Professor Will Steffen
Will Steffen, a US-born Australian citizen, is the Director of the Fenner School of Environment and Society.  He began his career as a chemical engineer with a BSc from the University of Missouri. He holds MSc (1972) and PhD (1975) degrees in chemistry from the University of Florida. Following a research fellowship at the Research School of Chemistry at ANU from 1977-1980, Will joined the CSIRO Division of Environmental Mechanics in the roles of science management, editing and communication.

In 1990 Will took up the position of Executive Officer for the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems project of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP). From 1998 to 2004 he was Executive Director of IGBP and was based in Stockholm, Sweden. The IGBP research effort involves about 10,000 scientists located in 80 countries around the world.

Will returned to Canberra in mid-2004 and took up a visiting fellowship with the Bureau of Rural Sciences, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Australian Government. He also became science adviser to the Australian Greenhouse Office, a position he still holds. Will’s research interests span a broad range within the field of Earth System science, with a special emphasis on terrestrial ecosystem interactions with global change, the global carbon cycle, incorporation of human processes in Earth System modelling and analysis, and sustainability and the Earth System. His work usually takes a synthesis/integration approach to complex questions about the evolution of the human-environment relationship, often working with teams of researchers within the School, across ANU and internationally.

Steffen has given numerous presentations on climate change, global change and Earth System science to political and business leaders as well as community groups. He serves as chair of the International Advisory Board, QUEST (Quantifying and Understanding the Earth System) programme, UK, and has membership on the International Advisory Panel, Earth and Sun System Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), USA; the Advisory Panel of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; and the National Committee for Earth System Science, Australian Academy of Science. He is a visiting researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Sweden.

Dr Warren W. Wood
Since 2003 Warren has been the John Hannah Professor of Integrated Studies at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan where he is seconded to the Department of Geological Science.  Since 1998, he has served as Distinguished Research Associate and Visiting Lecturer in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, UK.  Before these academic positions, Warren was a Research Hydrologist for 40 years with the U. S. Geological Survey stationed at various locations within the U.S.  Warren’s research interests include the origin and transport of gases, solutes, and particulate material in arid and semi-arid hydrogeologic environments and the response of these systems to climate changes over the last 700,000 years.  Recent work on the Holocene age coastal sabkhas of Abu Dhabi has provided new insight into transport of solutes and input to the atmosphere of important greenhouse gases in this extremely arid location.  Warren’s studies in arid areas has taken him to Australia, Botswana, China, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Libya, Oman, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Western United States, and Zimbabwe.

Warren has served and chaired many committees of American Geophysical Union, Geological Society of America, and National Ground Waters Association.  He is currently serving on the U.S. National Academy of Science panel on Desalination.  He has published over 100 refereed technical journal articles, co-edited three books, and served as Editor and Chief for the Journal Ground Water.  He has received many professional awards and accolades including the M. King Hubbard Award from the National Ground Water Association, Distinguished Service Award, Geological Society of America, Meritorious Service Award, U. S. Department of Interior, and Christiansen Fellow, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford University, UK.

Professor Stephen Dovers
Professor Stephen Dovers is at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University. Widely acknowledged as a leading scholar of environmental policy, he is active in research and education in policy and institutional analysis, decision making in the face of uncertainty, science-policy linkages, climate change impacts, natural resource management and environmental history.

He is Associate Editor of the journals Environmental Science and Policy and Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, and member of the editorial board of Golbal Environmental Change.

His books include the edited volumes Environmental History and Policy (Oxford 2000), Uncertainty, Ecology and Policy (Prentice-Hall 2001), South Africa's Environmental History (Ohio University Press 2002), Strategic Environmental Assessment in Australasia (Federation Press 2002), New Dimensions in Ecological Economics (Elgar 2003) and Managing Australia's Environment (Federation Press 2003), and authored volumes Institutional Change for Sustainable Development (Elgar 2004, with Robin Connor), Environment and Sustainability Policy (Federation Press 2005), and the forthcoming Handbook of Disaster and Emergency Policies and Institutions (Earthscan, with John Handmer).

Dr Mike Ewing
Dr Mike Ewing is currently the Research Director of the Future Farm Industries Cooperative Research Centre and previously Deputy CEO for the CRC for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity.  He is a plant scientist with special interests in forage systems, agronomy and cultivar development.  In recent years these interests have been focussed in support of efforts to prevent further expression of dryland salinity and to better manage landscapes where salinity is an existing constraint.Dr Ewing is a well performed and published scientist and a long term employee of the Department of Agriculture and Food, WA. He has a strong track record in identifying novel plants and defining their management and requirements for use in systems that overcome limitations and deliver opportunities to dryland agriculture across southern Australia. His broad range of skills and interests allow him to focus and lead multi-disciplinary initiatives that solve problems and deliver technologies that address system limiting constraints.

Professor Max Finlayson
Prof Max Finlayson is a wetland ecologist with a strong interest in wetland management and communication. He has been a long-time proponent of inter-disciplinary approaches to wetland research and management; interests that were developed in the tropical north of Australia and extended to parts of Europe, Africa and Asia. He has worked extensively on the inventory, assessment and monitoring of wetlands in wet tropical, wet-dry tropical and sub-tropical climatic regimes, covering pollution, invasive species and climate change.

He is the past President of Wetland International’s Supervisory Council and past-Chair of the Ramsar Wetland Convention’s Scientific and Technical Review Panel. He has been involved in several global assessments – the Third Assessment Report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, and the Global Environment Outlook-4. He recently left the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where his work covered the interactions between water management in agriculture and wetlands, to join ILWS at CSU as Director and Professor for Ecology and Biodiversity.

Max has contributed to over 200 journal articles, reports, guidelines, proceedings and book chapters on wetland ecology and management. He has contributed to the development of concepts and methods for wetland inventory, assessment and monitoring, principally through the Ramsar Wetlands Convention. He has led seminars, workshops, panels and training courses and been an invited speaker at international conferences covering wetlands ecology and management and at the conferences of the Ramsar Wetlands Convention.

Dr Tom Hatton
Dr Tom Hatton is the Director of the Water for a Healthy Country Flagship. As Director, Tom provides science leadership to a team of more than 200 leading research scientists and technical staff with skills in areas as diverse as hydrology, eco-hydrology, sociology, information and communication technology, atmospheric research, environmental management, economics and biology.  Prior to this appointment Tom was Deputy Chief of CSIRO’s Land and Water Division.

Tom has 25 years research experience, nationally and internationally, in a broad range of land and water related disciplines including forest productivity, ecology, bushfire science, ecohydrology, water allocation, salinity and catchment hydrology. He has made significant advances in the understanding of ecosystem dependence on groundwater, and the management and future of our salinising landscapes. He has significant expertise in building and managing multi disciplinary research teams to solve scientific and water resource management issues.

Dr Ken Lawrie
Dr Ken Lawrie is the Program Leader for Salinity Mapping and Hazard Assessment in the Cooperative Research Centre for Landscape, Environments and Mineral Exploration (CRC LEME). Ken, an employee of Geoscience Australia, has over 25 years experience internationally in geoscientific research for the petroleum, minerals and environments sectors.

Ken has made an outstanding contribution to salinity management in Australia through developing multi-scale, 3-D and 4-D approaches to mapping and characterising landscapes and aquifer and salinity systems. In particular, Ken’s teams have gained international recognition for demonstrating how airborne geophysical and other remotely sensed data, when combined with an understanding of landscape evolution, can be used successfully within salinity management strategies. Over the last 6 years, products developed by Ken’s teams have been used successfully to target Salinity Interception Schemes, protect aquifers through re-zoning irrigation infrastructure, provide enhanced management outcomes for biodiversity in riverine floodplains, manage salt-affected lands in dryland landscapes, and identify new groundwater resources.

Professor David Pannell
 David Pannell is Professor in the School of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Western Australia , and Leader of the People, Land and Water Program, Cooperative Research Centre for Plant-based Management of Dryland Salinity. His research includes the economics of land conservation at farm, catchment, and community levels; farmer adoption of land conservation practices; risk management; policy evaluation; and economics of farming systems. He was President of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society in 2000, a member of the WA Government’s Salinity Taskforce in 2001, and a director on the Board of Land and Water Australia 2002-05. Author of more than 100 journal articles and book chapters, David’s research has won awards in the USA , Australia , Canada and the UK , including the W.E. Wood Award for excellence in salinity R&D in 2004.

Dr Donald Suarez
Donald L. Suarez received a Ph.D. in Geochemistry, Pennsylvania State University, 1974. He is currently Director, USDA-ARS U.S. Salinity Laboratory, Riverside, California. Dr. Suarez served as an Associate and Technical Editor of “Soil Science Society of America Journal”, and as member of Editorial Board "Agricultural Water Management”. He is past Chair, Division on Water and Land Conservation, International Union of Soil Science, and is currently Chair of the IUSS Soil Salinity Work Group. Dr. Suarez was elected Fellow of American Society of Agronomy and Soil Science Society of America. He has been a consultant to World Bank, FAO and numerous countries regarding reclamation of sodic and saline soils. He is author or coauthor of 175+ research papers and book chapters related to chemistry and management of saline and sodic soils and water quality criteria for irrigation including chemical effects on soil hydraulic properties. Dr. Suarez has developed models for multicomponent transport of water and salts for predicting solution composition and plant response to irrigation with saline water and has Co-Organized various conferences including International Salinity Forum, Riverside CA April 2005.

Professor Dr Faisal K Taha
Professor Taha joined International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) in 2000 as the Director of Technical Programs (DTP). He holds a PhD from the University of Wyoming and has 30 years of professional experience in research and development in the USA, Canada, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. He has held key positions as Project Leader, Program Manager, Department Manager, Chairman, Professor and Technical Program Director at the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research, Canada’s Agriculture Development Fund, UAE University and ICBA.

Professor Taha is an accomplished researcher and scientist with over 100 publications in refereed journals, proceedings, technical reports and scientific books. He is also the winner of various regional and international awards in agricultural research and development. Professor Taha has also served as a consultant to many regional and international organizations working in agriculture and natural resources.

Professor Taha, a USA national, is a frequent speaker at international conferences and is well known throughout the international agricultural research community.

Dr Karen Villholth
Dr Karen Villholth, of the International Water Management Institute, is a groundwater specialist with a specialized background in physical/chemical/numerical sciences and with a broad knowledge and experience in groundwater contamination, groundwater modelling and groundwater management from professional work in a multitude of Asian, African and South American countries. Lately, she has developed training and research programs for professionals on groundwater governance in Asia during her affiliation with IWMI. She also initiated investigations of the impacts of the 2004 South Asian tsunami on groundwater and water supply sources in Sri Lanka and the guidance of local institutions and NGOs on the rehabilitation of the drinking water wells in the direct aftermath of the event. The field and applied research motivated further studies into the fundamental physical processes related to saltwater flooding and optimal remediation approaches with the aim of better confronting similar events in the future.

Dr John Williams
Dr John Williams heads the NRC as the Natural Resources Commissioner. John is an eminent scientist who retired from CSIRO as Chief of Land and Water in 2004, having been Chief or Deputy Chief since 1996. Most recently John was Chief Scientist and Chair of Department of Natural Resources’ Science and Information Board and Adjunct Professor in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management at Charles Sturt University.

John has extensive experience in providing national and international thought leadership in natural resource management, particularly in agriculture production and its environmental impact. He has contributed to seminal works on sustainable agriculture in Australia, and has published extensively on the nature of agriculture as part of the natural ecosystem. His experience and background in agriculture production and its environmental impact, particularly of salinity and erosion, coupled with his strong record in coordination and delivery, have positioned him to make a significant contribution to the national debate on natural resource management and land use policy in Australia.

In 2005, John was awarded the prestigious Farrer Memorial Medal for achievement and excellence in agricultural science. John represented CSIRO in the preparation and presentation of material to the Prime Minister's Science, Engineering and Innovation Council on "Sustaining the Agricultural Resource Base" (1995) and "Dryland Salinity and its Impact on Rural Communities and the Australian Landscape" (1998).

Dr Phil Cummins
Phil Cummins received his Phd in geophysics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988. He worked with Brian Kennett at the ANU from 1988 to 1997, spending one year in Japan in 1993.  During this time his work mainly focused on the theoretical study of seismic wave propagation in the earth’s deep interior. In 1997 he returned to Japan, taking a position at the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center (JAMSTEC), where the focus of his research shifted to subduction zone earthquakes. At JAMSTEC he headed a research group which studied the earthquake cycle in subduction zones, including the study of tsunami. He returned to Canberra in 2001 to become leader of GA’s Earthquake Hazard and Neotectonics Project. He is now Chief Scientist of the Risk Research Group, and is work now mainly involves the earthquake and tsunami hazard in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.