Dr. Jana Zinkernagel,  Hochschule Geisenheim University, Germany, holds a degree in horticultural sciences from the Technical University of Munich. In 2008, she obtained a PhD from the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen on the hydrophysiology of asparagus. Since December 2010, she is head of the Department of Vegetable Crops and Professor for Vegetable Crops at the Hochschule Geisenheim University. She holds several important positions as board member and coordinator of institutes. Her research fields are irrigation science, climate change impact and ecophysiology of vegetable crops. Recent research focuses on model- and sensor-based management systems. She has published around 100 scientific papers, mostly in the field of horticultural science.

Dr. Christian Schader heads the sustainability assessment group at the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) in Switzerland. He obtained a PhD on environmental-economic evaluation of agricultural policy at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His work encompasses evaluations of environmental, economic and social aspects of food production and consumption, including the development and application of methods, models and tools for analysing different sets of environmental, economic and social aspects of food supply chains. Apart from his work at global level and in developed countries, Christian has substantial field experience and he has co-authored the SAFA Guidelines (Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems) and has developed the SOL-Model.

Dr. Stefanos A. Nastis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Assistant Professor of Agricultural Production Economics and Agricultural Economic Development. He received his PhD in Economics on the effects of the environment on children’s health at the University of Wyoming, USA. His research interests in the interplay between agricultural economics and environmental economics encompass farm adaptation to climate change, farm efficiency and agricultural productivity analysis, crop biodiversity, innovations in farm planning and management, information technologies in farm management. He has published in international refereed journals and participated in national and international projects.

Dr. Ana Iglesias, Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Spain, is Professor of Environmental Economics and Policy. She is member of the Center for Agricultural and Environmental Risks of the UPM. Her research focuses on the interactions between global change, agriculture, and water, with particular emphasis on economic impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. She currently leads several EU projects related to adaptation policy. Her work has been published in over two hundred papers and she has been contributing author to the IPCC since 1995 and was review editor of the Economics of Climate Change in the IPCC report of 2014 (AR5).

Dr. Andrea Toreti, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy, is a senior scientist/scientific officer. He graduated in Mathematics at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy, and obtained a PhD in Climate Sciences at the University of Bern, Switzerland. He held positions at the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, at the University of Bern and the University of Giessen as assistant professor. His areas of interest include climate extremes and impacts on agriculture, climate variability, climate change impacts and adaptation, statistical climatology, change-point detection and attribution and agro-meteorology. He is the recipient of the MedCLIVAR Award for his contribution to research addressing climate extremes in the Mediterranean region.

Dr. Konstadinos Mattas, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Director and Professor of Agricultural Marketing and Policy. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics at the University of Kentucky, USA. His areas of research include agricultural policy, European policy, international trade, inter-industry analysis, Rural Development Interdisciplinary work, Agricultural marketing, and Investment analysis. He has published more than 190 peer-reviewed articles. He has served at the Board of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Agricultural Economists and the Greek Association of Agricultural Economists.

Dr. Athanasios Koukounaras, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Horticulture. He received his PhD in horticulture in 2007 at the same university. His areas of expertise include plant physiology, hydroponics cultivation, postharvest handling and physiology, fruit ripening, biodiversity and vegetables grafting. He has participated in several research projects. He has published around 30 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. He has served as scientific committee member of international and national symposia and conference as well as guest editor of a special issue in Advanced Greenhouse Horticulture.

Dr. Theodoros Mavromatis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Associate Professor of agrometeorology at the Department of Geology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia, UK, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in NCAR and the University of Florida, USA. His current research activities are in the fields of climate interactions with agriculture, using agrometeorological models and drought indicators under historical or future climate conditions. He has published more than 30 articles in international peer-reviewed journals.

Dr. Thomas Bournaris, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics. He obtained his PhD in Agricultural Economics in 2009 from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He works on agricultural economics, farm management and regional planning, sustainability in agriculture and management of agricultural resources. He has conducted research in many national and European funded projects. Recent publications include papers in the fields of biomass production, impact assessment of policy measures, planning of agro-energy districts in various prestigious scientific journals.

Dr. Kyriaki Kalbourtzi, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Professor of Laboratory of Ecology and Environmental Protection at the Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry & Natural Environment since 2002. She received her PhD at the same university in 1988 on "Manipulations of straw and allelopathy in agroecosystems of wheat (Triticum aestivum L. Em. Tell) and fababeans (Vicia faba L.)". Her research interests on agricultural ecology encompass biological (organic) farming, alternative farming systems, interactions between agro-ecosystems and other ecosystems, allelopathy, crop residue management, crop residue decomposition, nutrient cycling, energy flow in Mediterranean agro-ecosystems, and climate change effects on agriculture and vice versa. She has published around 60 scientific papers.

Dr. Andreas Mamolos, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Professor of Laboratory of Ecology and Environmental Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Forestry & Natural Environment. He received his PhD at the same university on "Plant species co-existence in herbaceous communities of late successional stages" His research focuses on Plant Ecology, the ecological effects of human domination to evolution and maintenance of biodiversity, population ecology, role of resource availability (nutrients and water) on plant competition, role of AMF in nutrition and plant coexistence, the relationships of environmental factors affecting the distribution and abundance of plants, recycling of matter and energy flows in natural and agricultural Mediterranean-type ecosystems, and impacts of changing climate on agriculture and vice versa. He is author of more than 50 scientific papers.

Dr. Stefanos Koundouras, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Assistant Professor in the Laboratory of Viticulture, School of Agriculture. He graduated from the School of Agriculture of the same university and obtained the Diplome National D’Oenologue (DNO), MSc in Enology-Viticulture (DEA) and PhD in Viticulture (Doctorat, 1999) at the University Victor Segalen Bordeaux II, France. His main research interests include vine ecophysiology and stress responses, vine water relations and impact on grape quality attributes. He is the Scientific Secretary of the Expert Group “Management and Innovations of Viticultural Techniques” of the “Viticulture” Commission of the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV, Paris) and a member of the International and Greek Society for Horticultural Science, and of the Associations of Enologists of Bordeaux and Greece. He is author and co-author of over 70 pear-reviewed research articles.

Dr. Juerg Luterbacher, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany, is Chair for Climatology, Climate Dynamics and Climate Change. He received his PhD in climate sciences from the University of Bern, Switzerland. His research is devoted to better understanding of past, present and future hydrological changes and temperature variations in Eurasia, the Arctic and Asia and the role of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. With his interdisciplinary approaches, he also studies the effects and influences of solar changes, tropical eruptions, land use changes and anthropogenic climate change on societies and their capacities to cope with extreme climate conditions. Another focus deals with novel statistical methods to downscale future extremes to local scales with potential applications for various stakeholders and provide climate services for different users. He was lead author in the IPCC 5th assessment report and has more than 170 peer-reviewed publications, including Science and Nature.

Dr. Andreas Gattinger, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany, is Professor of Organic Farming with focus on Sustainable Soil Use since 2017. He studied agriculture at the universities in Kassel/ Germany and Aberdeen/UK and got his PhD in soil microbiology at the Technical University of Munich in 2001. He has international scientific expertise in the field of soil ecology and climate impact of farming systems and his interests focus on organic farming systems, soil functions, greenhouse gases, eco-functional intensification, agro-ecology. He has authored or co-authored 65 peer-reviewed scientific journal articles to date, and is involved in numerous national and international research projects on climate change mitigation and adaptation in agriculture.

Dr. Prodromos Zanis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, is Professor at the Department of Meteorology and Climatology. He obtained his PhD at the University of Bern, Switzerland. His areas of expertise cover tropospheric and stratospheric ozone, air pollution and climate change, regional climate and air quality modelling, and chemistry - climate interactions from regional to global scale. He has around 90 publications in peer-reviewed international scientific journals and 90 articles in conference proceedings. He is Lead Author in chapter 6 of WGI AR6 of IPCC, coordinator of the Outstanding Student Poster contest at EGU in Atmospheric Sciences Division and Director of the Department of Meteorology and Climatology.

Dr. Martin Petrick, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany, is Professor of agricultural, food and environmental policy. He is also visiting researcher at Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies. Before that, he was Deputy Head of the Department Agricultural Policy at IAMO and professor at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Germany. He holds a PhD in agricultural economics from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. Major fields of expertise include structural change in agriculture, agricultural transition in former Soviet countries, the evaluation of agricultural policy measures, and public action in rural development. He has worked in senior positions for activities funded by the German Research Council, the European Commission, the World Bank, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, and other institutions.

Dr. Irmgard Jordan, from the Center for International Development and Environmental Research at the Justus Liebig University is a nutrition and home economic scientist. Her research focus is on nutrition epidemiology in low income countries with special emphasis on barriers and facilitating factors for sustainable diets. She is currently leading the nutrition component of the EaTSANE research project implemented in Uganda and Kenya. EaTSANE, “ Education and Training for sustainable agriculture and nutrition in EastAfrica”, is one of the 27 projects funded within the “Long term EU-Africa research and innovation partnership on food and nutrition security and sustainable agriculture (LEAP-Agri)”, an initiative of the European Union and the African Union.

Dr. Andreas Dittmann, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Germany, is Professor and Chair of Human Geography and Development Research since 2007. He received his PhD in social anthropology from the Philipps University Marburg. He holds several important positions such as DAAD-Coordinator Geography for “Re-Construction of Academic Structures in Afghanistan”, president of the “German Afghan University Association” (DAUG) and President of the Association of Geographers at Universities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (VGDH), among others. His research interests cover human geography, development and cultural geography, population and urban geography, human–environment–relations, and geographic conflict. He is author of a large number of scientific papers, books, and various reports for the scientific and science-interested public readership.