Prof. Dr. Andreas Macke is Professor for Physics of the Atmosphere at Leipzig University. He serves as director of the Leibniz-Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS) and heads the Department of Remote Sensing of Atmospheric Processes. Prof. Dr. Macke studied physics at the University of Cologne and received his doctorate at the University of Hamburg. After research stays in Geesthacht, New York City, Kiel and Munich he conducts his research in Leipzig since 2010. As a leading scientist he partook in the MOSAiC-Expedition 2019-2020 and researched the climate of the Arctic.

Prof. Dr. Beate Schücking studied medicine in Ulm with stays in Paris and New York City and received her doctorate with a thesis in experimental hematology. In 1989 she was appointed Professor of Medicine at the Department of Social Work at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. There she focused on the topics of women's health and social gerontology. After stays in Vienna and Osnabrück, including as Dean of the Department of Health Sciences and Psychology and Vice President for Research and Promotion of Young Academics at the University of Osnabrück, she became Rector of the University of Leipzig on 01.03.2011. She held this office until March 2022.

Prof. Dr. André Anders has a joint appointment as Director of IOM and Professor of Applied Physics at Leipzig University. His specialty is plasma physics and material sciences. He has authored 3 books and more than 350 papers in peer-reviewed journals, which were cited over 20,000 times. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Applied Physics and can thus explain publishing subtleties from the viewpoint of author, reviewer and editor.

James Conant, born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1958, is Humboldt Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in Leipzig, Germany, and Chester D. Tripp Professor of Humanities, Professor of Philosophy, and Full Professor at the College of the University of Chicago, USA. Conant works widely in the field of philosophy and has published articles on topics including philosophical logic, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, aesthetics, German idealism, and the history of analytic philosophy, as well as interpretations on a wide range of philosophers, including Descartes, Kant, Emerson, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Josiah Royce, William James, Frege, Carnap, Wittgenstein, Putnam, Cavell, Rorty, Stroud, and McDowell, to name a few.

Prof. Kristin Rebien is Associate Professor of German and European Studies at San Diego State University, California (USA). She studied German Studies and Political Science at Leipzig University and received her doctorate in German Studies from Stanford University. Her research examines the interface between literature and politics, philosophy, and the visual arts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her recent focus has been on concepts of European unity in German literature since 1945.