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.

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.

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.

Dr Parianos is Technical Director at the Cook Islands Seabed Minerals Authority. He has 10 years’ experience in the regulation, exploration and development of seabed nodule and seafloor massive sulfide minerals. This follows almost 20 years’ experience in the exploration, development and assessment of land based mineral and energy deposits. His doctorate is on the geology and mineral resource potential of the CCZ. This builds on several marine expeditions where he served as principal investigator and on prior contributions to ISA meetings.

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.

Prof. Georgy Cherkashov is a Deputy Director of the Institute for Geology and Mineral Resources of the Ocean in St.Petersburg (Russia) and Professor of St.Petersburg State University (part time). He holds a Dr. Sci. for research of seafloor massive sulfide deposits (SMS) of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. He coordinates prospecting works of deep-sea minerals within Russian Exploration Areas in Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In his career, Prof. Cherkashov served as a chief scientist of several ocean-going expeditions for prospecting of FMN and SMS deposits including diving missions on MIR submersible. He is a member of the Legal and Technical Commission of the International Seabed Authority. Prof. Cherkashov was a President of International Marine Minerals Society in 2011-2012. His main academic interests include the formation and distribution of deep-sea minerals, marine geology and deep-seabed exploration.

Kira Mizell is a Research Oceanographer for the Global Ocean Mineral Resources program at the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center. She started working at USGS on marine minerals research in 2011 and received her PhD in 2019 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, while continuing her work at USGS. She studies the distribution, composition, and formation of minerals that precipitate in the deep ocean, focusing on ferromanganese crusts, manganese nodules, and phosphorites. Her work informs mineral resource potential as well as paleoceanography, and she collaboratively investigates the relationship of marine minerals to co-located biological communities. She serves as Secretary of the Executive Board of the International Marine Minerals Society.

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.

Dale Squires is an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the University of California San Diego. He has decades of experience in marine and natural resource economics across the globe. He has worked with the ISA and the deep-seabed industry and environmental stakeholders on the payment regime, incentive-based approaches to environmental regulation, and the fair and equitable allocation of deep-seabed mining royalties. He is the co-author of eleven books and 150 peer-reviewed scholarly papers. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in applied economics from the University of California Berkeley and a Ph.D. from Cornell University.

Harald Brekke is a Senior geologist in the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, and former Chair of the board of the Legal and Technical Commission under the International Seabed Authority, ISA. Brekke has extensive experience with international work under the direction of the UN. For many years, he was a member of the UN Commission that works to set sovereignty limits for nations in the sea – outside 200 nautical miles. He has been one of Norway’s foremost advisers for many years in the work to set Norway’s boundary in excess of 200 nautical miles. He deserves much of the credit for the outer limit of the continental shelf outside Bouvet Island in the South Atlantic, which was clarified with the Continental Shelf Commission in New York in 2019. He has also contributed to the work of setting the outer boundaries of several other countries, including countries in West Africa.