Raphaël Arlettaz is the head of the Division of Conservation Biology at the University of Bern. He works primarily on societally relevant biodiversity conservation and restoration issues, adopting a problem-solving approach. His main research focus is on the population biology of rare and endangered animal species (insects and vertebrates – amphibians, birds, bats, carnivores and ungulates) of temperate, Mediterranean and Alpine biomes and on community ecology (plants and animals) of agro-ecosystems and Alpine ecosystems (grasslands, vineyards, fruit tree plantations, forests, treeline habitats and floodplain rivers). All his research projects aim to bridge the still wide chasm that exists between science and practice, with the overarching objective to render conservation action more efficient in the real world.
Tibor 
Standovár is an associate professor and department head at the Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Institute of Biology, Loránd Eötvös University in Budapest. His major research interest is in biodiversity conservation in forests. He has led and participated in several projects on studying tree stand and vegetation dynamics of untouched forest reserves, patterns, causes and consequences of large-scale ice and wind disturbances in managed forests and on the effects of tree stand structures on the occurrence of forest-dwelling species (herbs, birds, xylophagous beetles). In the past two decades his interest has turned into more applied topics in collaboration with national parks and forestry companies including the development of monitoring schemes to assess forest naturalness.
Tamara Mitrofanenko is working as an expert in the field of regional sustainable development as part of the team of the United Nations Environment Programme, Office in Vienna, Secretariat of the Carpathian Convention and at the University of Natural Resources and life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), Institute of Landscape Development, Recreation and Conservation Planning (ILEN). Her work has been largely focused on Central and Eastern Europe, and the Caucasus countries. Her PhD Thesis was focused on “Integrating approaches from the Intergenerational field into protected area management and regional development governance”. Since learning about the importance of transdisciplinary approaches for sustainable regional development, she has devoted her efforts to integration of transdisciplinary approaches into academic systems and policy processes as well as science-policy-practice interface in the context of sustainable regional development, as well as Education for Sustainable Development.
Huan Li is a senior research fellow at the HUN-REN Balaton Limnological Research Institute (BLKI) in Tihany, Hungary, where she leads research in satellite remote sensing and environmental informatics applied to aquatic systems. Her work uses Earth observation satellites and machine learning to monitor water bodies across a wide range of scales — from reconstructing four decades of phytoplankton dynamics in Lake Balaton using Landsat imagery to retrieving sea ice thickness in Antarctica and tracking water storage changes across major river basins worldwide. A particular focus of her research is recovering long-term ecological records from historical satellite archives, revealing environmental change at timescales and spatial extents that field surveys alone cannot reach. Alongside her research, Li Huan develops open, interactive monitoring tools using Google Earth Engine, making satellite-derived water quality data freely accessible to scientists, water managers, and the broader public.