Dr. Jane Lubchenco, University Distinguished Professor at Oregon State University, is a marine ecologist with expertise in the ocean, climate change, and interactions between the environment and human well-being.
She served on the Board of Directors for the U.S. National Science Foundation from 1996-2006. She was the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and an inaugural member of President Obama’s Science Team from 2009-2013. From 2014-2016, she was the first U.S. State Department Science Envoy for the Ocean, serving as a science diplomat to China, Indonesia, South Africa, Mauritius, and the Seychelles. From 2021-2025, she served as the Deputy Director of Climate and Environment within the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Biden presidency.

Education
Kyoto University: Bachelor, Master of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy.
University of Cambridge: Master of Philosophy.
Professional Experiences
Post doctoral researcher, Yokohama National Univ.,Japan:April, 2003- April, 2005
Researcher/Senior Researcher/Group Head, National Research Institute of Fisheries Science,Fisheries Research Agency, Japan:May, 2005- March,2019,
Professor, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo:April, 2019- Present
Other Activities
IUCN CEM-FEG member, PICES HD Committee Chair, ICES JMS Editor, Journal Marine Policy Editor, IMBER WG-HD associate member, etc.

Sailors for the Sea Japan (SFSJ) was established in 2011, as an affiliate of a marine conservation NGO founded by David Rockefeller, Jr., the head of the Rockefeller Family in 2004.
As an international environmental NGO, the SFSJ aims to realize a sustainable society by improving the marine environment through awareness-raising activities and policy advocacy through the development and operation of programmes such as the Blue Seafood Guide, a sustainable seafood rating program, and the Clean Regatta, an environmental standard for marine sports.
As an official columnist, Minako is participating in media series, including Forbes Japan “Aiming for a sustainable Society through Improvements to the Marine Environment”, 25ans “Minako Iue’s Save the Ocean”, and OCEANS dialogue series “The BLUEKEEPERS Project”.
Minako received Ph.D. in Global Environmental Studies from Kyoto University. She is currently a Project Researcher at Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo, and a Specially Appointed Associate Professor at Research Institute for Humanity and Nature.
She loves skiing (ex All-Japan Championship Competitor), Tea Ceremony (Associate Professor of the Urasenke School), and Ocean.

Charles Goddard imagines and builds The Economist Group’s flagship initiatives, the purpose of which is to catalyse progress on key issues of the day. He works closely with partners on themes including ocean health and the sustainable ocean economy, the Anthropocene, global health security, and ageing and longevity. Based in Sydney, Australia Charles was previously editorial director, Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit, director of research in Asia, and managing director of the Economist Corporate Network, a peer network for senior executives. He is concurrently executive director of Economist Impact’s World Ocean Initiative, and Back to Blue, a joint initiative with The Nippon Foundation that is building pathways to zero pollution in the ocean by 2050.

Atsushi Watanabe holds a doctorate in Science and specializes in geography and earth and planetary science, which he studied at the University of Tokyo. From 2004 to 2008, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Nagoya University's Graduate School of Environmental Studies. He then served as an assistant professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology's Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering from 2008 to 2018.
His research has focused on material cycles—particularly carbon—in coral reefs and coastal blue carbon ecosystems, as well as the effects of climate change and local stressors on these environments.
Since 2018, he has been a senior research fellow at the Ocean Policy Research Institute (OPRI) of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, where he leads research on blue economy and blue carbon policy. In April 2025, he assumed the role of Director of the Department of Ocean Vision and Action at OPRI. He has also served as a director of the Japan Blue Economy Association (JBE) since July 2020.

Sustainable management of coastal areas and facilitating science-policy-society interface in the ocean space is the core interest of Kotaro Tanaka. Kotaro’s expertise is in underwater acoustics and marine science, technology and society. Since joining the OPRI in 2021, he has been involved in various projects including maritime communications, ocean observation, ocean digitalization, networking of Early Career Ocean Professionals (ECOP), and a policy study on the UN Ocean Decade. Besides his role in OPRI, he has been working in Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, and Japan Fisheries Science and Technology Association. Kotaro holds PhD in Informatics (Kyoto University). He became a new father recently.