Since 2020, Atsushi Sunami has served as President of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. He graduated from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and earned both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. After working as a researcher at the Nomura Research Institute’s Policy Research Department, he held various academic positions at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), including Associate Professor, Professor, and Vice President. He currently serves as Special Advisor to the President and Director of the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Research Center at GRIPS. He has also contributed to government policymaking as a member and advisor on science, technology, and innovation policy for agencies such as the Cabinet Office, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the fields of science diplomacy and international cooperation, he has been actively engaged in policy proposals and institutional design through dialogue and collaboration.

Mitsutaku Makino is currently President of the Ocean Policy Research Institute (OPRI) of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) as well as Professor at the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute (AORI), the University of Tokyo. He received his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Kyoto University, and also earned a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge.He began his academic career as a postdoctoral researcher at Yokohama National University, Japan, where he worked from April 2003 to April 2005. In May 2005, he joined the National Research Institute of Fisheries Science under the Fisheries Research Agency, Japan, where he served successively as Researcher, Senior Researcher, and Group Head until March 2019. Since April 2019, he has been serving as a Professor at AORI.

Masanori Kobayashi is Senior Research Fellow of the Ocean Policy Research Institute of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF), and formerly Senior Research Fellow and Program Director of SPF. He undertakes research work on ocean and sustainability policy including sustainable blue economies, marine environment and resource management, sustainable fisheries, marine pollution control, ocean based renewable energies, and regional and international cooperation and partnership. He worked on sustainability issues at the Ocean Policy Research Foundation, the Yokohama National University, the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, the United Nations (New York, Geneva and Bonn) and the Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His publications include Kobayashi, M. et al (2022) Capitalizing on Co-Benefits and Synergies to Promote the Blue Economy in Asia and the Pacific”. In: Morgan, P. et al. eds. Blue Economy and Blue Finance – Toward Sustainable Development and Ocean Governance. Asian Development Bank Institute, pp. 150 – 189. He has been speaking and moderating various sessions including some of the recent ones such as the Honiara Summit on Sustainable Fisheries in Feb. 2025, Ocean pavilion at the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Nikkei Blue Ocean Forum, the World Ocean Summit 2023 and 2024, Our Ocean Conference 2023 in Panama and OOC 2022 in Palau.