Michael W. Lodge was the Secretary-General of the International Seabed Authority from 2017 - 2023. He has an LL.B. from the University of East Anglia and an MSc in marine policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is a barrister of Gray’s Inn, London. Before he was elected Secretary-General, Mr. Lodge served as Deputy to the Secretary-General and Legal Counsel of the International Seabed Authority. Other professional experiences include serving as a Counselor to the Round Table on Sustainable Development at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and as Legal Counsel to the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency. He has also held appointments as a Visiting Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Chatham House, London, and as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Oceans. Mr. Lodge has 30 years of experience as an international public lawyer with a strong background in law of the sea and ten years of judicial experience in the UK and the South Pacific. He spent many years living and working in the South Pacific and was one of the lead negotiators for the South Pacific Island States of the 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement. He has also worked as a consultant on fisheries, environmental and international law in Europe, Asia, Eastern Europe, the South Pacific and Africa. Mr. Lodge has published and lectured extensively on the international law of the sea. He has over 35 published books and articles on the law of the sea, ocean policy and related issues.

Dr. Ulrich Schwarz-Schampera is Programme Management Officer (Mining Geology) at the International Seabed Authority (ISA). He has 30 years of working experience in the field of marine geology, participating in and leading 25 resource-related scientific and exp loration cruises. Prior to ISA, he was leading the Ore Deposit Research Group at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover, Germany. Activities included research on ore deposits in South Africa, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Indonesia and Canada. Marine research in the Southwest and Central Pacific (sulphides, nodules, crusts) was followed in 2011 by prospecting and exploration in the Indian Ocean for polymetallic sulphides, within the context of the International Seabed Authority, until 2020, when he joined ISA.

Sir Michael Wood is a member of the UN International Law Commission, and a Senior Fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge. He is a barrister at Twenty Essex Chambers, London, where he practises in the field of public international law, including before international courts and tribunals. He was Legal Adviser to the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office between 1999 and 2006, having joined as an Assistant Legal Adviser in 1970.

Miss Walker is the Deputy Solicitor General, International Affairs Division at the Attorney General’s Chambers in Jamaica where she is responsible for providing expert legal advice to Government Ministries, Departments, and Agencies on a range of international law matters including law of the sea matters. She also represents the Government of Jamaica in the negotiation of international agreements. Before joining the Attorney General’s Chambers in 2020, Miss Walker was the Legal Adviser and Director of Legal Services at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade in Jamaica where she also represented the Government in multilateral and bilateral negotiations on a range of issues including maritime delimitation negotiations and provided advice to the Ministry on an array of international law matters which faced a small developing island state with major maritime concerns. Prior to joining the Ministry, she served as Senior Legal Officer in the CARICOM Secretariat, Guyana, from 1998 to 2001. There she worked on treaty issues related to the establishment of CARICOM Single Market and the creation of the Caribbean Court of Justice. Miss Walker began her legal career in the international law division of the Attorney General’s Chambers where she dealt with a variety of matters including maritime delimitation and international environmental law. Miss Walker is one of two Deputy Permanent Representatives of Jamaica to the ISA. She is a member of Legal and Technical Commission (LTC) of the International Seabed Authority. Miss Walker is a former Vice Chair (2017-18) and former Chair of the LTC (2018-2021).

Dr. Ulrich Schwarz-Schampera is Programme Management Officer (Mining Geology) at the International Seabed Authority (ISA). He has 30 years of working experience in the field of marine geology, participating in and leading 25 resource-related scientific and exp loration cruises. Prior to ISA, he was leading the Ore Deposit Research Group at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover, Germany. Activities included research on ore deposits in South Africa, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Indonesia and Canada. Marine research in the Southwest and Central Pacific (sulphides, nodules, crusts) was followed in 2011 by prospecting and exploration in the Indian Ocean for polymetallic sulphides, within the context of the International Seabed Authority, until 2020, when he joined ISA.

Since 2004, Sven Petersen is a senior scientist at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany. He received his PhD in economic geology from Freiberg University (Germany) after spending a number of years in Germany and Canada working on seafloor hydrothermal systems. His research focuses on the formation, distribution, and evolution of marine mineral resources in the deep sea. He participated in over 40 research cruises in all ocean basins. At present, he uses mobile drilling techniques, various geophysical methods as well as the use of autonomous underwater vehicles for investigating the distribution of mineral occurrences.

Saleem H. Ali is Chair of the Department of Geography and Spatial Sciences and the Blue & Gold Distinguished Professor of Energy and the Environment at the University of Delaware (USA). He is also a member of the United Nations International Resource Panel. Before embarking on an academic career, Prof. Ali worked as an environmental health and safety professional at General Electric Corporation. His laurels include being a National Geographic Explorer, with field experience in more than 160 countries and all continents; being selected as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum and serving on the boards of notable non-profit charitable organizations including RESOLVE, Adventure Scientists and Mediators Beyond Borders International. His books include Earthly Order: How Natural Laws Define Human Life (Oxford Univ. Press) and Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed and a Sustainable Future (Yale Univ. Press). Prof. Ali received his doctorate in Environmental Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an Masters in Environmental Studies from Yale University, and his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry (summa cum laude) from Tufts University. Dr. Ali is a citizen of the United States of America by birth; Pakistan by parental lineage; and Australian by naturalization.

Prof. Madureira is an Auxiliary Professor at the University of Évora where he got his PhD in igneous petrology and geochemistry. Currently, he is working as a geologist in the Task Group for the Extension of the Portuguese Continental Shelf. He coordinates the scientific and technical work related to the acquisition of data and information to support the outer limits of the continental shelf as submitted by Portugal to the United Nations. In his career, Prof. Madureira served as a principal investigator of several oceanographic campaigns in the North Atlantic and as a member of the Legal and Technical Commission of the International Seabed Authority. His main academic interests include the formation and distribution of deep-sea mineral resources, marine environment and deep-seabed exploration.

Joshua T. Tuhumwire is a geologist and founder of Gondwana Geoscience Consulting Ltd and director/chairman of Sipa Explotation Ltd. He holds a B. Sc. degree in Geology and Chemistry from Makerere University and a M. Sc in Mineral Prospection from Vrije Universiteit Brussel. In his professional career, he worked at Uganda’s Department of Geological Survey and Mines for a period of 30 years, as a geologist, senior geologist, principal geologist and eventually as the Commissioner for Geological Survey and Mines till early retirement in 2010 after which he joined the private sector in mineral exploration and forestry. Joshua has served as member of the UN Group of Experts for World Ocean Assessment I and II and currently a member of the Legal and Technical Commission.

Marie Bourrel-McKinnon joined the International Seabed Authority in 2017 as the Senior Policy Officer and Special Assistant to the Secretary-General. She became Chief of Staff and Head of the Strategic Planning Unit in 2022. She holds two Master of Laws degrees in Law of the Sea and Shipping and International Law and Economics from the Universities of Nantes and Toulouse and a PhD in international law from the University of Nantes, France. She has published more than thirty articles on the international law of the sea, international and environmental law, oceans policy and related issues. Before joining the Authority, Ms. Bourrel-McKinnon worked for the Pacific Community as a Legal Adviser for the maritime transport programme and the Pacific Community-EU Deep Sea Minerals project. She also worked for governments, non-governmental organizations and the private sector in shipping, the law of the sea, ocean management and marine policy in the South Pacific, Africa and Europe.

Dr. Thomas Kuhn works as the general manager of the German license for the exploration of massive sulfides in the Indian Ocean at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR). Before he started this position he worked for ten years in the German license area for the exploration of polymetallic nodules in the Pacific Ocean. In his scientific career he has specialized on the geochemistry and mineralogy of ferromanganese deposits from all major oceans including different hydrothermal systems. Furthermore, he dealt with resource assessment of these systems based on classical geostatistics and artificial neural networks. He also built up an ROV team at GEOMAR in the early 2000 years and has served as principal investigator of several see-going campaigns in the Pacific, North Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

Ellen Pape is a deep-sea benthic ecologist employed at the Marine Biology Research Group of Ghent University (UGent) in Belgium. She has been working in the field of deep-sea benthic ecology since 2007 (when she started her PhD in Marine Sciences). For her PhD, she studied the biodiversity and ecosystem function of meiofauna (nematodes) in contrasting southern European deep-sea environments through field observational studies and experimental work. Most of her research focuses on meiofauna, but she also co-authored scientific manuscripts on macro- and megafauna ecology. Since 2014, she has been coordinating the baseline biological and environmental studies in the exploration contract area of the Belgian company GSR (Global Sea Mineral Resources) in the Clarion Clipperton Fracture zone (northeast Pacific), a region of interest for deep-seabed mining for polymetallic nodules. She has also been involved in other research projects addressing ecological impacts of deep-seabed mining i.e. MiningImpact I and II (JPIOceans) and DEEP REST. As of January 2023 she is a member of the Legal and Technical Commission of the International Seabed Authority. In February 2023 she was appointed as a professor for 10% to develop and coordinate Lifelong Learning initiatives in marine and maritime sciences at the UGent campus in Ostend (Ostend Science Park, Bluebridge).

Dr Kirsty McQuaid is a South African Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Her expertise is in deep-sea ecology and habitat mapping, with a focus on abyssal plain environments. Kirsty’s current work centers on developing capacity for deep-sea research in Africa.

Carsten Rühlemann is head of the Marine Geology, Exploration Unit at the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), the German Geological Survey. After studying cartography in Berlin and geology in Göttingen, he completed his PhD at the University of Bremen and worked 11 years in marine palaeoclimate research before joining the BGR in 2003. Until 2019, he managed the exploration of polymetallic nodule deposits in the BGR licence area in the Pacific Ocean. Carsten has been a member of the ISA's Legal and Technical Commission since 2020. He has been involved in almost 30 research cruises in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Johan Heiler (1978) joined the DEME Group in 2002. Over the past 21 years Mr. Heiler has managed the design and construction of several vessels in DEME’s diverse Dredging and Offshore fleet. His latest dredging related project was the design and construction of DEME’s cutting edge cutter dredger ‘Spartacus’, the most powerful dredger in the world. He is an experienced project director with a strong technological focus and a track record of realizing complex innovation projects. Mr. Heiler is passionate about moving boundaries and solving complex multi-facetted (engineering) problems, and able to translate abstract, economic or strategic objectives into practical technological and operational solutions. For several years, he has been involved in the development of deep seabed mining technology and stood at the cradle of the creation GSR’s integrated nodule mining concept. Mr. Heiler has a degree in mechanical engineering (MSc) from the University of Brussels (BE).