Professor Ruichao Li received his doctoral degree from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is currently a Professor and PhD Supervisor at the College of Veterinary Medicine, Yangzhou University, China. He is the recipient of the Jiangsu Outstanding Youth Fund, Director of the Department of Basic Veterinary Medicine, and Principal Investigator (PI) at the Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Prevention and Control of Major Animal Epidemics and Zoonoses. His research focuses on veterinary pharmacology and bioinformatics, with particular emphasis on the mechanisms underlying antimicrobial resistance in animal pathogens and the development of novel sequencing technologies. He has published over 200 SCI-indexed papers in leading journals, including Lancet Microbe, Nature Communications, The ISME Journal, Genome Medicine, Drug Resistance Updates, Journal of Infection, Engineering, GigaScience, mSystems, and Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, and has received more than 6,000 citations. He has an H-index of 41 and has been selected for the Elsevier Top 2% Scientists List for three consecutive years. Professor Li was selected for the High-level Overseas Returnee Talent Support Program of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security of China and the Jiangsu 333 High Talent Program. He has led 12 research projects, including four grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), comprising General Program and International Cooperation projects.

Professor Kai Liu joined City University of Hong Kong in March 2019 as an Assistant Professor in Animal Welfare, Ethics and Behaviour. He contributes to the Bachelor of Veterinary Medicine by teaching courses in the areas of animal behaviour and welfare and intensive livestock production systems. He also conducts research in the area of precision livestock farming, mostly in poultry and swine production systems. Professor Liu has been named as the 2019 Class “New Faces of ASABE – Professionals” by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers. As an agricultural and biological engineer working in animal agriculture, he is dedicated to applying engineering strategies and innovation, and to seeking data-driven solutions to address global challenges related to food animal production and sustainability, particularly the ever-growing issues related to animal welfare and behaviour.

Luca Guardabassi is professor with special duties (PMSO) and leader of the research group One Health Antimicrobial Resistance. He is an internationally recognized One Health microbiologist specialized in AMR and antimicrobial therapy with over 180 publications in peer-reviewed journals (H-index 57 on Google Scholar, last accessed in March 2021). LG graduated in Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pisa in Italy in 1994, and obtained his PhD in Microbiology from the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Denmark in 2000. Diplomate of the European College of Veterinary Public Health (ECVPH) since 2005 and the European College of Veterinary Microbiology (ECVM) since 2020. For over 20 years, his research has focused on evolution and epidemiology of multidrug-resistant bacteria of clinical relevance in human and veterinary medicine, including but not limited to VRE, MRSA, MRSP and ESBL-producing Enterobacteriales. Among the highlights, he contributed to a better understanding of the environmental origins of some of the most feared AMR determinants in human medicine, namely glycopeptide resistance operons in Gram-positive bacteria and carbapenemase-encoding genes in Gram-negative bacteria. In recent years, his research has shifted focus towards bacterial response to antimicrobials, antimicrobial drug target discovery, and metagenomics of the intestinal and respiratory tract in domestic animals. He is a pioneer of antimicrobial stewarship in veterinary medicine and participated in numerous national and international working groups for developing guidelines for rational antimicrobial use in animals. As part of his honorary office, he is a member of the executive committee in ESCMID Study Group for Veterinary Microbiology (ESGVM) since 2015 and chairs the Therapeutic Guidelines Group of the World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) since 2018.