Simina LAKATOS is founding President of the Institute for Circular Economy and Environment "Ernest Lupan" (IRCEM) since 2012. Simina has economical and technical knowledge, abilities and experience: she holds a B.A. in Economics and a B.A. Honours  in Materials and Environment Engineering. She obtianed a Doctorate in Engineering and Management in 2011 after defending her thesis on Corporate Social Responsibility. Simina has been part of the Dept. of Management and Economical Engineering of UTC since 2011, where she teaches and researches the following areas: Sustainable Development with focus in circular economy, Strategic Management with focus in social economy, Enterprise Assessment and Marketing and International Management, all of which helps her to develop the IRCEM. Her focus is to accelerate the transition towards circularity from the bottom up with concerted actions, developing practical and scalable solutions, national campaigns, communicating and involving ohters in the dissemination of the circular economy and sustainable development message. Simina is Romanian and is fluent in English and Italian.

Laura Cutaia, researcher at ENEA is an Environmental Engineer (1996) with a PhD in raw materials eng. (2002). Main research topics: Industrial ecology and Symbiosis, Technology for raw and secondary materials treatment, Resources management, Life Cycle Assessment, Environmental Certification, End of life management. She is the responsible of Resources Valorisation Lab. at ENEA working on: circular economy and resource efficiency, industrial ecology and symbiosis, LCA, environmental certification schemes, REACH regulation, sustainable industrial areas.

Alexandre Affre is Director for the Industrial Affairs department at BusinessEurope, the leading advocate for growth and competitiveness at European level. In this role since 2013, Alexandre is responsible for developing and communicating the organization’s positions on energy, climate and environmental policy as well as industrial policy and research & innovation. Prior to that, he worked at the wildlife trade monitoring network of WWF and IUCN. Alexandre is a trained scientist and holds a Master in Ecology from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is a UK charity with the aim of accelerating the transition to the circular economy. 

Since its creation the charity has emerged as a global thought leader, establishing the circular economy on the agenda of decision makers across business, government and academia. Maja has been with the Foundation’s the Gov. & Cities team since 2015, where her work revolves around supporting policymakers at international, national, regional and local level in driving circular economy initiatives.