Prof. Dr. Milkha Singh Aulakh is presently serving as founder Vice Chancellor of Manyawar Shri Kashiram ji University of Agriculture & Technology, Banda, Uttar Pradesh State of India. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.

He has a 39-year long career dedicated to education, research and administration, besides about 10-year experience of administrative and managerial level. He is a regular Consultant of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria to design and formulate international research projects on Crop Improvement, Water, Soil and Fertilizer Management. He has been the Vice President of the Indian Society of Soil Science.

His research work was dedicated on developing and optimizing nutrient-management strategies for high nutrient-efficient, lower-unit cost crop production while minimizing environmental impacts; and to effective communication of research findings to the state, national and international agricultural community. His work has led to the development of several reliable methodologies, new crop production technologies and improved practices. He became youngest Fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1996; Fellow of Indian Society of Soil Science in 2000; and Hon. Fellow of Hi-Tech Horticultural Society in 2012.

Dr. Pisoot Vijarnsorn holds a master in Soil Survey and Classification from University of Illinois, USA and a Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of Tokyo, Japan.

His past and present research work focuses on Soil Survey and Classification, Soil Management, Land Use Planning and Farm Planning. He also participated with ESCAP on Desertification Control for several years and contributed to a study on Green House Gas Emission for the Asian Countries.

He was the National Soil Correlator of Land Development Department from 1990 to 1995, thereafter he became Senior Specialist on Soil Survey and Classification in the same department from 1996 until his retirement in 2004. Currently, he is serving as Senior Specialist on Land Development at Chaipattana Foundation. He is a member of International Union of Soil Sciences, Soil and Fertilizer Society of Thailand and Soil and Water Conservation Association of Thailand.

Dr. Kazuyuki Yagi is head of the Greenhouse Gas Team, the Department of Global Resources at the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences (NIAES), Tsukuba, Ibaraki in Japan and a member of several Japanese and American scientific societies.

He holds a Master and a Ph. D. from Nagoya University in Biogeochemistry (1986) and in Soil Science (1996) respectively. His areas of expertise are agricultural sources of trace gases particularly in Asian agroecosystems, material cycling in agricultural ecosystems, isotopic measurements, as well as biogeochemistry and global environmental change. His current research activities involve emissions of trace gases in association with different land uses and agricultural management aiming at quantifying and modeling the processes of these gas emissions and developing their mitigation technologies.

Since 2008 he has been serving as a professor at Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Tokyo.

Dr. Suk Young Hong is a senior research scientist and head of the Soil Information Lab, working at Soil and Fertilizer Management Division, National Academy of Agricultural Science (NAAS), Rural Development Administration (RDA), South Korea since 1995. She is a soil scientist with extensive experience for soil database and soil information of Korea.

She obtained her Ph.D. in 1999 from Kyungpook National University, South Korea. She worked on the establishment of Korean Soil Information System, soil prediction using VIS/NIR spectroscopy, and digital mapping of soil properties including soil organic carbon and available water capacity. She also has a strong background of remote sensing on agricultural environment such as land cover classification, estimation of crop growth, and crop yield prediction. Her group expands research interest on estimation of soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and energy-water balance modelling in agro-ecosystem using radar and thermal remote sensing.

She is now a vice-chair of ‘Division 1. Soil in Space and Time’ of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS) and is supporting the organization of the 20th World Congress of Soil Science. She is also involved in the GlobalSoilMap.net project and is a science coordinator of its East Asia Node.

Prof. Gan-Lin Zhang obtained his Ph.D on Soil Science in 1993 from the hinese Academy of Sciences and since then has been an employee at the Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

His research areas cover soil genesis, classification, digital soil mapping and soil information system, as well as urban soils. He has published more than 150 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and more than ten books/book chapters. He is on the editorial board of many well-known soil science and geography journals. He is one of the leaders in soil resource science in China. He also serves in many governmental department and professional expert panels regarding soil resource, earth surface processes and environmental protection in China and abroad.

He has been actively involved in international scientific cooperations and communications. He is currently involved in the GlobalSoilMap.net project and is the leader of its East Asia Node.