Francisco Ortigosa is Director of Geophysics at Repsol-YPF. Francisco has dedicated 21 years to the petroleum industry holding geophysics related positions in Spain, Venezuela, Colombia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Egypt and currently USA. He is particularly focused on the value added to the E&P Business by new technologies in the field of Geophysics. Recently he has created the Kaleidoscope Project that has been awarded by IEEE Spectrum as one of the most innovative projects for 2008. The Kaleidoscope Project is also finalist for the Petroleum Economist awards 2008, Project Innovation of the Year. Francisco has authored or coauthored numerous technical papers presented in International Conferences. Francisco is affiliated with the SEG, EAGE and AAPG.

Atef has been Head of Geomechanics at Total since 1995. Before that, he was a Research Engineer with the French Petroleum Institute IFP. He has wide experience in well and reservoir geomechanics within the oil and gas industry and holds both a Master Degree of Civil Engineer (1983) and a PHD in Geomechanics (1989).

Ingrid currently holds the position of Vice President Platform Technology and Marine Surveys at StatoilHydro Stavanger. Ingrid is a Master of Science, Marine Technology and Naval Architecture, achieving her degree in 1994. She has held various positions (engineer, manager) witin subsea technology in Statoil (intervention, operation, project planning, concept/technology development) and was Team Leader of the Exploration Valuation Team" in Statoil UK from 2002-2004, mainly valuating assets in Brazil, US Gulf of Mexico and West of Shetland regions (based in London). Ingrid was a Special Consultant with Statoil's CEO's office between 2005 and 2007 (based in Stavanger) and was Vice President Marine-, Civil and Material Technology until the merger between Statoil and Norsk Hydro in October 2007, when she took over her current position. She lives in Sandnes, Norway.

Christoph Koch is head of the department for “Reservoir Development Europe Oil” of RWE Dea AG, Hamburg, Germany. He holds a Dipl.-Ing. degree in drilling engineering and fluid mining from Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg. During his 8 years in the industry with RWE Dea he gained experiences in various positions including reservoir engineering/development as well as completions and workover operations on gas and oil wells.

Attila Holoda is currently Managing Director of Eurasian E&P for MOL. He has a degree in Petroleum Engineering from Gubkin Oil & Gas University in Moscow, and also an MBA in management and finance from the University of Economic Sciences in Budapest. Prior to his role as Managing Director, Attila held the positions of Senior Vice President of Central-European E&P and Production Director, amongst others within MOL.

Dr Amado is a Senior Reservoir Engineer at Petrobras America in Houston, Texas. He has over 15 years of experience in Reservoir Engineering in Exploration and Development Projects in GOM, Southern North Sea (UK) and West Africa. Previously he worked for Shell EP international and Schlumberger Geoquest Reservoir Technologies, where he had assignments in Mexico, UK, Brazil and USA. He has participated in several committees for the SPE, chairing technical sessions, coordinating conference committees and working as a Techincal Editor of the SPE Reservoir Engineering and Evaluation Journal. Dr Amado holds a PhD from University of Leoben in Austria and MSc from Unicamp in Brazil, both in Petroleum/Reservoir Engineering. Dr Amado has worked as a consultant for CSIRO in Australia for the Genesis 2000 project and was an associate professor at State University of North Fluminense, in Macae, Campos Basin, Brazil.

Mr. Souza is Petrobras Americas’s Production Engineering and Development Assets Area manager. He has 25 years of experience in project management and design for offshore equipment and installations with emphasis in Subsea Facilities and Steel Catenary Risers design and fabrication for deepwater applications. He was involved in the design, procurement and installation of many risers and subsea projects in Brazil, and in the Gulf of Mexico. He was the manager for the first deepwater high pressure high temperature Petrobras operated field in the Gulf of Mexico and was a coordinator for the future Cascade and Chinook developments.

Dr. Paul Jukes has over ten years' experience in the offshore industry, both as a Project Manager and as a Principal Design Engineer, and is presently the Advanced Engineering Group and Pipeline Manager for J P Kenny, Inc. Dr Jukes has extensive experience in the design and analysis of pipelines especially PIP systems for HPHT and deep water applications, and has recently been involved in a number of deepwater PIP systems for the Gulf of Mexico. His expertise is in the development of analysis methods for upheaval and lateral buckling, thermal expansion management, and spanning of pipelines and flowlines. Dr Jukes also has an interest in promoting Engineering to young people, and was the first Chairman of the Young Members Network for the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology (IMarEST). In 2007, he was awarded the IMarEST President's Commendation Award in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the activities of the Institute. Dr. Jukes is the youngest IMarEST member to be honored in such as way, and is now Chair of the US Gulf Coast Branch. Dr Jukes also has offshore experience which includes pipeline installation and construction, trenching, rock dumping, and umbilicals installation. Also he has worked aboard in locations such as Azerbaijan, London, Houston, and Italy. Dr. Jukes has published over thirty journal and conference papers, and is considered an expert in his field of design and analysis of offshore oil and gas pipelines.

Tim Bertels graduated in Geophysics at Delft University in The Netherlands and has worked in the Oil & Gas industry for close to 23 years. After graduation he joined Shell International where he has been holding several technical & leadership positions in Shell Companies, including joint ventures in Nigeria and Brunei. Assignments covered Exploration & Production, Technology Management and Strategy & Planning. Since 2004 Tim works full-time on CO2 Management, focusing on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).

Nadège Hopman has been working in the Oil and Gas industry for the past eight years in the Well Productivity Testing business. She was based mostly in Africa and held various positions, from field engineer to engineer in charge. She moved to Paris as Product Manager for multiphase meters applications in gas fields, which have since enjoyed a very successful deployment. She joined Carbon Services in 2008, and led projects in Europe and Africa. She holds a Masters in Civil Engineering, a Masters in Geophysics for the IFP School in Paris and an MBA from INSEAD.

Inge Manfred Carlsen has over 30 years experience doing contract research and technology development for the petroleum industry. His current position is as a Research Director for Production Technology at SINTEF Petroleum Research with main office in Trondheim, Norway. Key areas of research are within well technology and on how wells perform over time. Well Integrity during changing well life cycles is a fat growing research area including clients coming from both the operators, the service industry and the authorities.

Eirik currently holds the position of VP Operations at Baker Hughes INTEQ. Hailing from Trondheim, Norway, he has a BSc Petroleum Technology from Rogaland University and also a Masters in Management from the University of Stavanger. As VP Operations, he is responsible for INTEQ's operations in Europe, Africa, Russia and Caspian. Eirik is also a member of INTEQ's Executive Leadership Team.

Mr. Walker holds a Ph.D. degree from Durham University, and has 31 years of experience in the marine seismic exploration business. He held various management positions in GECO from 1984-1991. From 1991-1998 he was the Vice President Geophysics in PGS Exploration. He held the position as Managing Director of PGS Research UK from 1998-2002. Mr. Walker joined the senior management of RXT in December 2002. Mr. Walker is a UK citizen and resides in UK.

Hans C Ronnevik is a Geologist educated in Bergen. He started working as a research assistant at the University of Bergen and joined the Ministry of Industries Oil office in 1972. Hans then went on to work for Npd from 1973 -1983 and for Shell from 83/84. In 2000-2003 Hans worked as Exploration Manager in DNO and in a similar position in Lundin Norway from 2004.

Deirdre O’Donnell has 27 years Energy Industry experience, the last 21 in the upstream Oil and Gas Industry. Her academic background is a Scientific Software Development and Systems Analysis degree from Trinity College Dublin and an MBA from the Surrey European Management School. She commenced her career within the Energy Research division of the Irish Government and joined the oil industry in 1987, developing G&G solutions. Deirdre subsequently moved into more commercial roles with leading E&P technology providers before establishing “Working Smart Limited” in 1996. This was the first web-based recruitment company for the global oil and gas industry. Deirdre works with E&P and related service companies on a daily basis to help with their recruitment strategy for technical, operational and managerial staff. In May 2008, she launched the first dedicated graduate recruitment website for the upstream industry and is actively involved with universities and societies in promoting awareness of the challenges facing our graduates.

Roberta Bigliani joined IDC in 2007 and in her role, she is responsible for EMEA research-based advisory and consulting services, which provide full coverage of the energy industry value chain including both utilities and oil & gas segments. Roberta has over 17 years of experience in the gas and electricity industry. Prior to joining Energy Insights, she worked for Accenture where she led consulting projects for all major Italian Utilities and Oil & Gas companies. Over the last four years at Accenture, she joined Integrated Marketing Practice where she was responsible for Utilities at the European level. Roberta is the author of several reports and a contributor on energy issues for specialist publications.

Pierre-Boris Kalitventzeff is CEO and board member of BELSIM, a process software and engineering company. He has a masters in commercial engineering obtained at Louvain-La-Neuve university in Belgium. He started his career at IBM and left after 5 years, leaving a position where he was responsible for international deals for strategic outsourcing. Peirre-Boris joined Belsim 6 years ago. He successively handled sales, sales and marketing and is now CEO of the company since the 1st of January 2008.

Gerry Creech is the R&D Manager for ICS Triplex, A Rockwell Automation Company. Gerry has been designing and applying safety systems for safety critical applications since the mid 1970's. His experience includes detailed electronic design for safety system hardware, design and coding of software and system implementation for many applications including Emergency Shutdown systems and Fire & Gas systems. Gerry is a member of the IEC GEL65/1 working group and is currently on the IEC 61511 maintenance committee and a member of the InstMC safety panel.