Dr. Mark Tyndall is an infectious diseases specialist, epidemiologist and public health physician with a focus on urban health, drug use and harm reduction. He has held a number of academic leadership positions and most recently was the Director of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC). He is an author on over 300 peer-reviewed publications, and was co-lead investigator on the evaluation of Insite, North America’s first supervised injection site. His current work includes innovative solutions to prevent overdoses through safe supply programs and the use of biometric dispensing machines for opioids (MySafe). Dr. Tyndall is a strong Canadian advocate for public health through the lens of human rights and has championed the scale-up of vaping as a response to reducing the harms associated with tobacco use.

Will Godfrey is the founding editor-in-chief of Filter (https://filtermag.org), an online magazine that launched in 2018 to cover drug use, drug policy and human rights through a harm reduction lens. He's also the executive director of The Influence Foundation, the nonprofit behind Filter. He previously founded The Influence, an award-winning drug policy news site, and ran Substance.com and the addiction-focused site The Fix. Before that, he co-founded an award-winning print publication for incarcerated people in London. He has consulted for numerous organisations in the drug policy and harm reduction space. He lives in New York.

Professor Marewa Glover has worked on reducing smoking-related harm for over 25 years. She has worked as a policy analyst, a co-ordinator of a national tobacco control programme, cessation trainer and, for over 17 years, as a researcher. She has chaired numerous committees and organisations including End Smoking NZ, an independent NGO that lobbied for a harm reduction approach even before electronic cigarettes were introduced. Marewa has over 100 publications reflecting her leadership and support of numerous studies. Her primary focus has been reducing smoking during pregnancy and reducing smoking among Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. She has also been a co-investigator on a number of innovative cessation projects and a longitudinal online survey of New Zealand vapers. Dr Glover is the most prominent public commentator on vaping in NZ. She is regularly called by the media and has appeared on NZ’s 60 Minutes in addition to participating in live online and conference debates about vaping. Despite an initial ban on the import and sale of nicotine for vaping imposed by the Ministry of Health, vaping has become established as a common and successful way to reduce or stop smoking in NZ. Marewa, along with a small number of other researchers who early on foresaw the potential of ecigs, have helped make this happen.

Clive Bates has had a diverse career in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Starting out with IBM, he then switched career to work in the environment movement. From 1997-2003 he was Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK), campaigning to reduce the harms caused by tobacco. In 2003 he joined Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Strategy Unit as a civil servant and worked in senior roles in the public sector and for the United Nations in Sudan. He is now Director of The Counterfactual, a consulting and advocacy practice focussed on a pragmatic approach to sustainability and public health.  

Fiona Patten is a Member for Northern Metropolitan Region in the Victorian Parliament’s Legislative Council. Leader of the Reason Party, Fiona was first elected in 2014 and re-elected in 2018. Since being elected in 2014, Fiona has garnered respect from all sides of the political divide and has worked tirelessly to deliver legislative reforms that many thought impossible. Fiona is now working towards improving Victoria even further, and is pushing to legalise and regulate cannabis for adult use, continuing to implement electoral reform, religious accountability and greater separation of church and state, legalise sex work, and spent convictions legislation.  

Dr. John Oyston is a medical doctor specializing in anesthesiology. Now retired from anesthesiology and working exclusively on tobacco issues. Since 2006 he has been involved in numerous tobacco control issues including “Stop Smoking for Safer Surgery”, the “Campaign for the Quit Quarter”, “Tobacco21.ca”, and, most recently “Quit by Vaping”.

He has published editorials on tobacco control topics in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia and the Canadian Medical Association Journal. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto and has recently retired from the position of Chief of Anesthesiology at The Scarborough Hospital.

Professor Gerry Stimson is a leading advocate for tobacco harm reduction and an Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London. A public health social scientist, with over 50 years’ experience of research and advocacy, he was one of the founders of drugs harm reduction in the 1990s, helping to develop and evaluate harm reduction in the UK as a response to HIV/AIDS. Gerry has advised the UK Government, WHO, UNAIDS, UNODC, the World Bank and numerous governments around the world on issues relating to drugs, HIV infection and AIDS, and alcohol. He has also published over 220 scientific publications and several books. 

Currently, Gerry is Director of Research and Policy at Knowledge•Action•Change, and is involved in the FSFW-funded Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction and Tobacco Harm Reduction Scholarship programmes. He is also a co-founder of the Global Forum on Nicotine, which has been delivered by KAC Communications since 2014. 

Professor Gerry Stimson is a leading advocate for tobacco harm reduction and an Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London. A public health social scientist, with over 50 years’ experience of research and advocacy, he was one of the founders of drugs harm reduction in the 1990s, helping to develop and evaluate harm reduction in the UK as a response to HIV/AIDS. Gerry has advised the UK Government, WHO, UNAIDS, UNODC, the World Bank and numerous governments around the world on issues relating to drugs, HIV infection and AIDS, and alcohol. He has also published over 220 scientific publications and several books. 

Currently, Gerry is Director of Research and Policy at Knowledge•Action•Change, and is involved in the FSFW-funded Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction and Tobacco Harm Reduction Scholarship programmes. He is also a co-founder of the Global Forum on Nicotine, which has been delivered by KAC Communications since 2014. 

Professor Gerry Stimson is a leading advocate for tobacco harm reduction and an Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London. A public health social scientist, with over 50 years’ experience of research and advocacy, he was one of the founders of drugs harm reduction in the 1990s, helping to develop and evaluate harm reduction in the UK as a response to HIV/AIDS. Gerry has advised the UK Government, WHO, UNAIDS, UNODC, the World Bank and numerous governments around the world on issues relating to drugs, HIV infection and AIDS, and alcohol. He has also published over 220 scientific publications and several books. 

Currently, Gerry is Director of Research and Policy at Knowledge•Action•Change, and is involved in the FSFW-funded Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction and Tobacco Harm Reduction Scholarship programmes. He is also a co-founder of the Global Forum on Nicotine, which has been delivered by KAC Communications since 2014. 

Dr Roberto A Sussman is a full time senior researcher and lecturer in physics at the National University of Mexico. He specializes in Theoretical Cosmology but has undertaken research and frequent peer reviewing for journals in other areas of Astrophysics. He is also the founder and Director of Pro-Vapeo Mexico, an association representing Mexican consumers of noncombustible nicotine products and is a member of INNCO. He is actively advocating for an appropriate regulation of Tobacco Harm Reduction products in Mexico. He directs and supervises the effort to spread scientific information on these products, as well as advising consumers on how to counter the misinformation and prejudice about them that is rampant throughout Latin America.

Konstantinos Farsalinos, MD, MPH is a physician and senior researcher at the University of Patras and the School of Public Health-University of West Attica in Greece. His field of expertise is Public Health. He has been conducting laboratory, clinical and epidemiological research on smoking, tobacco harm reduction and e-cigarettes as principal investigator since 2011. He authored the first systematic review on e-cigarette safety/risk profile, published in 2014. Additionally, he has performed research and published studies on heated tobacco products. His findings have been presented in major international scientific congresses and his studies were used in preparing the regulatory framework on e-cigarettes by the European Union. As of mid-2020, he has published more than 90 studies and articles in international peer-reviewed scientific journals about smoking, tobacco harm reduction and alternative-to-smoking nicotine products. He was the handling editor and author of a book titled "Analytical assessment of e-cigarettes", published by Elsevier in 2017. In November 2020, he was declared a Highly Cited Researcher 2019 by the Web of Science, a list of researchers (6200 scientists out of 9 million examined) with the highest impact in global science in 21 scientific fields in the past decade. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has published 6 peer-reviewed studies and several pre-prints about the COVID-19, including the association between smoking, nicotine and COVID-19.

Riccardo Polosa is the Founder of the Center of Excellence for the acceleration of HArm Reduction (CoEHAR - University of Catania, Italy). Dr Polosa is Full Professor of Internal Medicine for the same University and Director of the Center for Smoking Prevention and Treatment at the University Hospital "Policlinico-V. Emanuele” of Catania. Dr. Polosa and the CoEHAR team of researchers conduct several high-profile clinical and behavioral research in the field of smoking-related diseases. According to a bibliometric analysis, Professor Polosa is considered the most productive scientist in the world in the field of electronic cigarette research.

Professor Gerry Stimson is a leading advocate for tobacco harm reduction and an Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London. A public health social scientist, with over 50 years’ experience of research and advocacy, he was one of the founders of drugs harm reduction in the 1990s, helping to develop and evaluate harm reduction in the UK as a response to HIV/AIDS. Gerry has advised the UK Government, WHO, UNAIDS, UNODC, the World Bank and numerous governments around the world on issues relating to drugs, HIV infection and AIDS, and alcohol. He has also published over 220 scientific publications and several books. 

Currently, Gerry is Director of Research and Policy at Knowledge•Action•Change, and is involved in the FSFW-funded Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction and Tobacco Harm Reduction Scholarship programmes. He is also a co-founder of the Global Forum on Nicotine, which has been delivered by KAC Communications since 2014. 

Chim Ngoma is a passionate advocate for tobacco harm reduction and has led the THR Malawi project since 2018. He also works as an Assistant Manager on KAC’s THR Scholarship Programme. Chim has been involved in a number of notable THR projects and activities including the Burning Issues report and briefing paper on THR and the Right to Health as a reviewer. He also participated in a multi-stakeholder smoke-free dialogue in Cape Town aimed at informing the creation of the Smoke-Free Index, an initiative of the FSFW. Previously, Chim worked as a content writer consultant at Solimar International, as a citizen journalist at Nation Publications Limited and as a communications, visibility and M&E consultant at International Cooperation (GIZ).

Dr. Sree T.Sucharitha, M.D currently Professor in Department of Community Medicine and Research Co-ordinator at Tagore Medical College and Hospital Chennai, India holds Fellowship in HIV Medicine from I-Tech India which is a joint program with collaboration with Tamil Nadu government. She is also Fellow of Asian Human Rights and Drug Policy. Won Best paper awards for presentations at Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR University (2018), IJRULA- Best Research Scientist-Environment Science (2018), Tamil Nadu Physical Education and Sports University (2019). She is the Founding-Director of AHRER-Association for Harm Reduction Education and Research, a first-ever registered medical professionals body in India for increasing the public awareness of harms resulting due to various human behaviours associated with tobacco consumption, narcotics, alcohol, and obesity.