Professor WK Tang was appointed to professor in the Department of Psychiatry, the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2011. His main research areas are Addictions and Neuropsychiatry in Stroke. Professor Tang has published over 100 papers in renowned journals, and has also contributed to the peer review of 40 journals. He has secured over 20 major competitive research grants. He has served the editorial boards of five scientific journals. He was also a recipient of the Young Researcher Award in 2007, awarded by the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Prof. Gaiane Safarova is graduated from Leningrad State University (Faculty of Mathematics and Mechanics). Since the graduation she have worked at the same institution – now its name is Saint-Petersburg Institute for Economics and Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences. At present she occupies a position of Leading Research Scientist and the Head of the Laboratory of Analysis and Modeling Socio-Demographic Processes. Besides, she is a Professor of the Faculty of Economics at the European University at Saint-Petersburg. She has two scientific degrees – PhD in Economics and Sc. D in Gerontology and the author of more than 150 scientific publications. She has been the leader of several projects supported by Russian foundations and participated in a number of international projects. Prof. Gaiane Safarova is a member of the European Association for Population Studies (EAPS) and International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP).

Dr. Lisa A. Hollis-Sawyer, an Associate Professor in the Psychology department and Coordinator of the Gerontology program at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago, Illinois. She received doctorate in Industrial Gerontology from The University of Akron and conducted post-doctoral NIH/NIA training at Boston University. She is a trained social/industrial psychologist, a gerontologist, and a women and gender studies faculty. In addition, she co-authored four textbooks and books and authored/co-authored 34 scholarly publications. Dr. Lisa received the American Psychological Association’s Division 20 Mentorship Awards in Aging award in 2014, and attained the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education’s Program of Merit designation for the NEIU M.A. in Gerontology program in the same year. She teaches courses related to social, industrial, gender, testing/assessment, and aging-related (developmental) psychology. She actively develops and teaches several e-courses at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

Dr. Wolf-Ostermann is a full professor in the department of Health Care Services Research in Nursing Sciences at the University of Bremen, Germany. Prior to that she served for ten years as full professor at the Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Germany and also has served as a research statistician at several academic and government settings. Dr. Wolf-Ostermann is an internationally recognized dementia researcher especially in the area of small scale living environments for people with dementia. She has extensively published her work in a variety of journals that focus on gerontology and disseminated her work at an international level in numerous monographs, book chapters, and presentations.

Dr Michaela Bercovich is the director of the Oncological Hospice in Sheba hospital, Tel HaShomer, Israel and a lecturer at Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine. Dr. Bercovitch was born in Romania, Bucharest, where she graduated from medical school as MD in Pediatrics. In 1987 she emigrated to Israel and after two years training in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics she continued her medical practice in the Oncological Hospice. In 1998 she initiated a 2 year comprehensive postgraduate course of Palliative Medicine for doctors. She is involved in the education of medical students, nurses and doctors across Israel. Her research fields include pain control, impact of high dose opioids on patients’ survival, development of clinical auditing tools and a hospice oriented clinical database. She is the author of the chapter discussing treatment of pain with TENS (Oxford Textbook of Palliative Medicine), and other chapters addressing euthanasia, non-pharmacological treatments for chronic pain, the role of the physician near death, and the effect of patient-setting on the work of the team. Dr Bercovitch was a member of the Directory of European Association for Palliative Care (2007-2016); Served as the Chairperson of Israeli Palliative Medicine Society (2002-2016) focusing on the recognition of Palliative Medicine as a sub-specialty and its inclusion as a government funded treatment. Along the years she has actively participated in the conception and promulgation of the first Israeli law regarding the dying patient.