Maresi Nerad is the founding director of the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE) and a Professor for Higher Education, College of Education, at the University of Washington, Seattle and an affiliated professor at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California, Berkeley. A native of Germany, Dr. Nerad received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley; directed research in the central Graduate Division of UC Berkeley, served as Dean in Residence at the Council of Graduate Schools, D.C. (the professional association of US Graduate Deans), and as Associate Dean of the UW central Graduate School. She was appointed as distinguished Mieguanyah Fellow by the Graduate School of the University of Melbourne, Australia, as Professor Extraordinary by the University of the Free State, South Africa, and received the Fulbright Specialist award. She was a visiting professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, at Nagoya University, Japan and at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.

She has served on many national and international review committees and advisory boards, such as the International Advisory Committee for Science and Engineering of NSF (US), the National Academies Panel to evaluate the NSF/NCSES approach to measuring the US Science and Engineering Workforce, the U.S. National Research Council, the German Excellence Initiative, the Presidential Innovation Board of the University of Bremen, Germany, the Graduate Academy of the Goethe University of Frankfurt. She has undertaken evaluation research for flagship interdisciplinary doctoral programs in the U.S. (NSF/IGERT), in Germany, and for the European Commission (ITN). She has written and edited 5 books and published numerous articles on doctoral education (Towards a Global PhD? Globalization and the Impact on the Quality on Doctoral Education).

Most recently she has secured funding and co-organized an international workshop and conference on Forces and Forms in Doctoral Education Worldwide in Difficult Political Times (VW Foundation) in September 1-5, 2019 in Hannover Germany. The resulting book, Towards a Core Value System in Doctoral Education, UCL Press will appear in spring 2022. Resulting policy recommendations are to be found under www.doctoral-education.info.

She publishes with current and former students, advises and coaches on a broad range of issues in doctoral education and in early research careers worldwide and currently is investigating Taboos in Doctoral Education Across Countries.

Prof. S. Arunachalam is globally known for his expertise in Scientometrics and their use for assessing the research impact on a wide scale ranging from individuals and departments to institutions and countries.  His interests includes scientometrics, science policy, information science, public understanding of science, openness in scholarly communication, ICT for Development and rural knowledge centres and improving information access, both for scientists and for the rural poor. He is one of the earliest in the developing countries to use citation indexes to study developments in science and science policy. He was instrumental in CSIR, DBT and DST adopting Green open access as official policy.