Prof Mark Howden is Director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a member of the Australian National Climate Science Advisory Committee. He was on the US Federal Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Climate Assessment and contributes to several major national and international science and policy advisory bodies.  Mark has worked on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues for over 30 years in partnership with many industry, community and policy groups via both research and science-policy roles. Issues he has addressed include agriculture and food security, the natural resource base, ecosystems and biodiversity, energy, water and urban systems. He helped develop both the national and international greenhouse gas inventories that are a fundamental part of the Paris Agreement and has assessed sustainable ways to reduce emissions. He has been a major contributor to the IPCC since 1991, sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Sarah has two decades' experience advising Australian and multi-national clients on governance, compliance, misleading disclosure and competition law (antitrust) issues.  Her expertise in the field of ESG (environmental, social, governance) in financial services and investment, and their relationship to fiduciary duties, is internationally recognised by organisations from the Bank of England to the European Union and United Nations PRI. 

Sarah is an experienced director and advisory board member.  She is currently a non-executive director of the $24-billion Emergency Services & State Super and the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia. She sits on the Technical Working Group of the international Climate Disclosure Standards Board.

Sarah has taught the Australian Institute of Company Directors Course for more than a decade, teaches as part of the Australian faculty of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and is an academic visitor at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.

She was the instructing solicitor on a brief to Mr Noel Hutley SC in October 2016 that is widely cited as the authoritative exposition on directors' duties and climate change risk in Australia.

Mark brings with him 32 years of operational experience ranging from fire-fighter through to Commissioner and now Director-General, as well as 18 years in senior executive leadership and strategic management. 
In his role as Director General of Emergency Management Australia, Mark is responsible for the coordination of Australia’s response to crises, including natural disasters and to terrorist or security related incidents both domestically and internationally.

Kathleen is a senior principal researcher and leads the group in the Climate Science Centre of CSIRO Ocean and Atmosphere that undertakes climate and extremes, projections and coastal research including sea-level rise and coastal extremes. Her work deals with how climate change will affect severe weather and coastal extreme sea levels through numerical modelling and climate model analysis with a focus on Australia and small islands. She has developed climate projections for impact and adaptation assessments to assist local government manage and adapt to climate change. Her contribution to this work was awarded Eureka awards in 2003 and 2009

She has published over 50 refereed publications and over 70 other reports and articles and was a contributing author on the IPCC second, third and fourth assessment reports. She was a lead author on the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation, the IPCC Working Group 2 Fifth assessment report on Coastal Systems and Low-Lying Areas and is currently working on the IPCC Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere. She was part of the CSIRO team that developed a wave energy atlas for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA).

Dr Hugh Hunt is a Reader in Engineering Dynamics and Vibration at Cambridge University. His research centres on the control of noise and vibration from underground railways, but he got caught up in geoengineering as Co-Investigator on the SPICE project, 2010-15, which looked at various aspects of Solar Radiations Management (SRM): www.spicepipe.co.uk. He was responsible for an outdoor experiment, the 1 km testbed, which was intended to evaluate the influence of wind on the motion of a tethered balloon, but controversy over geoengineering experiments led to the testbed being cancelled. He is now promoting other technologies for the removal of non-CO₂greenhouse gases, in particular methane and N₂O: www.suggr.co.uk. He also runs the Cambridge Climate Lecture Series which aims to raise awareness of the urgency around climate change: www.climateseries.com.

Hugh is a regular presenter on television documentaries on Channel 4, PBS Nova and SBS, including "Dambusters: Building the Bouncing Bomb", "Attack of the Zeppelins", "Escape from Colditz" and "Guy Martin Wall of Death". He is Keeper of the Clock at Trinity College, a clock which is demonstrably the most accurate tower clock in the world www.trin.cam.ac.uk/clock.  He has an impressive collection of boomerangs which he uses to inspire students in the study of dynamics and mechanics.

Dr David Wachenfeld is the Chief Scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. Working at the Authority since 1997, he has covered a diverse range of Marine Park management challenges, including:

- adapting Marine Park management to climate change, including improvements to resilience-based management;

- science and spatial analysis to support the development,  implementation and monitoring of Marine Park zoning;

- state of the environment and outlook reporting;

- working with fishers and fisheries managers to improve sustainability of fishing activities;

- improving tactical responses to crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks;

- development of reef restoration techniques;

- prioritising coastal ecosystems for protection and restoration; and

- improving catchment management to reduce pollution to the Reef.

He has dived on coral reefs all around the world, conducting research, taking photographs, teaching people and working to protect the environment.

In 1993, he completed a DPhil studying the behaviour and ecology of coral reef triggerfish in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Although his career has concentrated on coral reef management he has also worked in reef tourism and science.

Prof Anthony Capon is the first Professor of Planetary Health at the University of Sydney. A former Director of the International Institute for Global Health at United Nations University (UNU-IIGH), he is a public health physician and an authority on environmental health and health promotion. Tony’s research focuses on urbanisation, sustainable development and human health. He was the inaugural Medical Officer of Health in western Sydney (1991-2006) and the founding Convenor for the NCCARF-funded Adaptation Research Network for Human Health (2009-2011). He currently leads the NSW Adapt Human Health and Social Impacts Node.  Tony is a member of the Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on Planetary Health.

Craig Lapsley is Victoria's inaugural Emergency Management Commissioner. He has overall responsibility for coordination before, during and after major emergencies including management of consequences of an emergency. Craig was appointed as Victoria’s first and only Fire Services Commissioner in 2010 after 30-years in Australian emergency management, mostly with the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA), including service as a volunteer firefighter. Craig finished his employment with CFA in August 2007, ranked as Deputy Chief Officer.

In 2007, he was appointed Director Emergency Management – Health and Human Services and was responsible for the health sector emergency response to major incidents including mass casualty, pre-hospital (ambulance) and hospital surge capability. This extended to the state coordination and management of recovery arrangements for all emergencies, including recovery efforts after the 2009 Black Saturday fires.

In 1996 Craig was seconded to NSW Fire Brigades (Sydney) in the position of Manager State Operations for two years. He was also seconded to Victoria State Emergency Service in 2005 to transform SES from a government department to a newly formed statutory authority.

Craig is Chief Patron of Road Rescue Association Victoria and on the National Emergency Services Advisory Committee of the Australian Red Cross. He is a director with the Victorian Emergency Services Foundation and the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. He is Patron of SARDA (Search and Rescue Dog Association), the Bendigo Football Netball League and the Central Victorian Fire Services Preservation Society.

The Far North Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils (FNQROC) is a regional local government partnership based in the Queensland tropics. Travis works in the end user and practitioner space in strategy, policy, communication, spatial analysis and partnerships for invasive species, landscape restoration, biodiversity, water quality and climate adaptation. For the past 20 something years he has worked in the private, NGO and state/local public sector on a wide range of invasive species and conservation programs and projects.

Mark Leplastrier joined the insurance industry in 2001 and holds the position of Executive Manager Natural Perils at IAG. As the focus and importance of identifying and quantifying peril risk has grown he now manages a team of specialists in the fields of meteorology, climate, hydrology, engineering and spatial data.

As a team they assist in the functions of catastrophe modelling for reinsurance requirements, risk based pricing and major event support. A growing area has been in understanding community impacts from natural perils and practical ways to reduce risk.

Jon Barnett is an Australian Research Council Future and Professor in the School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. He is a political geographer whose research investigates vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in social systems, focussing on risks to coastal settlements, human security, hunger, migration, violent conflict, and water stress. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in the South Pacific, China, and East Timor. 

Dr Alistair Hobday completed a BSc (Hons) in Biological Science at Stanford University, a PhD in Biological Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and held a National Research Council Postgraduate Fellowship at the Pacific Fisheries Environmental Laboratory in Monterey, California.  His research spans a range of topics, including spatial management and migration of large pelagic species, environmental influences on marine species, the impacts of climate change on marine resources, and development and testing of adaptation options for marine conservation, fisheries, and aquaculture. He leads the Marine Climate Impact and Adaptation area at CSIRO. In addition to his climate research, Alistair has co-led the development of risk assessment methods for assessing the ecological sustainability of Australia’s fisheries. He was co-chair for the international IMBER program CLIOTOP (Climate Impacts on Top Ocean Predators) from 2010-2015, and now serves on the Scientific Steering Committee.

Karen Hussey is Director of the Centre for Policy Futures located in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The University of Queensland, a position she took up in July 2017. Trained as a political scientist and economist, Karen undertakes research in the field of public policy and governance, with a particular interest in public policy relating to sustainable development.

Her recent research has focused on water and energy security, the role of the state in climate change mitigation and adaptation, the links between international trade and environmental regulation, and the peculiarities of public policy in federal and supranational systems.

Recent publications include: Climate Change and the State: Indifferent, Irrelevant or Impotent? (Edward Elgar, in preparation); Achieving Decarbonisation for Prosperous Societies (CUP, forthcoming, with K. Baldwin, J. Lindesay, and M. Smith); Climate, Energy and Water (with J. Pittock and S. Dovers, CUP 2015); Water Resources Planning and Management (with Prof. Quentin Grafton, CUP 2011); and numerous journal articles, book chapters and edited collections in related fields.

Karen is a Chief Investigator on the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC project ‘Policies, Institutions and Governance of Natural Hazards'; Lead Investigator for the ERIN project ‘An analysis of the desirability and feasibility of increased energy and electricity integration in South East Asia’; Chief Investigator on the ARC Linkage project ‘Trade and investment relations between Australia and the European Union’ and she has the pleasure of supervising 9 PhD students. She is a member of the Future Earth Australia Scientific Steering Committee, and on several editorial boards of journals in her field.

Prior to taking up her position at UQ, she was Associate Professor in the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the ANU, where she now holds an Adjunct Professorship. From 2007-2010 Karen was based in Brussels as the ANU Vice Chancellor’s Representative in Europe, where she was responsible for developing the ANU’s research relationships and profile with European research teams and institutions.

Jean Palutikof is Director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University. She took up the role in October 2008, having previously managed the production of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report for Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), while based at the UK Met Office. Prior to joining the Met
Office, she was a Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences, and Director of the Climatic Research Unit, at the University of East Anglia, UK, where she worked from 1979 to 2004, and a Lecturer at the Department of Geography, University of Nairobi, Kenya, from 1974 to 1979. Her research interests focus on climate change impacts, and the application of climatic data to economic and planning issues. She specialises in the study of changes in extreme events and their impacts, especially windstorm. She was a Lead Author for Working Group II of the IPCC Second and Third Assessment Reports. She has authored more than 200 papers, articles and reports on the topic of climate change and climate variability. Her proudest moment to date was attending the ceremony in 2007 at which the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.