Associate Professor Maciej Banach, MD, PhD, is the Head of the Department of Hypertension in the Medical University of Łódź. He is the author or co-author of 15 books and more than 250 publications in the field of cardiology, hypertensiology, lipidology, cardiac surgery and nephrology. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Archives of Medical Science (AMS) and Cardiovascular Continuum, as well as the editor and the member of Editorial Advisory Board of numerous international medical journals such as Medical Science Monitor and Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy.

Professor Banach was also a member of Young Scientists' Council and the Committee for Parametric Evaluation of Scientific Journals at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland.

He won the scholarship dedicated to most talented young scientists granted by the Polityka magazine in 2006. In 2009 he was the laureate of the START Programme conducted by the Foundation for Polish Science and the winner of the Minister of Health award for a series of scientific research investigations.

In the Ministry of Science and Higher Education Professor Banach has overall responsibility for all policy matters within the science sector: implementation of the changes introduced in the science system in October 2010, especially new procedures in evaluation of scientific units and international cooperation in the field of science and research.

Professor Maciej Banach is 33 years old, he is a father of 6-year-old twins.

Dr. Zoran Stančič is Deputy Director-General in the European Commission, DG INFSO since 2009.

Trained as an engineer he started his professional career as a research assistant at the Department of Archaeology, University of Ljubljana. In 1994 he was employed as the Head of the Spatial Information Centre of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Associate Professor at the Department of Geodesy. From 1990 till 2000 he was a research fellow or visiting professor at the University of Arkansas, the Delft University of Technology, the University of Reading, the Boston University, the University of Trieste and the University of Paris. Zoran Stančič has published seven scientific books and a number of scientific papers on quantitative methods in archaeology and remote sensing.

During 1999 - 2000 he was Deputy Director of the Scientific Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

From the year 2000 to 2004 he was State Secretary for Science at the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport in Slovenia.

In the period 2004 - 2009 he served as Deputy Director-General in the European Commission, DG Research.

Andrzej Jajszczyk is the Director of the National Science Centre and a professor at AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland. He received M.S., Ph.D., and Dr Hab. degrees from Poznan University of Technology in 1974, 1979 and 1986, respectively. He spent a year at the University of Adelaide in Australia, two years at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and half year at Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne, France. He is the author or co-author of seven books and more than 260 research papers, as well as 19 patents in the areas of telecommunications switching, high-speed networking, network management and reliability. He has been a consultant to industry, telecommunications operators, and government agencies in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Poland, and the USA.

He was the founding editor of IEEE Global Communications, editor of IEEE Transactions on Communications, and editor-in-chief of IEEE Communications Magazine. He serves on editorial boards of various reputed journals, including Annales des Télécommunications, China Communications, and Journal of Security and Telecommunications. In 2004 - 2005 he was Director of Magazines of IEEE Communications Society (and again, starting from January 2010) and in 2006 - 2007 he was Director of Europe, Africa, and Middle East Region in the same Society. In 2008 - 2009 he served as Vice-President - Technical Activities. He has been involved in organization of numerous conferences. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. Andrzej Jajszczyk is Vice-President of the Kyoto-Krakow Foundation, fostering cultural and technical relations between Asia and Poland.

Olle Viktorsson is responsible for Ericsson's external research relations globally. Olle Viktorsson took his M.Sc. in electrical engineering at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm 1970 and joined Ericsson in 1971 after military service. Since then he has been working within the R&D organisation at Ericsson, Ellemtel and Ericsson again. From 1996 he has been with Ericsson Research, first for ten years as Director of IP Networks Research and for several years also as Ericsson's IETF coordinator. Now he is responsible for external research relations globally which includes coordination of university co-operations in Europe, Asia, North and South America as well as EU FP7, EIT ICT Labs and Celtic projects. The external research cooperations covers areas such as wireless, transport, packet, services, software, multimedia, security, safety and sustainability.

Matthew Finnie drives the company's advanced services strategy, including developing the platform that has allowed the company to launch its industry-leading VOIP, Ethernet and Media products. Trained as an electrical engineer, he helped develop early IP-product innovations, including one of the first commercial applications of VOIP a decade ago. As head of the Enterprise Service Development Group at Vocaltec, he worked with European/US carriers and multi-national corporations to launch converged communication services. Matthew was also the co-founder of US-based Internet start-up Insitu, which developed real-time IP collaboration tools. Matthew has degrees in electrical and electronic engineering and marketing.

The NGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) Alliance is an open forum founded by world-leading mobile operators. Its goal is to ensure that the standards for next generation network infrastructure, service platforms and devices will meet the requirements of operators and, ultimately, will satisfy end user demand and expectations. Projects are established to share, assess, and drive various aspects of mobile broadband technologies focusing on LTE/EPC and its evolution. The results complement and support the work within standardisation bodies and industry fora.

Peter serves as Operating Officer and Member of the Board of the NGMN Alliance. He is responsible for the management of NGMN"s operations, the definition of the strategic direction towards the Board, the co-ordination of projects and task forces, as well as the representation of the NGMN Alliance in the Telco community.

By doing research and business in various fields of Telecommunications for over 30 years including more than 15 years of executive management with operators of mobile communication networks, Peter has gained broad technology and management experience.

From 2000 until 2006, he held positions as a Senior Executive in Orange. He started as Chief Technical Officer with Orange Communications SA, Switzerland, and finally was responsible for Quality and Performance as Corporate Vice President with Orange SA, Paris. Prior to joining Orange, he was more than 7 years with E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH as General Manager, Systems Engineering.

Peter has held various positions as founding Board Member in industry fora including the UMTS Forum. He has been serving as a Scientific Advisor to the German Research Foundation since 1996.

Since July 2006, he has been running his own company as a Business Consultant, focusing on innovation, strategy, and organization development in key areas of the telecommunications industry. With his experience and personal network he provides support for several enterprises as Board Member or in mission critical projects.

Lauri Oksanen is head of Nokia Siemens Networks Research. Lauri joined Nokia in 1988. He worked first in optical fiber technology and then in mobile radio systems. He was with Nokia 3G WCDMA program from the beginning and was responsible for the development of planning, optimization and performance of the system. Lauri has Master's and Licentiate degrees in Telecommunications from Helsinki University of Technology, where he also worked as a researcher before joining Nokia.

Thierry Van Landegem is currently Vice President of Global Operations for Bell Labs, the research and venturing arm of Alcatel-Lucent. He heads all Bell Labs locations worldwide and his responsibilities include innovation culture, eco-system, open innovation and operations.

Prior to this he served as a Vice President of the Internet Access Division responsible for a broadband product line. Before that he was the Director of Network Architecture and Strategy for the Alcatel group in the areas of broadband telecommunications.