Dr. Mike Maunder

Director, Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Coral Gables, Florida, USA. Professional Interests include: International and national plant conservation policy, Practical application of plant conservation, Capacity building for biodiversity, Public understanding of plant conservation issues.

Dr. Abdul Hamid Hallab

Special Advisor to the President of the American University of Beirut and the Vice President of the Lebanese National Council for Scientific Research.
Published extensively in the field of Food Technology and Nutrition in refereed International Journals.  He has established and administered regional programs of training and technical assistance for the public and private sectors in the Middle East.

Dr. Simon N. Haydar, Ph.D.

Principal Research Scientist, Group Leader at the Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Neuroscience Department Princeton.
Research experience in CNS (Obesity, Schizophrenia, Anxiety, Depression, Alzheimer’s, Stroke), Oncology, immunosuppression, antiviral and inflammation. Led projects to clinical development.  He is also the author and co-author on 11 patents, 7 publications and 23 presentations.

Ms. Ann Zwicker Kerr

Spent a total of fifteen years living, studying and teaching in the Middle East.  Ann is currently at the University of California in Los Angeles, where she coordinates the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Enrichment Program. 
She is a frequent speaker on the Middle East and an escort for study groups to the region. Her late husband, Malcolm Kerr, was the president of the American University of Beirut.

Mr. Walid Nasser

Lawyer, specializing in anti-piracy, registration of trademarks and intellectual property.
Mr. Nasser is one of the drafters of the newly enacted copyright and patent laws of Lebanon. In addition, he drafted the Access and Benefit Sharing law, and the biosafety decree for Lebanon. Furthermore, he contributed to the drafting of the biodiversity section of the special book on the environmental laws and regulations in Lebanon, and authored a certain number of articles that were published in international legal publications.

Dr. Michael Wink

Dean of Research; Faculty of Life Science Heidelberg University; and Guest professor at the University of Harbin (China).
Fields of interest include: Molecular pharmacology, evolution and ecology of plant secondary metabolites; their application in medicine and agriculture. Biosynthesis and production of active compounds in cell cultures. Molecular phylogeny, phylogeography, and population genetics of plants, birds and reptiles.
Author/coauthor of more than 500 publications and more than 20 books/monographs.

Dr. José A. Zaglul

President of EARTH University (Escuela de Agricultura de la Región Tropical Húmeda), an institution dedicated to the conservation and sustainable development of the tropics.
Dr. Zaglul has been President of EARTH since its inception in 1989 and has guided its development from the conceptual stages into the operational stage in which it currently exists.

Dr. Franklin Chang Diaz

Chairman and CEO of ASTRA, inventor of the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR, U.S. patent 2002) and other advanced propulsion technologies, founded the Ad Astra Rocket Company (AARC) in 2005, after 25 years of service as a NASA astronaut. AARC is dedicated to the development and commercialization of the VASIMR and related technologies.

Dr. Heikki Vuorela

Professor of Pharmacognosy, University of Helsinki
Dr. Vuorela's research in pharmacy covers the fields of drug discovery, chromatography and spectrometry of natural products.

Dr. Arto Urtti

Dr. Urtti has obtained international research experience as a post-doctoral fellow (University of Kansas) and visiting professor (University of California San Francisco and University of Wisconsin). He has led the Centre for Drug Research (previously DDTC – Drug Discovery and Development Technology Center) since 2005. Professor Urtti’s main research fields are drug delivery and nanotechnology.