Professor Cymie R. Payne is on the faculty of Rutgers University and a member of its Institute of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. She has appeared as counsel before the Intl Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and as expert before the International Court of Justice. She is legal advisor to the IUCN delegation to the UN negotiation of a high seas biodiversity treaty. She has been a member of the Berkeley Law faculty and served as an attorney with the UN Security Council environmental war reparations program, the U.S. Dept of the Interior, and the law firm of Goodwin, Procter. She holds an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley.

Pradeep Singh is a doctoral researcher at the University of Bremen, where he explores the role of expert subsidiary bodies in shaping the law of the sea, and an independent legal consultant. He holds an LL.M degree from Harvard Law School, an LL.M. degree in Global Environment and Climate Change Law from the University of Edinburgh as a British Chevening scholar, and an LL.B. degree with first-class honours from the University of Malaya in his home country, Malaysia. Pradeep has published extensively on the topics within his expertise, which range from public international law, global environmental law and climate law, the law of the sea and ocean governance. He regularly attends and participates in meetings and events of the International Seabed Authority as an observer delegate for the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies. In his capacity as an independent consultant, Pradeep occasionally provides legal advice to several delegates and parties on technical matters pertaining to marine areas beyond national jurisdiction.