^{Proposed by: Zhili He and Ruiwen Hu, China}

Panel Members
David Johnson, Eawag, Switzerland
 Synthetic microbial communities for understanding spatial controls on the spread of antibiotic resistance

Yuting Liang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Rebuild healthy soil microbiome in degraded acidic soils by synthetic communities

Ting Lu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Synthetic microbial consortia for plastic upcycling

Jizhong Zhou, University of Oklahoma, USA
Synthetic communities for understanding microbial interaction network

Christopher E. Lawson, University of Toronto, Canada
Microbiome engineering for food waste utilization

Yongyu Zhang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Microbiota-algae interactions and their role in driving marine carbon sequestration

Zhili He, Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), China
Synthetic microbial communities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in mangrove ecosystems

Zhenmei Lu, Zhejiang University, China
Interspecies synergistic interactions mediated by cofactor exchange enhance stress tolerance by inducing biofilm formation

Qiang He, University of Tennessee, USA
Synthetic nitrifying microbial community: interaction mechanisms and ecological effects

^{Proposed by: Nianzhi Jiao, China}

Panel Members:
Feng Chen, University of Maryland, USA
Marine microbial ecology

Daniele Daffonchio, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia
Mangrove biodiversity and carbon sequestration

Hongbin Liu, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR
Marine microbial ecology

Carolin Löscher, Danish Institute for Advanced Study, Southern Demark University, Denmark
Microbial ecology and global biogeochemical cycles

Curtis Suttle, University of British Columbia, Canada
Marine viruses

Chuanlun Zhang, Southern University of Science and Technology, China
Marine biogeochemistry, drone array technology for monitoring marine ecology

^{Proposed by: Lu Fan, China}

Panel Members
A. Murat Eren (Meren), Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, Germany
Computational microbiology

Runsheng Li, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
Strain-level Nanopore data analysis

Ke Yu, Peking University, China
Metagenome binning

Xin Zhao, BGI Research, China
Intra-tissue spatial metaomics

Richard Wolff, University of California Los Angeles, USA
Population genetics in human microbiome

^{Proposed by: S. Emil Ruff, USA}

Panel Members:
Beate Kraft, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Devan M. Nisson, NASA Ames, USA
Ranjani Murali, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA
Jennifer B. Glass, Georgia Tech, USA

^{Proposed by: Federico M. Lauro, Singapore}

Panel Members
Daniel Blackwood, National University of Singapore, Singapore (Chemist)
Winona Wijaya, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (Bioinformatician)
Elena Messinese, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (Corrosion Engineer)
Dake Xu, Northeastern University, China (Electrochemist)
Kang Cui, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (Material Scientist)

^{Proposed by: Stephanie Jurburg, Germany}

Panel Members:
Brajesh Singh, Western Sydney University, Australia
As the new Chair of the International Network of Soil Biodiversity, Prof. Singh will present his work focused on the importance of capacity building for the next generation of global microbiome research.

Pedro Lebre, University of Pretoria, South Africa
As organizer of the 2024 Datathon in Africa and one of the leaders of the largest initiative to catalog soil microbiomes across sub-Saharan Africa, Dr. Lebre will discuss his experience in cross-border research and collaboration in the Global South

Clara María Arboleda Baena, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Germany
As an organizer of the 2023 Datathon in Latin America and a member of the MicroSudAqua network, Dr. Arboleda will discuss the importance of collaborative research networks in Latin American microbial ecology

Emma Rocke, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Dr Rocke leads the Marine Microbial Ecology lab in Cape Town, focusing on marine microbial science across 'omics disciplines along the South African coastlines. She leverages advanced sampling, analysis, and bioinformatics expertise from the H2020 project AtlantECO. Dr. Rocke will discuss her experience with the 'gap' between available infrastructure for microbial studies and the limited expertise in Africa, and how to mitigate this moving forward. 

^{Proposed by: Maria Chuvochina and Philip Hugenholtz, Australia}

Panel Members
SeqCode Committee members
Luis-Miguel Rodriguez-R, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Marike Palmer, University of Manitoba, Canada
Stephanus Venter, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Outside community members
Diego Javier Jiménez Avella, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia
Melandre Van Lill, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Yinzhao Wang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China