Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri is Chair of the IRI Board of Overseers. He is currently the Director-General of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) and the Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), established by World Meteorological Organization and United Nations Environment Programme in 1988. He has been active in several international forums dealing with the subject of climate change and its policy dimensions. In 2007, IPCC was co-recipient (with Al Gore) of the Nobel Peace prize.

In March 2009, Dr. Pachauri was named to head the newly established Yale Climate and Energy Institute (YCEI) at Yale University.

Kazuo Aichi is currently a member of the House of Representatives in the government of Japan. In this capacity, he is the Director of the Special Committee for Research on the Constitution of Japan, and also a member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Within the Liberal Democratic Party, he is president of the Central Institute of Politics.

Prior to his current position, he was Director General of the Global Environmental Action, a non-governmental institution in Japan committed to helping develop solutions to global environmental problems.

He has held several positions in the Japanese government, including member of the House of Representatives for 24 years, State Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Minister of the Environment, and Minister for the State of Defense. From 2001-2002, he was a visiting researcher at Harvard University and George Washington University.

Hsin is Director General of Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau. Prior to this, he was a Counselor at the Ministry of Transportation and Communications from July 1995 to February 2004. Hsin served under five Ministers, where his ability to work with legislators was of particular value. His skills in public affairs contributed significantly to the development of Ministerial policies and approval of annual Ministerial budgets. The Executive Yuan in 2001 selected him as a model civil servant, which is one of the highest honorary awards given to civil servants in Taiwan.

Hsin received his Bachelor's Degree in Atmospheric Science from the Chinese Culture University in 1967. He joined the Central Weather Bureau after serving his one year of military service in 1968, and worked as a weather forecaster, weather station chief, section chief, and senior meteorologist with the CWB from 1968 to 1995. Under the support of the National Science Council, he continued his studies of numerical weather prediction at the National Taiwan University from August 1980 to August 1981.

Nay Htun is currently Professor Environmental Sustainability, Stony Brook University Southampton campus. He is also a Fellow and Visiting Professor Centre for Environmental policy, Imperial College London; Visiting Professor and Senior Advisor for Asia Pacific, International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics, Lund University, Sweden; Honorary Professor, Tongyi University, Shanghai, China; Visiting Faculty and Advisor, Chulabhorn Research Institute, Bangkok, Thailand.

He was formerly with UNEP and UNDP where he held the rank of UN Assistant Secretary General, as well as served as Director and Special Advisor, UNCED Secretariat, Geneva, Switzerland and help organized the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.
Nay Htun is a Member of the Board of a number of not-for-profit research organizations and graduated with a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London

McElroy is the Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies, Founding Chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and current Director of the Center for the Environment at Harvard University. His research is directed at studies of the wide-ranging effects of human activities on the global environment. In addition to his position at Harvard, McElroy has served on numerous committees of the National Academy of Sciences, the US Congress and various agencies of the US Government including the Office of the Vice-President. He is a Member of the China International Council for Sustainable Development. He received his BA, AM, and PhD in applied mathematics from Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute and Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to this, he served as Director of the Center for International Development (CID), Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), and the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade at Harvard University. In January 2002, Sachs was appointed by Secretary General Kofi Annan as his Special Advisor on the Millennium Development Goals. Sachs is the recipient of many awards and honors. He has published more than two hundred scholarly articles, and has authored or edited many books. Sachs received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 1976, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1978 and 1980 respectively.

Sir Crispin Tickell is currently the Director of the Policy Foresight Programme in the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at Oxford University. He is also Chairman of the Trustees of the St. Andrew’s Prize for the Environment, and is Advisor at Large to the President of Arizona State University. He joined the British Diplomatic Service in 1954 and served in various capacities, including British Ambassador to Mexico, UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and Permanent Representative on the United Nations Security Council. Sir Crispin has authored several books and publications, including Climatic Change and World Affairs, which thirty years ago already pointed to the possibility that climate change could affect international stability.

Simon Upton is Chairman of the OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development. Prior to this he served 19 years as a Member of the New Zealand House of Representatives including 9 years as a Minister. His portfolios included Environment, Research Science and Technology and Health. He is a graduate of the Universities of Auckland, New Zealand and Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He is a member of the Van Lennep Eminent Persons Group on Subsidies and a member of the Advisory Board to the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction.

Dr. Zebiak is director general of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, which uses a science-based approach to enhance society's ability to understand, anticipate and manage climate risk to improve human welfare. As director, he leads an inter-disciplinary team of over 40 scientists specializing in climate prediction, agriculture, health, water, economics and development policy. Dr. Zebiak has worked in the area of ocean-atmosphere interaction and climate variability since completing his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He and Dr. Mark Cane authored the first dynamical model used to predict El Niño successfully. He has published extensively in journals such as Science, Nature, the International Journal of Climatology, and has served as an advisor to a range of US and international climate science research programs.