For thirty years Riel has been co-creating innovation, leadership and transformation in both the public and private sectors around the world. He is one of the world’s leading strategic foresight designers and practitioners. Currently Riel holds the position of Head of Foresight at UNESCO in Paris. Previously he has worked as a senior manager in the Ontario public service (Ministries of Finance; Universities; and Industry) and for some thirteen years in total at the OECD in Paris (Directorates of Economics; Science & Technology; Education; Territorial Development; Development Centre; International Futures Programme).

In 2005 he founded an independent consultancy – xperidox (which means knowledge through experience) to advise clients on how to use the future more effectively. Since 1988, when he managed his first major participatory foresight exercise (Vision 2000), Riel has designed over fifty applied futures projects around the world, large and small scale, public and private. He is an accomplished and innovative designer of processes for using the future to make decisions in the present.

Since July 2009, Kurt is the Secretary-General of the League of European Research Universities (LERU), an association of twenty-one leading research-intensive universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden, Leuven, Heidelberg, etc). Before joining LERU, he was the chief legal advisor (2004-2007) and the chief of staff (2007-2009) of the Flemish Minister for Public Works, Energy, Environment and Nature. He is also a professor of law (however on parttime leave since 2007) at the University of Leuven, the university where he studied law (1984-1989), obtained his PhD in Law (1989-1995) and spent (until now) his whole academic career.

Furthermore, he is an honorary professor of law at the University of Malta and the University of Dundee, was awarded the Hou-De Honorary Chair at the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, and has been a visiting professor of law at the Universities of London, Sydney and Singapore. Kurt published extensively in the field of EU Environmental, Energy and Climate Change Law, and is the editor of several leading bookseries and journals in that field. Finally, he chairs the Board of Directors of the Flemish Energy Regulator (VREG), is chair of the Flemish Environmental Damages Commission, co-chair of the Malta Legal Forum on Adaptation to Climate Change, and is on the board of a number of profit (MRBB, AIF) and non-profit (I-Cleantech) organisations in Belgium.

Ken Guy is the Director of Wise Guys Ltd., a company he launched in 2000 to conduct innovation policy research and provide advice to innovation policymakers and administrators. In 1989, he founded Technopolis Ltd., an innovation policy consultancy that, by the time of his decision to leave and sell the company in January 2000, had grown to be a leader in its field. Ken is prominent in evaluation and assessment circles.  Building on early work in the 1970s in the fields of risk assessment and environmental monitoring, and on the evaluation of collaborative R&D programmes during his time at SPRU in the 1980s, in the 1990s he established evaluation as a core competence of the Technopolis group of companies.

After nine years with Wise Guys Ltd., Ken spent the period from May 2009 to May 2011 as a visiting senior scientist at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) in Seville, one of the seven research institutes that comprise the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. Subsequently, he took up a senior position at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as Head of the Science and Technology Policy (STP) Division, where he remained until returning to Wise Guys Ltd. in February 2015.

Göran Roos is chairing the Value Add and Industrial Growth Sub-Committee of the Economic Development Board in Adelaide; He is a member of the Council for Flinders University and also a Stretton Fellow appointed by the City of Playford at University of Adelaide; Adjunct Professor at ECIC, University of Adelaide, South Australia; Australia; Adjunct Professor at University of Technology Sydney Business School, Australia; and Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Business, Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Göran is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) as well as of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA).

Göran was named one of the 13 most influential thinkers for the 21st Century by the Spanish business journal “Direccion y Progreso” and was appointed “Manufacturing for the Future” Thinker in Residence by the South Australian Premier for the year 2011 and an appointed member of the Prime Minister’s Manufacturing Leaders Group 2012/2013. He was selected for Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) Top 10 Speeches 2013: A collection of the most influential and interesting speeches from the CEDA platform in 2013 for the speech: “The future of manufacturing in Australia: Innovation and productivity”.