Carlos M. Duarte (Lisbon, 1960) is the CEO of the Global Coral R&D Accelerator Platform.  Duarte’s research addresses the effects of global change on marine ecosystems and the development of ocean-based solutions to global challenges. He developed evidence-based strategies to rebuild the abundance of marine life by 2050, and leads efforts to solve the coral reef crisis. Building on his research showing mangroves, seagrasses and salt-marshes to be globally-relevant carbon sinks, he developed, working with different UN agencies, the concept of Blue Carbon as a nature-based solution to climate change. His research, across all oceans, depths, organisms and ecosystem types, has led to more than 1.100 scientific papers. Duarte is ranked as the top marine biologist and the 12^th most influential climate scientist worldwide (Reuters), and has received multiple accolades. On April 16 2025, he was presented by the Emperor of Japan with the Japan Prize 2025 for his “contribution to our understanding of marine ecosystem in a changing earth, especially through pioneering research on Blue Carbon”. He serves as Chief Scientist at E1 and is heavily involved with sustainability in sports.

More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_M._Duarte 

David Obura chairs the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and is Founding Director of CORDIO East Africa. After 30 years of research on coral reef vulnerability to climate change and their importance to society, his focus is now on linking local to global challenges to help society pivot towards a safe and just future.

Professor David Suggett is Director for the KAUST Coral Restoration Initiative (KCRI) at Shushah Island, Saudi Arabia – the world’s largest reef restoration effort – and a Professor in Practice at KAUST. He is a world leading expert in coral biology and how corals shape the functioning of reef systems, from scales spanning coral reef microbes to human-ecological interactions. Prior to moving to KAUST in 2023, he was a Professor at University of Technology Sydney, where he established and led the "Future Reefs" Program, Australia's largest team dedicated to unlocking how the environment and climate change influence corals of the Great Barrier Reef – a major focus of which was developing and applying novel technologies for resolving how corals function. This work led to a world-first partnership between researchers and tourism (the largest economic asset to the Great Barrier Reef) to restore degraded sites at scale, the "Coral Nurture Program", which he co-founded and led for 4 years. Work through the Coral Nurture Program has led to innovative methods to propagate and plant coral for reef restoration, and in recognition as a global model for successful targeted reef restoration, become an official Actor for the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration in 2022. He has contributed to numerous international committees and workshops for studying and conserving coral reefs, and has served the Coral Restoration Consortium - the international body dedicated to advancing knowledge on reef restoration – in several capacities since 2020. He has been a leading advocate for restoration activities as effective tools within wider reef management frameworks, and where his current role positions global efforts to develop and deploy innovations needed to transform restoration cost-efficiencies and scalability.

Gareth Williams is Professor of Marine Biology and Director of Research Impact at Bangor University's School of Ocean Sciences, UK. His work focuses on the effects of local and global human impacts and biophysical gradients on coral reefs across multiple trophic levels (microbes to sharks) and scales (individual reefs to entire ocean basins). Much of his work incorporates remote coral reefs free from direct local human impacts, providing key replication at the unimpacted end of an intact-to-degraded ecosystem spectrum. By surveying across extensive geographical areas, his research group address broad questions pertaining to: 1. the human and biophysical drivers of coral reef ecosystem structure and function, 2. climate change impacts to coral reef ecosystems, and 3. the spatial ecology of coral reefs. His recent works have highlighted the impacts of global warming and local human pressures on reef structure and function, the importance of coupled land-sea policies (like wastewater management and fisheries governance) for supporting reef persistence under climate change, and the need to better quantify ocean-reef connections to improve our models and predictions of reef futures.

Based at CARMABI Foundation in Curacao, The Marhaver Lab works to solve the trickiest puzzles in coral breeding and share the solutions with science and restoration teams worldwide so that everyone can grow more corals, faster. Dr. Marhaver was the first person to raise juveniles of the endangered Caribbean Pillar Coral and the rare, disease-prone Caribbean Pineapple Coral. With collaborators, she helped achieve the first demonstration of assisted gene flow in endangered Elkhorn Coral using cryopreserved sperm. Current projects include breeding understudied coral species, improving fertilization and cryopreservation technologies, and developing engineered materials for reef restoration. 

Dr. Marhaver's research has been featured by NPR, BBC, The Economist, Harvard, TED, Google, Mission Blue, and hundreds of other outlets. She is a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation, a TED Senior Fellow, a National Geographic Explorer, and a World Economic Forum Young Scientist.

Dr. Line K Bay (Denmark) is a coral reef scientist with nearly 30 years of experience in the field. After completing a PhD in population genetics at James Cook University in 2006, she undertook postdoctoral research in eco-evo coral genomics at the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. In 2011 she joined the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) to lead research on coral adaptation to climate change. Line’s expertise spans genetics, ecology, and evolution of coral reef organisms, with highly cited papers in leading peer-reviewed journals. Line co-designed the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program (RRAP) and co-led the coral aquaculture and deployment, and genetics sub-programs (2019 - 22). She also led the CORDAP landscape study for natural and assisted evolution in 2023. She now directs AIMS’s research into Reef Recovery, Adaptation and Restoration where ~70 scientists, technical staff, and higher degree students undertake R&D to enhance knowledge and practices for coral restoration and adaptation while delivering tangible training, capacity building and job opportunities in local communities. Passionate about science communication, Line's research has gained significant attention across various media platforms. Committed to ethical and inclusive research, Line champions collaboration among scientists, engineers, practitioners, local communities, and First Nations Peoples.

Nils Rädecker is a microbial ecologist whose research focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern photosymbioses—intimate partnerships between heterotrophic hosts and their phototrophic endosymbionts. By studying the interplay between metabolic interactions and host immune responses, his work seeks to elucidate the processes underlying the repeated formation of these symbioses throughout evolutionary history and their ongoing ecology collapse in the Anthropocene. 

Nils recently established his new research group at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) in Oldenburg, where he combines latestomics approaches with advanced imaging techniques to understand symbiotic interactions in their spatial context. 

Dr. Christian Voolstra is a coral reef scientist whose research investigates how symbioses and microbiomes shape coral resilience to environmental change. His work integrates ecological, molecular, and microbial approaches to understand the function of coral metaorganisms and to develop tools with real-world impact. His work emphasizes the need for experimental standardization and robust analytical frameworks to enable broader comparability and insight across studies. Dr. Voolstra has led and contributed to the development of several open-access community resources, including the SymPortal.org platform for coral algal symbiont typing, standardized CBASS short-term thermal stress assays, the reefgenomics.org data repository, and the Tara Pacific expedition data collection. These efforts aim to foster accessibility, interoperability, and integration of research data across the global coral reef science community.

Dr. Voolstra has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles, contributed to multiple book chapters, and holds patents related to bioactive compounds from marine organisms. He is the current President of the International Coral Reef Society (ICRS) and serves as scientific co-director of the upcoming Tara Coral expedition. He earned his PhD from the Institute of Genetics in Cologne, completed postdoctoral research at the University of California, and was a faculty member at the Red Sea Research Center at KAUST, Saudi Arabia, where he served as Associate Director from 2016 to 2019. Since 2019, he is Professor (Chair) of Genetics of Adaptation in Aquatic Systems at the University of Konstanz, Germany.