Babis Theodoulidis is Director of the Centre for Service Research at the University of Manchester and holds the position of Associate Professor at Manchester Business School. He received a PhD degree in Computation from UMIST, an MSc in Computer Science from University of Glasgow and a Diploma in Computer Engineering and Informatics from University of Patras, Greece.

His teaching responsibilities are in the areas of information management and systems at the undergraduate, MSc and MBA levels. He has also taught executive-development seminars and carried out consultancy work on the subjects of information management, business and IT strategy, business process improvement and business intelligence.

Dr Theodoulidis held visiting positions at the School of Engineering, University of Surrey and Athens University of Economics and Business. He has published over 150 refereed journal and conference articles and his research work (as Principal or Co-Investigator) has been supported extensively from UK and European funding bodies since the early days of ESPRIT in 1990 and also directly from industry.

Katsutoshi Yada is Professor of Management Information Systems in the Faculty of Commerce, Kansai University, Osaka, Japan. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in Business Administration from Kobe University of Commerce, Hyogo, Japan, in 1994 and 2002, respectively. He was a visiting scholar of School of business at Columbia University from 2006 to 2007. He is currently chair of Program on "Data Mining and Service Science for Innovation",and the director of Data Mining Laboratory at Kansai University supported by MEXT. His present research interests include data mining for service, and information strategy concerning data mining. His papers have appeared in several international journals, including Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Soft Computing, Decision Support Systems and others. He had been a guest editor of special issues in Information Science. He received Distinguished Professor Award from Kansai University and many international and domestic awards from academic societies and conferences. He has been chairman and member of various program committee in many international data mining conferences and workshops, including TC chair of IEEE SMC, ICDM and others. He is a member of IEEE, AMA and AMS.

Kevin Ellis is the founder of a start up company in the areas of Cloud Computing and also is the Senior VP for PBR, an international professional sports and media organization. Prior to this Kevin was the Director of Service Science and Innovation at Sun Microsystems. In this role he was responsible for the strategy and portfolio management of Sun's technical service portfolio as well as working with Universities to define and discover Service Science focused opportunities. Kevin has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry and has worked in DoD, Telecommunications, Professional Services, and operations. He has held positions at MCI, Comsys,and GTE Government Systems. Kevin earned his Master of Business Administration from the University of Colorado, and holds a Masters in Computer Information Systems and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Denver.

Ajay's team is responsible for the development and management of services IP life cycle, Cloud based security intelligence, and Managed Security Services products. Before joining Symantec, Ajay led product management for new products at VeriSign, which included the successful launch of managed services and consulting solutions for mobile security and mobile payments. He was also the founding co-chair of an industry-wide open authentication initiative called OATH, and provided product management leadership for a variety of authentication solutions at VeriSign. Before VeriSign, he was the Vice President and GM of Hughes Software Systems, a division of Hughes Network Systems, where he successfully started a global consulting services business to deliver system integration solutions.Ajay has been an evangelist and a frequently featured speaker on Security, Privacy, and Mobile Commerce/ Payments in leading global conferences.

Gary Phillips is Senior Director of Research and Development in the Office of the CTO for Symantec Corporation. In this position, Gary manages a diversity of responsibilities, including open source operations and strategy, product security, interactions with all standards bodies, standards compliance, shared development tools, shared code management, technology control planning and software supply chain assurance.

Gary is currently a member of the SAFE Codeboard of directors and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) board of directors. He is also a former member of the International Committee for IT Standards (INCITS) executive board, the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) board, and the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) board. Gary has served in a number of leadership positions in each organization.

Prior to joining Symantec, Gary held several senior management and technology leadership positions for Compaq, Schlumberger,Western Geophysical, and Fairchild. He earned his Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology and attended graduate school at the University of South Florida.

Dr. Wolfgang Gentzsch is a senior consultant for HPC, Grid and Cloud Computing and the General Chairman of the ISC Cloud Conference Series.Previously, he was an Advisor to the EU funded project DEISA, the Distributed European Initiative for Supercomputing Applications, and he directed the 3-year German Government funded $150 Mio D-Grid Initiative for developing a sustainable Grid infrastructure for research and industry in Germany. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the OGF Open Grid & Cloud Forum standards organization, and a member of the US President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology, PCAST. He Founded the e-School Project which aimed at building and operating a professional interactive Web 2.0 computer simulation laboratory for K-20science and engineering education and edutainment.

Before, Wolfgang was a professor of computer science and mathematics at several universities in the US and in Germany, and held leading positions at the MCNC Grid and Data Center, Sun Microsystems, Gridware, Genias, the DLR German Aerospace Research Center, and the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics. Wolfgang studied mathematics and physics at the Technical Universities in Aachen and in Darmstadt, and got his PhD in numerical methods for partial differential equations.

Youakim Badr is currently Associate Professor of Computer Science at France's National Institute for Applied Sciences in Lyon (INSA of Lyon) since 2003. He teaches in both the Department of Computer Engineering and the Department of Industrial Engineering. He also served as Director of the International Master Program in Information Systems from 2006 to 2010 and contributes largely to INSA’s international relations through his work in academic exchange programs.

Through his research activities he has acquired skills in fields such as System Design and Architectures, Interoperability and Integration, Networking, and Security, and their application to various domains such as Information Systems, Business Processes, Supply Chains, Productions Systems and Virtual Enterprises. His current research interests include systems in both the service sector and ICT. In particular, he studies the digital ecosystem of services and the multidisciplinary modeling approach of designing services through the integration of ICT, strategy and processes. In this context, he supervises several doctoral candidates and actively participates in national and international projects combining industrial and computer engineering approaches. He is also the editor of more than 85 publications in technical journals and conference articles, 5 conference volumes, and two books published by Springer Verlag. He held short-term visiting scholar positions at the University of Sydney, the University of Namur in Belgium and Zayed University in the UAE, and spent his sabbatical leave at Cornell University and The Pennsylvania State University in the United States.

Dr. Badr is vigorously involved in a series of international conferences and serves as a reviewer for various conferences and journals. He also is a professional member of ACM, INFORMS, and IEEE Services Computing Community, a member of OW2 and the Service Sciences working group of the Networked European Software and Services Initiative (NESSI), and associate member of the European Network of Excellence in Software Services and Systems (S-CUBE).

Raaj Sah has taught economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania, and Yale. He is presently a professor at the University of Chicago. His innovative writings have been published widely, in many areas of economics and business. Raaj Sah has been honored for his teaching. He has spent time in over forty countries for his advisory, business-related, and professional work. He has held, and currently holds, board positions in several corporations and nonprofits. Raaj holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Dr. Jay Lee is Ohio Eminent Scholar and L.W. Scott Alter Chair Professor at the Univ. of Cincinnati and is founding director of National Science Foundation (NSF) Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) on Intelligent Maintenance Systems (IMS www.imscenter.net ) which is a multi-campus NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center which consists of the Univ. of Cincinnati (lead institution), the Univ. of Michigan, and Missouri Univ. of S&T. Since its inception in 2001, the Center has been supported by over 70 global companies including P&G, GE Aviation, Eaton, National Instruments, Boeing, Caterpillar, Siemens, Chevron, Honeywell, Parker Hannifin, Spirit AeroSystems, Ingersoll Rand, Goodyear, Intel, Applied Materials, Army Research Lab., Forcam (Germany), Alstom (France), ITRI (Taiwan), Omron (Japan), Nissan (Japan), Delta Electronics (Taiwan), HIWIN (Taiwan), PMC (Taiwan), III (Taiwan), Shaanxi Auto Group (China), Tekniker (Spain), FMTC (Belgium), Kistler (Switzerland), etc. His current research focuses on dominant innovation tools for product and service design as well as intelligent prognostics tools and smart predictive analytics for equipment reliability assessment and smart product life cycle management.

Currently, he is leading an initiative to establish an Advanced Industrial Technology Research Institute (AITRI) at Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. He serves as honorary professor and visiting professor for a number of institutions including Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ., City Univ. of Hong Kong, Cranfield Univ. in UK, Lulea Univ. of Technology in Sweden, Hong Kong PolyU., Xian Jiao Tong Univ. and Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) in China. He also serves as advisor to a number of global organizations, including a member of the Manufacturing Executive Leadership Board of U.S., IBM MAXIMO Executive Advisory Council, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan, Japan Productivity Center (JPC), Academy of Machinery Science & Technology in China, Scientific Advisory Board of Flanders' MECHATRONICS Technology Centre (FMTC) in Leuven, Belgium, etc. In addition, he serves as editors and associate editor for a number of journals including IEEE Transaction on Industrial Informatics, Int. Journal on Prognostics & Health Management (IJPHM), Int. Journal on Service Operations and Informatics, etc.

Previously, he served as Director for Product Development and Manufacturing at United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), E. Hartford, CT as well as Program Directors for a number of programs at NSF during 1991-1998, including the Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) Program, the Industry/University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRCs) Program, and the Div. of Design, Manufacture, and Industrial Innovation. He also served as an advisory member for a number of institutions including, Johns Hopkins Univ., Cambridge Univ., etc.

He has authored/co-authored numerous highly influential articles and technical papers in the areas of machinery monitory and prognostics, E-manufacturing, and intelligent maintenance systems. He also has a number of patents and trademarks. He is a frequently invited speaker and has delivered over 150 invited keynote and plenary speeches at major international conferences. He is a Fellow of ASME, SME, as well as a founding fellow of International Society of Engineering Asset Management (ISEAM).