Prof. Mahdi Karkush is President of Iraqi Scientific Geotechnical Society and Professor of Civil Engineering in the Department of Civil Engineering at University of Baghdad, Iraq. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Geotechnical Engineering from University of Baghdad, Iraq in 2008. He pursued his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from University of Babylon, Iraq in 1995 and M.Sc. in Civil Structural Engineering from University of Babylon, Iraq in 1998. He is Member of the editorial board of several world scientific journals and scientific and organizing committees of several conferences. His outstanding research works in the fields of geoenvironmental engineering and sustainability in geotechnical engineering, foundation engineering, and geomechanics. He is Fellow of the Iraqi Engineers Association (IEA), Iraq, International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE), UK, Fulbright scholar, USA, DAAD scholar, Germany,  Swinburne Scholar, Australia, and L.N.Gumilyov Eurasian National University, Kazakhstan.

Prof. Deepankar Choudhury is Prof. T. Kant Chair Professor and former Head of Civil Engineering Department at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India. Always 1st class 1st Gold Medalist in academics, he received Ph.D. in Civil Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering from IISc Bangalore, India, in 2002 and received Prof. G. A. Leonard's Best PhD Thesis Award from IGS. Prof. Choudhury worked as a faculty member at IIT Kanpur before joining IIT Bombay in 2003 and mentored two new IITs, Gandhinagar in 2009 and Dharwad in 2017. He was also a Visiting Faculty/Fellow at NUS Singapore, UoW Australia, UC Berkeley USA, Kagoshima University Japan, TU Darmstadt Germany, INU South Korea. Prof. Choudhury is a Humboldt Fellow of Germany, JSPS Fellow of Japan, TWAS-VS Fellow of Italy. He has authored over 300 technical publications including about 180 peer-reviewed journal papers, which are highly cited. He has supervised over 35 Ph.D. students. He is Editor-in-Chief of Indian Geotechnical Journal, Springer; Associate Editor of ASCE-International Journal of Geomechanics and served as editorial board member of several world class journals like Soils and Foundations (Elsevier), Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Geotechnical and Geological Engineering (Springer), Geomechanics and Engineering (Techno-Press) etc. He is Fellow of the ASCE, USA (F.ASCE), Fellow of The National Academy of Sciences, India (FNASc), Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE), Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc), Fellow of Institution of Engineers, India (FIE), Indian Geotechnical Society (FIGS), Indian Society of Earthquake Technology (FISET). His outstanding research works in the domain of Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, Foundation Engineering and Computational Geomechanics are highly cited and implemented in various field problems through mega projects. His course lectures through NPTEL are highly popular and he is recipient of multiple Excellence in Teaching Awards in addition to several research awards. He was Secretary of TC-207 and TC-212 of ISSMGE. He serves as expert member for several national and international committees of repute including various design code committees. A globe trotter with visit of over 35 countries, Prof. Choudhury delivered plenary/keynote/invited lectures in various reputed conferences across the globe.