Thor Sigfusson is an Icelandic entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Iceland Ocean Cluster, Grandi Food Hall, Hlemmur Food Hall, Codland, Collagen and several other start-ups in the blue economy. In recent years, Thor has been expanding the Ocean Cluster network. Currently, five sister clusters are up and running in the United States, one in the Faroe Islands, and one in the Pacific’s.

Thor has published eight books on subjects as different as business and salmon. He has a PhD in international business and business networks and his research has been published in academic business journals. His main interest is entrepreneurial networks and better utilization of fish resources.

Thor is a well-known speaker and has been key speaker on various seafood related conferences all over the world including Abu-Dhabi, US and South-Korea.

James Gaffey has a lot of notable achievements. He is a Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Circular Bioeconomy Research Group at Shannon ABC at Munster Technology University and a researcher on multiple national and EU-funded bioeconomy initiatives including Biorefinery Glas small-scale grass biorefinery demonstration (coordinator), BBI JU projects ICT-BIOCHIAN (scientific coordinator) and BIOSWITCH, and H2020 projects such as BIO4AFRICA, COOPID and agroBRIDGES.

He is also an Academic Collaborator in the SFI BiOrbic Research Centre and part of the SFI Farm Zero C team developing a worlds first net-zero emissions dairy demonstration farm. In addition to that he is also a part of MTU's core programme development team on the MSc Programme Bioeconomy with Business.

James has been a regular contributor to European-level studies into circular economy and bioeconomy, and has been a member of the Expert Panel for the Impact Assessment of Circular Biobased Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU) successor programme to BBI JU under the Horizon Europe programme.

He was previously biorefinery specialist on the EU Horizon 2020 AgriForValor Project and prior to joining MTU worked at NUI Galway (Technology Centre for Biorefining and Bioenergy) as part of the "Bio-Éire - a Bioeconomy for Ireland" team – the results of which are a key part to help develop a National Bioeconomy Policy Statement for Ireland.

James has worked in the field of advanced biorefining since 2009.

Tom Bosschaert has developed over 500 projects pioneering projects for cities, buildings, business, policy, and industry. His vision shows that we can flourish globally when we integrate environmental, societal, economical and technical aspects at the same time.
After his Master in Industrial Design Engineering from Delft, he studied Architecture in Australia at the University of Western Australia, and obtained his Masters in Architecture & Urban Planning from Yale University.
In 2017 his initiative, the UCo center for sustainable entrepreneurship in Utrecht opened, bringing together over 150 sustainability pioneers in the first energy neutral, circular and healthy listed heritage building in Europe.
Tom Bosschaert also developed the Symbiosis in Development (SiD) methodology which combines systems thinking, complexity analysis, iterative design thinking and co-creation in multi-disciplinary teams.
As director and designer, he has leaded Except bio-based architectural and urban designs, such as the Merredin Algae plant, Shanghai vertical agriculture tower systems and the urban redevelopment of large and small cities around the world.

Hanno Tomberg is the head of Open University at TalTech. Open University is responsible for lifelong education and schoolchildren activities at TalTech. He is also leading the Just Transition Fund workgroup at the university, which has proposed TalTech’s action plan to use the funds means in the next six years for higher and continuing education. Previously he has worked at the Management Board at Foundation Archimedes, responsible for implementing the European Union structural funds in higher education and science, as Managing Director of Enterprise Estonia (EAS) from 2014 to 2016 and at management posts at various Estonian publications and media houses. He has earned a Master’s degree in journalism from Tartu University in 1993.

Rutt Hints' main interests are currently connected with metallogeny and sedimentology of black shales. Her other research directions involve diverse problems of geochemistry, mineralogy and genesis of fine-grained sedimentary and volcanic complexes. During the last decade she has been engaged in several international projects devoted to geological information systems and digital educational resources.

Rutt has received her PhD in geology from the University of Tartu. Besides research activities, she is the study programme director for Georesources at TalTech.

Dr Massimo Gasparon has been developing the EU Raw Materials sector for several years. He started as Innovation Director at EIT RawMaterials where the six value chain-based thematic areas are driving the EU Raw Materials sector towards a major strength for Europe.
Dr Gasparon is the European Raw Materials Alliance director where the main challenges are: to develop resilient value chains for EU industrial ecosystems; reduce dependency on primary critical raw materials through circular use of re-sources, sustainable products and innovation; strengthen domestic sourcing of raw materials in the EU; diversify sourcing from third countries and remove distortions to international trade, fully respecting the EU’s international obligations. These all provide many opportunities to develop green technologies and new approaches in Circular Economy to fulfil the EU Green Deal.

Dr Olli Salmi is the Director of EIT RawMaterials Baltic Sea Innovation Hub, representing EIT RawMaterials in Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Dr Salmi has two decades of experience in leadership, innovation management and capacity building in the mineral sector as well as in planning and design. At EIT RawMaterials, he strives to ensure better integration of innovation, education and business among the metal and mineral sector stakeholders in their efforts to turn raw materials into a major strength for Europe.

Prior to joining EIT RawMaterials, Dr Salmi has worked as Research Professor at VTT Technological Research Centre of Finland and as CTO of EPECC Ltd.

Darina Štyriaková is a professional research associate at Slovenian Building and Civil Engineering Institute, a biotechnologist and the Founder of ekolive. ekolive is the first and leading provider of a new ecological bioleaching method (InnoBioTech™) for the ecological release of elements and the degradation of organic contaminants.

She has registered 2 EU patents and coordinated 2 EU funded projects. She is a professional research associate at Slovenian Building and Civil Engineering Institute (ZAG), a member of the first sustainability expert community of the Visegrád Group focused on Climate Neutrality by 2050 and the EU Sustainable Development Strategy.

Darina is in the TOP 5 creative young Entrepreneurs of Slovakia 2020, a member of European Raw Materials Alliance ERMA, member of Artemis, and CircLean.

Birgit Rusten is one of the founders of FutureBuilt, an innovation program in its second ten-year-period. FutureBuilt’s goal is fuelling the shift towards low carbon and people-centered cities and architecture.

Through FutureBuilt Birgit and her team have developed a quite unique model for cooperation between municipalities, developers and real estate, to help making buildings and city areas more sustainable and climate friendly.

FutureBuilt have initiated more than 50 pilot-projects in the Oslo region in Norway, to showcase that zero carbon and high quality buildings and city areas are within reach.

Abdolrasoul Habibipour (Ph.D.) is a postdoctoral researcher in Information Systems at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden and managing director of Botnia Living Lab, Sweden. His research focuses on participatory design and user engagement in living lab context, with a particular emphasis on users’ motivations and needs. Abdolrasoul has experience teaching and supervising students at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and has published several journal and conference articles in his research topic. He has been involved in different international innovation and research projects such as Privacy Flag, USEMP and U4IoT projects and is currently working on UNaLab, LiLaCC and ACCLab projects.

Dr. Ralf-Martin Soe is a Founding Director of the FinEst Centre for Smart Cities. His previous positions include being an ICT Counsellor to the Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology, a Supervisory Board Member at the Estonian Internet Foundation and a Government Fellow at the United Nations University’s e-Government Unit.
Since 2013, he has been involved with the NGO ITL Digital Lab (ICT Cluster of Estonia) as a Development Manager. During 2009-2013, he was a Financial and Digitalisation Consultant working with the UK Government, PwC, Praxis and United Nations University. From 2006-2009, he was an Investigative Journalist at the Business Daily Äripäev and was selected as the Best Young Journalist in Estonia by the Estonian Newspaper Association in 2008, after several nominations.
Ralf has two master degrees in Financial Management (MSc, Maastricht University/ United Nations University and MBA, University of Tartu) and has a PhD degree in Technology Governance from TalTech. He was selected as the TalTech Junior Researcher of the Year 2019 and most influential person of the year 2019 in Estonia by the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

Mihkel Kaevats is an Estonian poet and a city activist, who now leads the Green Transition in Tallinn City. His latest achievement is taking the strategy „Climate Neutral Tallinn“ successfully through the City Parliament. He was also the writer for the city’s roof strategy „Tallinn 2035“. Focusing in achieving a human-centered change in city space, mobility and sustainability, „Tallinn 2035“ was an organization-wide effort to compile an ambitious big picture for the whole Tallinn city region. In private life, he is a passionate city cyclist, an inspired maker of walks and a devoted fan of his dog.

Maarten is trained as an urban planner and graduated on sustainable urban development at the University of Amsterdam and the Northeastern University in Boston. Before AM he worked for the City of Amsterdam on urban renewal programs.

As a Sustainable Development Manager at AM Maarten invents, develops and implements sustainability solutions for new district developments. He focuses on the energy transition, circular construction, climate adaptation and sustainable mobility and works with a wide array of partners to innovate and mainstream best practices. Among other projects he works on the transformation of the Amsterdam prison complex into the ecodistrict ‘Bajeskwartier’. AM won the project from a competition organized by the Central Government Real Estate Agency.

Merit Valdsalu is the CEO and Co-Founder of Single.Earth, a startup integrating nature protection into the economy. She's an avid environmentalist and equality advocate, and an ex-Pipdriver fond of super scalable and impactful tech solutions. Single.Earth combines her two passions: saving the planet from an ecological disaster by using cutting-edge technology.

Jüri Kaljundi is has founded many services and foundations. For example he is the co-founder of Weekdone, a weekly team management service that makes managers and employees more productive.

He is also the co-founder of Koosloodus, a nature conservancy foundation, that helps to protect and develope Estonian nature. And he is also the co-founder of Garage48, a regional non-profit startup foundation, that organizes weekend hackathons and startup events in the Baltics, Europe, Middle-East and Africa.

Sten Aan is a green energy enthusiast. He is leading the energy sector advisory business in KPMG Baltics. His team is oriented to helping companies transition to a more sustainable future, primarily focusing on renewable energy investment projects and sustainable strategy.

Previously he has led business development at Eesti Energia group in various positions, most notably initiating the group's solar business in Estonia. Sten holds MSc in power engineering and MA in management from TalTech.