacturing systems, power systems, and UAV systems. He was awarded an hon. doctorate from ETH, Zürich; was guest chair prof., Tsinghua U., Beijing; is a hon. prof., IIT Hyderabad; and was dist. vis. prof., IIT Bombay. His awards include: Eckman Award, Am. Automatic Control Council; IEEE Field Award in Control Systems; Ellersick Prize of IEEE Communications Soc. Alexander Graham Bell Medal of IEEE, Infocom Achievement Award, SIGMOBILE Test-of-Time Paper Award; ACM SIGMOBILE Outst. Contrib. Award; Dist. Alumnus Award of IIT Madras; Alumni Achv. Award, Washington U., St. Louis; Drucker Eminent Faculty Award, U. of Illinois. He is Fellow, IEEE, member, US National Academy of Engineering, and Indian National Academy of Engineering.

Kwok, MD, PhD, graduated at University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. After residency in dermatology and postdoctoral training at Washington University School of Medicine, USA, he joined its faculty in 1993. He was Distinguished Fellow and Director of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Academia Sinica from 2017-2023, and Henry Bachrach Distinguished Professor at University of California San Francisco from 2002-2024. Kwok’s research focused on developing tools and strategies to study the human genome and the role of human variation in common diseases. He holds several patents on genomic analysis tools and played key roles in many large consortia, including the SNP Consortium, the International HapMap Project, the NSIGHT Consortium, and the CSER Consortium. He led the Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative, where a reference database with genetic profiles and clinical data of 500,000 people was built to improve health through disease risk prediction and tailored heath management guidelines. Kwok is a Fellow of the AAAS and the recipient of the 2022 Chen Award for Distinguished Academic Achievement in Human Genetic and Genomic Research by the Human Genome Organization.

Lal is dist. univ. prof. of soil science and dir., Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State U., Columbus. After obtaining his PhD at Ohio State and completing postdoctoral work at The U. of Sydney, Australia, in 1969, he joined the Intl. Inst. of Tropical Agriculture in Ibadan, Nigeria. He returned to Ohio State in 1987 where he has taught two classes: environmental soil physics, and soils and climate change, and conducted research on soil carbon sequestration, soil restoration and food security. Honours include: three h.c. doctorates; Hugh Hammond Bennett Award (1998); Borlaug Award (2005); IPCC Nobel Peace Prize certificate; Zayed Prize diploma, Liebig Award (2006). He is a fellow of five societies, incl. the American Assn. for Adv. of Science (1996) and The Rothamsted (2013). He has authored 15 and edited 56 books, and has about 1700 scientific articles to his credit.

Dr. Laurencin is the University Professor of the University of Connecticut (the 8th in history). He is the Albert and Wilda Van Dusen Distinguished Endowed Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering. He did his B.S.E. degree in Chemical Engineering at Princeton, his M.D. from Harvard Medical School (Magna Cum Laude) and his PhD from M.I.T.. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering in the U.S.. He is an elected Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Sciences. the Indian National Academy of Engineering, and an Academician and Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He has been honored three times by U.S. Presidents. He received the Presidential Faculty Fellow Award from President Bill Clinton and the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Math and Engineering Mentoring from President Barack Obama. He received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the United States' highest honor for technological achievement in ceremonies at the White House.

Littlewood took a BA in 1976 and a PhD in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1980, with a one-year intermediate sojourn at MIT as a Kennedy Scholar. In 1980 he moved to Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and remained as a member of technical staff to become head of the Theoretical Physics Research Department in 1992. He returned to Cambridge in 1997 as Professor of Physics, and from 2005 to 2010 he was head of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 2011 he became Associate Laboratory Director at Argonne National Laboratory in the USA, and in 2014 Laboratory Director, retiring in 2017. He is a Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, and Trinity College Cambridge. He has extensive collaborations in India, at Bangalore, TIFR, and Kolkata. He has over 200 publications and six patents.

Murenzi (PhD Louvain, Belgium) has been professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute since 2024. He was Executive Director of TWAS from 2011-2023, with a year interruption across 2016-2017 when he served as Director of the Division of Science Policy and Capacity Building in UNESCO's Natural Sciences Sector (July 2016). He previously was Minister of Science, Technology and Scientific Research in Rwanda and Director of the Center for Science, Technology and Sustainability at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC; he was also visiting Professor at the University of Maryland. He was Chair and Professor in the Department of Physics at Clark Atlanta University, USA. He was also designer of the two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform. In 2012 he was elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS). He chairs the UN Secretary General's High-level Panel of Technology Bank and Science, Technology and Innovation Supporting Mechanism dedicated to the Least Developed Countries; he is a Member of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Digital Development and of the Carnegie Mellon University President’s Global Advisory Council.

N’Guerekata (Ph. D. Montreal Canada 1980) is a University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics and Associate Dean, School of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Former Vice Rector of the University of Bangui, Deputy Minister for Scientific and Technical Research and Senior Advisor to the Head of State, N'Guerekata is a Fulbrighter, and an African Academy of Science Fellow, The World Academy of Sciences Fellow, American Mathematical Society Fellow. He received numerous honors and awards in the US, France, India, and Central African Republic. Founder and Chief Editor of the International Journal of Evolution Equations and the Journal of Nonlinear Evolution Equations and Applications, he is also a member of editorial boards of over 18 other international mathematical journals. Dr. N'Guerekata is (co) author of over 286 mathematics publications including 12 books.

Nahar (MSc, Dhaka University; MA, PhD, Wayne State University) is an atomic astrophysicist at Ohio State University; adjunct professor, Cairo University and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU); Iron Lady of international Opacity Project and Iron Project; known for her seminal contributions in radiative atomic processes of photoionization and theoretical spectroscopy. She introduced a unified method for electron-ion recombination and x-ray spectroscopy for cancer treatment. Delivering research and lecture courses with computational workshops globally since 2013, she trained over 700 researchers. She is co-author of textbook Atomic Astrophysics and Spectroscopy (Cambridge), founder of NORAD-Atomic-Data database, co-founder, Indo-US STEM Education and Research Centre, AMU; founder, STEM research and education programme in developing countries; founder, International Society of Muslim Women in Science; director, Women in STEM Roadshow. Fellow of American Physical Society (APS), Bangladesh Physical Society, Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. Recipient of President's Golden Dome Award, Cairo University; Gold Medal, Topical Society of Laser Sciences; Medal, NRIAG; John Wheatly Award of APS.

Narayan is the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard Univ., U.S.A. He obtained his PhD in 1979 at Bangalore Univ., India. He has made numerous contributions in many areas of astrophysics, notably in the field of black holes. His work spans theory, observations, and numerical simulations. His membership includes: Royal Society (London); National Academy of Sciences (USA); American Association for the Advancement of Science; and Honorary Fellowship of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Ovbiagele, MD, MSc, MAS, MBA, MLS, is professor of neurology and associate dean at the University of California, San Francisco. His primary research involves translation of evidence-based interventions into clinical practice and community settings, to improve stroke outcomes for underserved and vulnerable populations around the world. He currently leads several studies of stroke in the US and sub-Saharan Africa. Ovbiagele has published over 600 peer-reviewed articles (h-index 89) in the areas of stroke prevention, risk factors and outcomes. His work has been recognized with the Pessin and Wartenberg Awards of the American Academy of Neurology; Penn Award of the American Neurological Association; Mridha Humanitarian Award of the American Brain Foundation; Feinberg and Stroke Council Awards of the American Stroke Association; Haddock International and Distinguished Scientist Awards of the American Heart Association, and Meritorious Achievement Award of the National Medical Association. He chaired the International Stroke Conference (2016-2018) and is current editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Heart Association. He serves on the board of the World Stroke Organization.