M. R. Sukhumbhand Paribatra, a scholar, politician and philanthropist, Sukhumbhand Paribatra has been, until recently, a Democrat Party Member of Parliament for Bangkok since 1996, serving as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1997 and 2001. He holds degrees from Pembroke College, Oxford University, and Georgetown University. Before being elected to Parliament, he was an associate professor at Chulalongkorn University, serving as Director of its Institute of Security and International Studies (1987-93). While an academic, he held many positions, including those of Advisor to the House of Representatives Standing Committee for Foreign Affairs, Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister, Chatchai Choonhavan, and Chairman of the Ministry of Commerce’s Advisory Committee on International Commerce. He has also held the posts of Vice-President and President of the Social Science Association of Thailand and is a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, and the International Council of the Asia Society, New York. Since 1986, he has been Chairman of the Chumbhot-Pantip Foundation, one of Thailand’s largest philanthropic organizations. Since 1999, he has served as Chairman of S.E.A. Write Award, the only regional literary awards in Southeast Asia. In 1994 he was selected one of Time Magazine’s “Global 100”, a list of potential leaders for the twenty-first century.

Dr Wang Zhengyi is a professor and Chair of Department of International Political Economy, School of International Studies of Peking University, China. He received his Ph.D. in economics in 1993, worked as a post-doctoral fellow at SUNY at Binghamton, US and Masion des sciences de L’Homme, France in 1994-95, and then as a visiting scholar visited many universities in US, France, Belgium, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Canada. He has published a series of books and articles on International Political Economy, Asian Pacific regionalism, China’s political economy and social reconstruction, especially including Political Economy of Asian Regionalism(2007), World System and Rise of Power(2005), International Political Economy(2003);World System and China(2000) and Periphery Development: World system and Southeast Asia(1997), and “Transition Paradigm, Industrial Policy and Economic Policy: domestic and international forces”(forthcoming), “Beyond Gilpin’s Typology of IPE”(2006), “Understanding China’s Transition: national strategy, institutional adjustment and international forces”(2005), “Conceptualizing Economic Security and Governance: China confronts globalization”(2004). He was appointed as a trans-century distinguished professor by Education Ministry of China in 1999 and as a National Outstanding Expert by State Council of China in 2001. From 2002 on, he joins Peking University to direct new major in International Political Economy. He is also adjunct professor of College of Foreign Affairs and deputy general secretary of China International Economic Relations Association, and internationally a member of Academic Committee of The Nippon Foundation Group.

Zhang Qi is a Chinese citizen and a member of Academic Committee for the Future Leaders’ Retreat Program at Peking University. He is a law professor at Peking Unvierstiy and also Excutive Director of the Institute of Comparative Law and Sociology of Law at PKU Law School. He received his LL.B from Jilin University in 1982, LL.M. from Peking Unviersity in 1987 and Ph.D. in Jurisprudence from Peking University in 1998. He teaches Jurisprudence and Comparative Law in PKU Law School and Comparing Legal Systems of China and the U.S. for Stanford students as a Visiting Professor of Stanford in Beijing.

Dr. Pranee Thiparat is an assistant professor at the Department of International Relations, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University. Her areas of interest include U.S. domestic politics and foreign policy, regional security issues with particular emphasis on ASEAN and Thai foreign policy. Dr. Thiparat was chairperson of Department of International Relations from 2003-2005 and Director of the Institute of Security and International Studies (ISIS),Tahiland from February 2000-July 2002. She obtained her Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University, U.S.A.

Shuichi Ohno is Executive Director in charge of International Programs at The Nippon Foundation. A graduate of Kyoto University, he worked for the trading house Marubeni Corporation for almost thirty years. An economist by training, he worked for various economic and development organizations such as the OECD and World Bank during his employ with Marubeni. He joined The Nippon Foundation in 2001 as Director of International Affairs, and was appointed Executive Director in 2004. Under his leadership, The International Program Department of The Nippon Foundation has been developing and supporting a wide range of programs aimed at alleviating poverty and promoting human development around the world.

M.Rajaretnam was Educated in Singapore and the United States Rajaretnam started his career in 1971 as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore).Upon leaving the ISEAS in 1981 he spent a brief period in the private sector. In 1985 he established the Information & Resource Center as a private “think tank” and consultancy. He expanded his work to Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar through capacity-building activities and journals. In 1991 the IRC initiated a major regional integration project, Interaction for Progress: ASEAN-Vietnam that challenged the Vietnamese political and intellectual leadership to be part of the larger Southeast Asian community. He was concurrently Executive Director of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (1993-95), Coordinator of the Singapore Institute of Pacific Economic Cooperation (SINPEC, 1993-95), and Secretary of Singapore-CSCAP (Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, 1994-96). In 1994 he was advisor to the Institute for Policy Research in Malaysia and also designed and coordinated the Institute’s Asian Renaissance Project. His primary activities in the last decade have been directed to the building of a Southeast Asian community. In 2003 he convened a group of “friends and citizens of Asia” informally called the Asian Dialogue Society committed to the pan-Asian idea of “building a better Asia”. Currently he is the Director and Chief Executive of the International Centre Goa, India.

Dr.Lau Sim Yee is a Malaysian citizen. He joined the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in 1991. He is currently a senior program advisor to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. He advises SPF in projects related to people exchange program, human resources development and capacity building programs, and research projects pertain to economic cooperation, economic development, and international relations in Asia. He received his Ph.D. in International Cultural Studies from Tohoku University in 1998. He is also a professor at the School of International Economics and Business Adminustration of Reitaku University, since 2000. He teaches Development Economics and Southeast Asian Studies in undergraduate school, and Asian Economies at graduate school.

Professor Amitav Acharya holds the Chair of Global Governance and directs the Governance Research Centre at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. During 2001-2007, he was professor of international affairs and Deputy Director and Head of Research of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His previous appointments include Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, Fellow of the Harvard University Asia Center, and Senior Fellow of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Professor Acharya’s publications number over 20 books and 200 journal and magazine articles. His books include: US Military Strategy in the Gulf (Routledge 1989); A New Regional Order in Southeast Asia (IISS 1993); New Challenges for ASEAN (UBC 1995); The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia (Oxford 2000); Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia (Routledge 2001); Asia Pacific Security Cooperation (M.E. Sharpe 2004); Crafting Cooperation: Regional International Institutions in Comparative Politics (Cambridge 2007); Reassessing Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (MIT 2007) Singapore’s Foreign Policy; The Search for Regional Order (World Scientific 2007); The Age of Fear: Power Versus Principle in the War on Terror (New Delhi: Rupa and Co. and Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2004) and Asia Rising: But Is Asia Leading? (Singapore and New York: World Scientific, 2007). His international media appearances have been with CNN International, BBC World Service, CNBC and Channel News Asia (Singapore). He current affairs commentaries have appeared in Financial Times, Foreign Affairs (Online); International Herald Tribune, Straits Times, The Nation, Jakarta Post, Canberra Times, Far Eastern Economic Review, Japan Times, YaleGlobal Online, and Foreign Affairs covering such topics as Asian security, the war on terror, and the rise of China and India.