Rüdiger Lentz is the Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Germany. Between 2009 and September 2013, he served as the Executive Director of the German-American Heritage Foundation and Museum in Washington. From November 1998 until December 2009, he was the Washington Bureau Chief and Senior Diplomatic Correspondent for Deutsche Welle. Prior to his assignment in Washington, he served as Deutsche Welle’s Brussels Bureau Chief. Before joining Deutsche Welle, Lentz worked as a correspondent for the German news magazine Der Spiegel, after having served in the German Armed Forces for eight years and as a TV commentator and reporter at ARD/WDR, Germany’s largest public TV and radio station. Lentz has also held various positions including that of Editor in Chief at RIAS-TV Berlin from 1990-1992. As the Executive Director of German TV from 2002-2005 he was responsible for the branding and market entrance plan of German TV in the US. He has been a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University, the School of Foreign Service in Washington and a regular guest on CNN and C-Span. Lentz was born 1947 and studied international relations, history and economics at the University of Hamburg. He is a long time member of the Atlantik-Bruecke and a founding member of the German American Business Council (GABC) in Washington.

Ronan Long read for his PhD in Trinity College Dublin. He holds a Personal Professorship in Law and the Jean Monnet Chair of European Law at the School of Law at NUI Galway, where he lectures EU Law, International Law, Planning and Environmental Law, Law of the Sea, and European Fisheries Law. He has also lectured at the Rhodes Academy Oceans Law and Policy and is a supervisor of advanced academic research under the United Nations - The Nippon Foundation of Japan Fellowship Program. In this capacity, he has worked with mid-career legal professionals from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Guatemala. He was the first recipient of the Manahan Fellowship and he has written and co-edited five books, and contributes to the leading peer-review journals as well as international workshops/conferences on the law of the sea, ocean management, and the law and policy of the marine environment. Prior to his academic career, he was a permanent staff member at the European Commission (1993-2000) and undertook over 40 missions on behalf of the European Institutions to the Member States of the European Union, the United States of America, Canada, Central America as well as to African countries. Dr. Long is Research Director at the Marine Law and Ocean Policy Centre, which is a cross-faculty initiative between participants from the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, the Law School and Trinity College Dublin. He has participated on the European Union delegation at a number of international fora dealing with the law of the sea including the United Nations and is Ireland’s representative at UNESCO /IOC Advisory Body of Experts of the Law of the Sea.

Charles Mallory served as CEO of the Aspen Institute Germany from 2007 to 2013. Mr. Mallory came to Aspen Germany from the U.S. Department of State where he served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2002 to 2007. Prior to his government service, Mr. Mallory was CEO of Credit Suisse Investment Funds Moscow AO and a Director of Credit Suisse Asset Management (1992-1997) and participated in the structuring and closing in the mezzanine and equity tranches of a large number of domestic and international buyout and LBO transactions. (1997-2002). Under his leadership, Credit Suisse, launched the first family of Russian mutual funds, becoming market leader. At the Department of State he managed the $4 bn portfolio of Middle East assistance programs and was instrumental in restructuring the $2bn U.S. assistance program to Egypt, and in negotiating and executing a $1bn Egyptian bank privatization. Mr. Mallory is an honorary trustee of Aspen Germany.

Prof. Dr. Carlo Masala was born on 27th March 1968 in Cologne, Germany. He studied Political Science, German and Romanic Philology at the Universities of Cologne and Bonn. From 1992 to 1998, Professor Masala was a research associate at the Department of Political Science at the University of Cologne, where he received a doctorates degree, writing a dissertation about the German-Italian relations between 1963 and 1969. 1998 he was appointed to Akademischer Rat for life at the Department of Political Science at University of Cologne. In December 2002, he was granted venia legendi in Political Science. After a substitute
professorship in summer semester 2002 at Geschwister-Scholl-Department at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, he changed to NATO Defence College in the beginning of 2004, where he acted as Research Advisor and, from 2006 on, as Deputy Director of the research department. Visiting professorships and research
stays led him to the USA (Ann Arbor, Chicago, Washington), to Great Britain (Shrivenham), Slovakia (Matja Belt Universiy), Italy (Rome and Florence) as well as the Eastern Mediterranean University of Cyprus. In March 2007, he was offered a professorship at Universität der Bundeswehr München and accepted it on 1st June.Since 2009 Prof. Masala has been a member of the sientific advisory council on the security research program of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). He has been one of the publishers of Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (ZIB) since January 2010 together with Prof. Stephan Stetter. Since November 2011 Prof. Masala has been dean of the faculty Staats- und Sozialwissensachaften of the University of the German Armed Forces in Munich. He is also a member of the senate of the Hochschule für Politik München. His main research focuses on Theories of International Politics, Security Policy, Transatlantic Relations and Developments in the Mediterranean.

Bryan McGrath is Managing Director at FerryBridge Group LLC, a defense consulting firm based in Easton, MD. Bryan is a retired Naval Officer with over 25 years of experience. He was the lead strategist and primary author of the US Navy's 2007 Maritime Strategy and is an acknowledged expert in the fields of strategy formulation, strategic planning, and strategic communication.

Since September 2012, Mr. Diego Ruiz Palmer (United States) is the Special Advisor to the NATO Secretary General for Economics and Security, as well as Head of the Economics and Security Assessments Unit, NATO International Staff. Between August 2010 and August 2012, Mr. Ruiz Palmer was the first Head of the Strategic Analysis Capability (SAC) in NATO’s new Emerging Security Challenges Division. SAC is a joint assessment unit, composed of civilian and military personnel from NATO’s International and International Military Staffs, tasked with helping anticipate potential crisis situations, assess their possible implications for NATO, and provide advice. On two earlier tours at NATO HQ, Mr. Ruiz Palmer was head of armaments planning (1991 - 2000) and head of operations planning (2002-2010). In the latter position, he led the development of the Comprehensive Strategic Political-Military Plan which guides NATO's engagement in Afghanistan. From 1980-1991, he was an analyst on the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) National Security Study Memorandum 186 task force, which provided assessments on European politicalmilitary issues to the Secretary of Defense, in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Duncan Redford is the Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Modern Naval History at the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences of the University of Portsmouth and is also the Subject Specialist in Modern Naval History at the National Museum of the Royal Navy. Duncan Redford joined the Royal Navy in 1991. After officer training at Britannia Royal Naval College as well as onboard HMS Broadsword and HMS Boxer, he was selected to attend the Royal Naval Engineering College, Manadon, Plymouth where he completed a BA (Hons) in Maritime Defence, Technology and Management. A volunteer for submarine service, he served on HMS Torbay, Tireless and Turbulent between 1996 and 2001. In 2001 Dr Redford left the Navy to study for an MA in War Studies at King’s College London. Having won the Laughton Naval History Scholarship at King’s College London in 2002, he was awarded his PhD in 2006 for his research into ‘The Cultural Impact of Submarines on Britain 1900-1977’. In 2008 he was awarded a prestigious 3 year Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellowship in partnership with the Centre for Maritime Historical Studies, University of Exeter. Dr. Redford’s research interests cover all aspects of British naval history, especially during the 19th and 20th centuries, British defence policy and armed forces corporate culture as well as identity issues. He is currently completing a book The Navy and the Nation 1870-1980 which examines the relationship between the Royal Navy and British national identity.

Serge Rinkel is Director of Programs and Services of the World Border Organization, BORDERPOL based in Ottawa, Canada. He started his career aged 15 in the maritime world as a cadet in the French Navy and in 1971 received training with the US Navy. He travelled the globe mainly aboard French naval warships, being a missile technician as well as an intelligence officer in French Polynesia, in the framework of the protection of Nuclear Experimentation campaigns. In 1977 he started a new career in the French Customs Marine Branch as a cutter’s commander, a maritime intelligence officer and a Naval operations coordinator in the Atlantic region mostly involved in European anti-narcotics operations at sea. In 1994 he became international observer serving in Ukraine for the Danube River Sanction Assistance Mission to ensure compliance with the embargo against Serbia and Montenegro in the river traffic, from the Black Sea to Serbia. Selected as a World Customs Organisation Maritime Anti-Narcotics Expert in 1997, he was engaged for 10 years in setting up port anti-smuggling units in the framework of the WCOUnited Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Seaports Project, in Eastern and Southern Africa (Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Mauritius.) He became a pan African analyst on arms trafficking, connected to crossborder crime for the French Ministry of Defense. In 2007-2008 he was appointed a member of a group of experts on the U.N. Security Council Sanctions Committee, investigating the embargo of arms concerning the Democratic Republic of Congo conflict zone and the neighboring countries. In 2010 in the framework of the 10th European Commission Development Fund he was leading a team of experts in Nigeria to support a project concerning drug trafficking and connected organised crime (including piracy and oil bunkering). Appointed director of programs and services of the World Border Organization – BORDERPOL 10 years ago, he is overseeing about 160 customs, police, civil aviation, maritime surveillance and border management experts who provide developmental and technical support to national border services around the world. In July 2012 he accepted the position of the European president of the Civil Society Pan African Network, which is an international NGO member of the UN Economic and Social Committee. (http://www.borderpolevent.org/borderpol)

Sten Rynning is Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Management and Head of the Centre for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. His interests include NATO and Transatlantic Security Relations, the Foreign, Security, and Defense policy of the EU (CFSP and ESDP), French Security and Defense, Military Strategy and Doctrine, Military Innovation, Civil-Military Relations, Theories of Security and International Relations and Geopolitics. He is the author of numerous articles, and his books include NATO in Afghanistan: the liberal disconnect (2012), NATO renewed: the power and purpose of transatlantic cooperation (2005) and Changing military doctrine: presidents and military power in Fifth Republic France, 1958-2000 (2001). He is also co-author of Transforming Military Power since the Cold War: Britain, France, and the United States, 1991-2012 (2013) Mr. Rynning receveid his MA in Contemporary European Studies from the University of Sussex and his PhD in International Studies from the University of South Carolina. He was a Fulbright Scholar and is amongst others a member of the Committee of Representatives of the Danish Atlantic Treaty Association and a member of the Editorial Board of the University of South Carolina International Studies Book Series.

Dr. Vijay Sakhuja is Director (Research) at the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA), New Delhi. He is also Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore since 2006. A former Indian Navy officer, Dr Sakhuja has been on the research faculty of a number of think tanks in India. He is author of Asian Maritime Power in the 21st Century: Strategic Transactions -China, India and Southeast Asia (2011) and Confidence Building from the Sea: An Indian Initiative (2001). A co-authored volume titled Geopolitics of Climate Change in the Bay of Bengal is under publication by ISEAS, Singapore and a manuscript Politico- Strategic Developments in the Arctic is under preparation. Dr. Vijay Sakhuja is editor of India Vietnam Strategic Partnership: Exploring Vistas for Expanded Cooperation (2011) and Reinvigorating IOR-ARC (2011) and co-editor of India Vietnam Relations: Expanding the Partnership in the 21st Century (2013); Change in Myanmar (forthcoming 2013); India and the European Union: Expanding the Strategic Partnership (2012), Fisheries Exploitation in the Indian Ocean: Threats and Opportunities (2010), and Nagapattinam to Suvarnadwipa: Reflections on Chola Naval Expeditions to Southeast Asia (2009).

Vice Admiral (ret.) Ferdinando Sanfelice di Monteforte is President of the Military Commission, Italian Atlantic Committee and one of the five Members of the Wise Pens Team International. He teaches as Professor of Strategy at the Catholic University of Milan, the University of Florence and the University of Trieste – Branch of Gorizia. He served in numerous international assignments. Among them, he has been Italian Military Representative to the Military Committees
of NATO and EU, as well as Commander of the NATO maritime operation Active Endeavour. He is author of numerous books and essays about strategic and military subjects published on Italian, French and American magazines. Member of the Board of the Italian Society of Military History, the French Académie de Marine and the Jury of the Prix Davéluy, he received various honors and acknowledgements, such as the NATO Meritorious Service Medal and the NATO and WEU medals for service in the Former Yugoslavia Operations.

Captain (German Navy) Johannes Schmidt-Thomée assumed the position of Executive Director, Centre of Excellence for Operations in Confined and Shallow Waters (COECSW), in 2013. After joining the Navy in 1982, officer education, training, and academic studies (1983-1984), his postings included the fast patrol boats S50 PANTHER, S41 TIGER, and S76 FRETTCHEN. He also served as aide de camp at Territorial Command Schleswig-Holstein. After successfully graduating from the Admiral Staff Course at the Federal Armed Forces Command and Staff College in 1997, he served at the Naval Office (2001) and the Ministry of Defense (2003), before taking command of 1 [DEU] CORVETTE SQUADRON. In 2010, he commanded the German UNIFIL contingent and United Nations Maritime Task Group 448.03 in the Easter Mediterranean. Prior to his current position, he served as division chief at the German Fleet Command, and section head at the German Navy HQ.

Thorsten Staffelt was a Member of the German Bundestag 2009 - 2013, representing the Free Democratic Party (FDP). In this function he was a member of the Committee on Transport, Building and Urban Development of the German Bundestag; rapporteur for shipping and harbours; rapporteur for aviation and space travel; substitutional member of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC); substitutional member of the Committee on the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety; and rapporteur for energy efficiency. Besides his political career, Mr. Staffelt is a self-employed businessman (GASEX® compressed air optimizing) since 1998. He studied Mechanical Engineering and earned his Diploma (Dipl.-Ing., FH) from the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen. Mr. Staffeldt spent several years aboard cargo ships as ship mechanic, and technical officer candidate. He is also an elected member of the Chamber of Commerce, Bremen, and a member of the German Society for Aviation and Space Travel.

Born in Kiel, Germany Vice Admiral (ret.) Hans-Joachim Stricker joined the German Navy in October 1968. After the basic officers training he began his sea service in October 1972 in the 6th Minesweeping Squadron in Wilhelmshaven on board MSC KOBLENZ and later commanded the minesweepers NIXE (1974-1977) and Sirius (1978-1980). On promotion to Commander in September 1982 he joined the 5th German Minesweeping Squadron as Deputy Squadron Commander and served thereafter from September 1984 to June 1987 in the Policy Division at Headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic in Norfolk, Virginia. Returning to Germany he was assigned as Staff Officer Force Planning and Nato Matters in the Long Term Planning Branch at the German Naval Staff, MoD Bonn. From October 1988 to January 1991 he served as Military Assistant to the Chief of Defense Germany, MoD Bonn and joined thereafter
again the 5th German Minewarfare Squadron, this time as Squadron Commander. On promotion to Captain in September 1993 he held the post as instructor for Maritime Warfare and Operational Planning at the German Armed Forces Command and Staff College in Hamburg. In September 1995 Stricker joined the Ministry of Defense where he served as Branch Chief European Union/Western European Union (WEU) in the Politico-military affairs Department of the Armed Forces Staff in Bonn. In December 1997 he became Commander German Minewarfare Forces in January 1998. In March 2003 Stricker took up the position as ACOS Strategy at HQ SACLANT in Norfolk, Va, USA. After decommissioning SACLANT in June 2003 and commissioning Headquarters of the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (HQ SACT) on 19. June 2003 he assumed duties as DCOS Transformation and was promoted Vice Admiral. In May 2006 Admiral Stricker returned to Germany to take up the position as Commander in Chief German Fleet with Headquarters in Glücksburg, Germany. He commanded the German Fleet until his retirement on 30 June 2010. In June 2012 Stricker became president of the German Maritime Institute.

Captain Peter M. Swartz, U.S. Navy (ret.), is a principal research scientist with CNA Strategic Studies, focuses on U.S. Navy policy and strategy. He is a former U.S. Navy officer, having retired in 1993 in the grade of captain. While a junior officer in the Navy, Swartz served as a counter-insurgency instructor, a psychological operations officer, an advisor to the Vietnamese Navy in the western Mekong Delta, and a staff officer supporting Admiral E.R. Zumwalt, Jr., in
Saigon and Washington, DC. As a mid-level officer, he initiated and organized the first U.S. Navy-French Navy staff policy talks, was a principal author of The Maritime Strategy of the 1980s, and served on the staffs of successive Chiefs of Naval Operations and Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. As a senior officer, during the time of the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, Swartz was Director of Defense Operations at the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels and served as
Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, during the first Gulf War. Recent Work: Recent and current U.S. Navy strategy, U.S. inter-service relationships, concepts, policies, and doctrine; OPNAV organizational history; alternative U.S. Navy global fleet deployment models; CNA Scientific Analyst to the Director, U.S. Navy Strategy and Policy Division (OPNAV N51); lessons learned from past U.S. Navy homeland defense, riverine, counter-piracy, and irregular warfare operations.

Former Coordinator of American-German Cooperation, German Federal Foreign Office Karsten Voigt majored in history and in German and Scandinavian studies at the Universities of Hamburg, Copenhagen and Frankfurt. Mr. Voigt became actively engaged in politics at an early age. In post-war times, he accompanied witnesses during the Auschwitz trial proceedings and took part in the Anti-Vietnam war demonstrations. From 1969 until 1973, he served as Chairman of the German Young Socialists Organization. From 1984 until 1995, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the German Social Democratic Party and from 1985-94, member of the Executive Committee of the Party of European Socialists. From 1976-98, he served as a Member of the German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) for the Social Democrats (SPD). From 1977-98 he also served as a Member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, of which he was President between 1994 and 1996.Mr. Voigt's expertise is in the fields of foreign policy and security. From 1983-98, he was foreign policy spokesman of the SPD parliamentary group. Among his numerous other positions held, he is member of the Board of Directors of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) in Berlin, sits on the Board of the Aspen Institute Berlin as well as on the Advisory Board of the Center for German and European Studies of the University of Minnesota. He is also a member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Allied Museum Berlin.

Dr. Jasper Wieck is a career diplomat of the German Federal Ministry of Foreign Office. He currently serves as the Head of Division for Principle Questions of Defense and Security Policy.

Captain (ret.) Wilson is the Acting Director of the Global Maritime Operational Threat Response Coordination Center (GMCC), a Department of the Homeland Security office within the U.S. Coast Guard, and is an adjunct professor of maritime security at the U.S. Naval Academy. He previously served in the U.S. Navy, retiring in the rank of Captain. His service on active duty for 21 years included posts in the USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63), at the Pentagon, and in Antarctica.
He also commanded Region Legal Service Office, Naval District Washington, and was Oceans Policy adviser to the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy).

Sr. Col. XU Hui is a Professor and Deputy Commandant for Academics at the College of Defense Studies at the National Defense University, PLA China. He also holds the posts of Deputy Secretary of the Association of World Military Studies of China, Executive Councillor of the China Association of American Studies, and Editor in Chief of Defense Forum quarterly of NDU. He graduated from the Military Academy, Army Command and Staff College at the National Defense University, and got his Ph.D. in Political Science from the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, becoming a visiting fellow at George Washington University. Gaining working experiences in the field with troops of Chinese Army and Navy, he has been involved in teaching and research in the areas of Security in the Asia-Pacific region, Sino-American Relations, and Crisis Management at NDU since the 1990s. His Academic interests cover Asian-Pacific Security, Sino-US Military Relations, China’s Defense and Foreign Policy. His recent publications include International Crisis Management: Theory and Case Studies, US Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era (Coedited with Wang Jisi), Trends of Security and Defense Policies of Foreign Countries in the 21st Century. He was awarded as one of the Excellent Professors of the PLA and one of the leading experts on National Security Studies, NDU China.