Prof. Yasushi Mori is a Professor attached to the Graduate School of Environmental and Life Science. He got his Bachelor degree (Agriculture) in 1991, Master’s degree in 1993, and PhD (Agriculture) in 1999, from Kyoto University. In 1993, he joined Shimane University as an Assistant Professor. He spent the period 2001-2003 in UC Davis, Davis CA as a JSPS Research Fellow. In 2003, he became an Associate Professor in Shimane University. In 2012, he joined Graduate School of Environ. and Life Science, Okayama University as an Associate Professor, and in 2016, became a Professor. From 2019, he serves as the Vice-dean, Graduate School of Environ. and Life Science, Okayama University. He has expertise on Soil Science, Environmental Science, and Agricultural Land Conservation. His research interests go to recover the soil organic matter contents by using soil pore structure, reduce GHG emission by improving infiltration process, remediate contaminated soils, and reduce soil erosion by enhancing water holding properties of agricultural soils.

Professor Buddhi Marambe obtained his B.Sc. degree in Agriculture from the University of Peradeniya (UOP), Sri Lanka, and M.Agr. & D.Agr. from the Hiroshima University, Japan. Being an academic at the Department of Crop Science of Faculty of Agriculture, UOP for more than 38 years, Professor Marambe is extensively involved in teaching, research and outreach in Wed Science, Climate Change Adaptation, and Climate-Smart Agriculture programmes conducted in Sri Lanka, especially focusing on the total food system. With more than 150 research publications, Prof. Marambe won the “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the International Weed Science Society (IWSS) in 2022, and Presidential Awards and National Research Council (NRC) Merit Awards in Sri Lanka for scientific research related to Agriculture and Food Security in several years. He was the Chairman and currently a member of the National Experts Committee on Climate Change Adaptation (NECCCA), and is the Chairman of the National Invasive Species Specialist Group (NISSG) of the Ministry of Environment. Professor Marambe has been the Lead Negotiator in the field of agriculture representing the Government of Sri Lanka at the Conference of Parties in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, for the past 11 years. While being an academic, he has served as a non-executive member in the Boards of several private sector organizations to provide technical advocacies on agricultural development, and in Councils/Executive Committee of many professional associations. Professor Marambe has provided his services as a consultant to the World Bank, ADB, EU, UNDP, FAO, WFP, UNEP, ICRAF, and CIAT on issues related to agriculture and climate change at national and international levels.

Professor Ranil Coorey obtained his BSc in Food Technology from the University of the Philippines, Diliman in 1991. He then went on to pursuing his Master’s degree in Food Science and Technology at Curtin University, Perth, Australia and completed the same in 1996. Further, Professor Coorey completed his PhD at Curtin University in 2008. Professor Coorey has worked in the food industry in different countries for many years before joining Curtin University as an academic, where he continues to lecture in food product innovation and food safety. Currently, he is also the Director of Learning and Teaching in the School of Molecular and Life Sciences and former Discipline Leader of the Food Science and Technology program and its Course Coordinator. During his long career in the food industry, he has developed commercial food safety management systems and food products while working mainly in research and development and product innovation. Being a University academic as well as a researcher, he is, currently, engaged in a variety of industry-funded projects on chicken and meat cold-chain-management and safety and product innovation. Moreover, he also holds an international collaborative research project on safe chicken processing, which includes Australia and several African countries, namely, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Uganda. Professor Coorey’s other research projects include a large Australian government grant on red meat safety and industry-funded Australian native food processing and safety. Professor Coorey’s projects on Australian native food processing has identified possible unique food ingredients that can now be commercialised. Being a prolific academic writer, he has published extensively in high impact internationally peer reviewed SCI journals. Professor Coorey has supervised numerous MSc and PhD students from around the world, including those from Sri Lanka. Further, he closely works with many Sri Lankan scientists both at Curtin University and Sri Lanka. Professor Coorey was instrumental in establishing a link program between the University of Ruhuna and Curtin University and an MOU to this effect was signed in 2017. As part of the link programme, collaborative research on chicken meat safety, novel food product development etc will be carried out both in Sri Lanka and Australia. Moreover, staff and student exchange programmes, joint undergraduate and postgraduate programmes will also be established between these two Universities.