Dr. Olaf Heidelbach studied Agricultural Economics and Development Studies at the Universities of Hohenheim/Germany and Ȧs/Norway. In 2007 he defended his doctoral thesis on innovative risk management instruments in Kazakhstan's agricultural sector at the Martin Luther University in Halle/Germany. He has been an Associate Professor lecturing risk management and analysis in the MBA Programme of the American University of Central Asia in 2008 and 2009. Between 2007 and 2012 he has been working at the EU Delegation to the Kyrgyz Republic and has managed numerous projects and sector policy support programmes in Central Asia on good governance, education, and rural development involving civil society and government institutions. Between 2012 and 2017, he was the responsible programme manager at the EU Delegation to Azerbaijan for the sectors agriculture/rural development and budget support operations/public financial management and has acted as Head of Cooperation. Since April 2017 he is based in Sri Lanka and manages at the EU Delegation in Colombo the EU's interventions in agriculture/rural development and public financial management.

Athula Ginige is Professor of Information Technology at Western Sydney University (WSU), Australia and he leads the Social Computing and Knowledge Ecosystems Research Program at the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics. This program focuses on developing knowledge driven Social Computing solutions delivered via mobile based systems to a range of applied problems including “Grand Challenges” in diverse areas such as agriculture, healthcare, business and education. His current research areas include both autonomous and participatory sensor networks, knowledge aggregation and event detection, large scale knowledge organisation based on ontologies and semantic web technologies, context modelling, designing mobile based systems for user empowerment and Social Computing. Digital Knowledge Ecosystems integrate all these technologies and methodologies to provide innovative and sometimes disruptive solutions to real world challenges.

Prof Ginige has previously done some pioneering work to establish the discipline area of Web Engineering which he is now extending to mobile based applications. He has also done extensive research in the areas of e-Business and e-Transformation. In 2016 he won the Australian Computer Society Digital Disrupter Gold award for developing the Digital Knowledge Ecosystem for Agribusiness. He has over 250 Journal and Conference publications and given many keynotes at conferences. He has successfully supervised 15 PhD students. He graduated with B.Sc. Engineering first class honours from University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, England in 1987

Dr Ranil Coorey completed his primary and secondary education at St Joseph’s College, Colombo 10, Sri Lanka before continuing with his BSc in Food Technology at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, which he completed in 1991. He then went on to pursuing his Master’s degree in Food Science and Technology at Curtin University, Perth, Australia and completed the same in 1996. Further, Dr Coorey completed his PhD at Curtin University in 2008. Dr Coorey has worked in the food industry in different countries for many years before joining Curtin University as an academic, where he continues to lecture in food processing and food safety. Currently, he working there as a Senior Lecturer and the Course Coordinator and former Discipline Leader of the Food Science and Technology program. During his long career in the food industry, he has developed commercial food safety management systems and food products while working mainly in research and development and product innovation. Being a University academic as well as a researcher, he is, currently, engaged in a variety of industry-funded projects on chicken and seafood cold-chain-management and safety. Moreover, he also holds an international collaborative research project on safe chicken processing, which includes Australia and several African countries, namely, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Uganda. Dr Coorey’s other research projects include a large Australian government grant on red meat safety and industry-funded Australian native food processing and safety. Being a prolific academic writer, he has published extensively in high impact internationally peer reviewed SCI journals. Dr Coorey has supervised numerous MSc and PhD students from around the world. Further, he closely worked with many Sri Lankan scientists both at Curtin University and Sri Lanka. Dr Coorey was instrumental in establishing a link program between the University of Ruhuna and Curtin University and an MOU to this effect was signed in 2017. As part of the link programme, collaborative research on chicken meat safety, novel food product development etc will be carried out both in Sri Lanka and Australia. Moreover, staff and student exchange programmes, joint undergraduate and postgraduate programmes will also be established between these two Universities.

Dr. Apurba Giri is presently working as Assistant Professor & Head, Dept. of Nutrition and Coordinator, Dept. of Food Processing, Mugberia Gangadhar Mahavidyalaya (UGC recognized as College with Potential for Excellence; Affiliated to Vidyasagar University). He did B.Tech (Dairy Tech.) from West Bengal University of Animal and Fishery Sciences, M.Tech (Dairy Tech.) from Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fishery Sciences University, Ph.D (Dairy Tech.) from National Dairy Research Institute, and Post-Doc (Agri. and Food Eng.) from IIT-Kharagpur. He worked as Technical Officer at City Dairy, Howrah and Sr. Officer at Banas Dairy, Gujarat. He traveled to Denmark Technical University, Denmark to present his Post-Doctoral research work with the help to UGC International Travel Grant. He is life member of World Science Congress, Indian Dairy Association, Dairy Technology Society of India, Association of Food Scientists and Technologists (India), The Indian Science Congress Association and Nutrition Society of India. He has achieved 13 awards in National and International level (including Best Thesis Award from NDRI, oral presentation, poster presentation etc.). He organized 11 Workshop / Conference / Seminar / Short-term course. He attended 11 International Conferences, 21 National seminars/conferences and 11 workshops/short courses. He published 21 research papers in International Journal (having SCI journal, i.e. Food Chemistry, Food and Bioprocess Technology, Journal of Food Science and Technology, Journal of Food Process Engineering, International Journal of Dairy Technology, Journal of Food Processing and Preservation), 3 research papers in National Journals, 7 popular articles, 5 book chapters, 20 other publications (proceeding, Bulletin, NDRI News, etc.). He was presenter as invited speaker in 4 seminars/camps; oral presenter in 6 International conferences, 11 National conferences/seminars, 2 Departmental seminars; poster presenter in 12 International conferences, 23 National conferences/seminars. A project (duration 3 years) funded by Dept. of Science & Technology and Biotechnology (Govt. of West Bengal) is undergoing under his supervision. His areas of research interest are traditional Indian dairy products, frozen dairy products, dairy by-products, cheese and fermented dairy products, dried milk and milk products, algal technology, functional foods etc.

Dr. Raju Mandal serves as an Associate Professor, attached to Department of Economics, Assam University. He is an enthusiastic and innovative professional with extensive experience in Economics of Natural Resources and Environment. He is passionate about Climate Change impact in Agriculture and will tap into his knowledge to the development of Economics of Social Sector. As a leading researcher in Assam University, Dr. Raju brought the founding platform to Climate Change Impact on Rice Yield and have worked for several other funding project in India.

Paul Dargusch currently works as an Associate Professor in Environmental Management at The University of Queensland (UQ). He concurrently serves as a Special Advisor to the UNDP in Papua New Guinea. His research interests cover various fields of environmental studies and environmental change, including tropical forest management, ecological engineering and restoration, energy economics and climate policy, and agricultural development. He has a special interest in environmental markets, particularly in how to achieve better returns from environmental finance. From 2016 to 2018 Paul served as the Deputy Head of UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences; Australia’s top ranked University for environmental sciences. He has published more than 100 papers in leading peer-reviewed journals including in Science and Nature Climate Change. From 2007 to 2016, Paul served as the Director of the UQ Carbon Lab. In that role he developed a carbon trading simulation tool called the Carbon Game which he and his team used to train more than 5000 people in 16 different countries on carbon and energy management; including Government agencies in China, Indonesia, the UAE and Australia, some of the world’s largest corporations such as Petronas, the Chinese National Oil Corporation and Glencore Xstrata, and leading development agencies, such as the World Bank and the FAO. Prior to joining UQ, from 1996 to 2007 Paul held various senior roles in the private sector, including as General Manager of International Business with PCA Ltd (one of Australia’s largest vertically integrated oilseeds companies) and CEO of the BFA Group (Australasia’s biggest organic certification agency).