Dmitri Ryutov is a theoretical plasma physicist. Graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (1962), he received his doctorate in plasma theory in 1966. From 1968 to 1997, he was at the Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, where he expanded the fusion research program from 1979 and was promoted from deputy director to chief scientist in 1994. From 1994, he was a senior visiting scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he became a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff in 2012 (retired in 2016). Ryutov is a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1992, a Fellow of the APS (1998) and the IoP (2004), an Edward Teller Fellow of the LLNL (2007). He is a recipient of the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics and the John Dawson Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research.

Bruno Coppi is a full professor at MIT since 1968 with numerous contributions to theoretical plasma physics, fusion, and space physics. He is widely recognized for the development of the Alcator program at MIT and the Frascati Torus Program in Italy. Prof. Coppi is a member of the American Academy for Arts and Sciences (1976) and was knighted Great Officer of the Order of Merit of the Republic by the President of Italy. He received both the APS Maxwell Prize and the Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics. He is a fellow of the AAAS and of the APS, and served as chairman of the APS Committee on the International Freedom of Scientists.

Kristel Crombé is an experimental plasma physicist, professor at the University of Gent, a researcher at Laboratory for Plasma Physics, Royal Military Academy, Belgium, and an active collaborator on the ITER project. She got her PhD from in Plasma Physics - Nuclear Fusion from Gent University in 2005 and was awarded the EPS PhD Research Prize for her thesis “Spectroscopic Studies of Impurity Ion Dynamics on the JET and TEXTOR Tokamaks” in 2006. Prof Crombé is now a board member of the Plasma Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS-PPD) and serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Physics Communications.