Meike Vogt is a senior scientist at the Institute for Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics within the Environmental Systems Sciences department at ETH Zurich. She is a marine ecosystem modeler, who assesses the links between marine ecosystem structure and function in terms of global biogeochemical cycling. Her work pairs ocean observations with statistical and numerical marine ecosystem models to reveal the drivers of present and future global plankton biogeography and biodiversity, and to understand the impact of anthropogenic climate change on these systems. In recent years, Meike has been pioneering the use of statistical and machine learning models to understand global plankton biogeography based on in situ data.

Matthias Rillig is Professor of Ecology at the Institute of Biology at the Freie Universität Berlin. His versatile field of research is in soil and plant ecology, where his research interests include the symbiosis of fungi with plants and its effects on soil aggregation. His research group examines the effects of multiple factors of global change on soil processes andl biodiversity, and terrestrial ecosystems. He uses fungi as model systems to test ecological principles. Rillig heads several joint projects, including “µPlastic”, which studies the effects of microplastics on agricultural soils.

Professor Karin Pittman is an internationally experienced Canadian marine biologist publishing continuously since 1982. She has worked in fisheries and aquaculture in Europe, North America and many developing countries, under NORAD, FAO, and various other NGOs as well as bilateral programs. She received  Hordaland Inventor prize in 2013 and the Norwegian Thon national award for Excellence in Teaching in 2016, the same year she won a global prize for Aquaculture Leadership and Innovation for the invention of Mucosal Mapping technology, now trademarked as Veribarr. She has taught fish culture and larviculture in many countries and has developed the first fish-based health standard focusing on mucosal barriers. As a researcher, she has studied egg and larval development and metamorphosis of marine species, epigenetics, nutrient uptake, marine ecosystem changes and aspects of fish health. She is the producer and librettist for the rock Opera Fish to Mars (2017-ongoing). She is a Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences (BIO) at the University of Bergen, Norway, Chief Scientific Officer of the startup QuantiDoc and developer of an ethical role play about science, aquaculture and social impacts.

Working in the Behavioural Evolution Research Group at the Max Planck Institute in Konstanz, Alex Jordan aims to answer a foundational question: how does social behaviour evolve? He asks this question by situating his studies in the natural, often underwater, world. In pursuit of the answer, his research traverses borders of subject and scale—from the neurobiology of social interactions, to the development of cognition, to the ecology of entire communities. Jordan harnesses recent advances in machine learning and automated tracking techniques, but anchors them in behavioural experiments conducted in the wild environments in which animals evolved. His work takes him from ancient lakes in the African Rift Valley, through tropical reefs in the Pacific, to highland cloud forests in Costa Rica. Among other scientific highlights, he was the first to demonstrate that a fish can pass the classic mirror test for self-recognition. The innovative methods for capturing and analysing complex data in Jordan’s lab have animated partnerships across fields. Jordan has worked with artists and academies such as SUPERFLEX, TBA-21, and Tomas Saraceno, to explore the uncharted crossroad of computational ethology, animal intelligence, philosophy, and human perception.

Christina Agapakis is a synthetic biologist and artist. In her scientific work, she has examined enzymes involved in the production of biofuels, ecological design principles for synthetic biology, and the evolution of microbial communities in the soil. As an artist, she has mapped the microbial diversity of California, isolated halophilic bacteria from the Salton Sea and made cheese from bacteria living on human skin. She collaborated with Sissel Tolaas and Daisy Ginsberg on Resurrecting the Sublime (2019) to produce the scent of an extinct flower. Since 2015, she works as the creative director of Ginkgo Bioworks, where she engages with people, policies, and potential futures involved in synthetic biology, working for more open, equitable, and renewable technologies.