Michael Hicks is Professor of Soil Mechanics and Head of Geo-Engineering at Delft University of Technology. He has over 30 years' experience in finite element analysis, constitutive modelling and soil liquefaction, and has published around 120 articles. His particular interest is the stochastic characterisation and modelling of soil heterogeneity, including its impact on material behaviour and the response of geotechnical structures.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of ALERT Geomaterials and was Chairman of the Organising Committee for Géotechnique's 2005 Symposium in Print, "Risk and Variability in Geotechnical Engineering."
He also chaired the  International Workshop on "Safety Concepts and Calibration of Partial Factors in European and North American Codes of Practice" (Delft, 2011), the International Conference on "Installation Effects in Geotechnical Engineering" (Rotterdam, 2013), and the 8thEuropean Conference on "Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering" (Delft, 2014).

Federico Pisanò is Assistant Professor of Offshore Soil Mechanics at TU Delft (since 2014) and has 10 years' experience in the area of theoretical and computational Geomechanics.
He earned a PhD in Geotechnical Engineering in 2011 from Politecnico di Milano and had significant research experiences at international institutions, including Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (2010), University of California Davis (2012-2013) and University of Western Australia (2016). He has published approximately 30 journal and conference papers, with current focus on the numerical analysis of offshore foundations systems and dynamic soil-structure interaction. Since 2015 he is a member of the ISSMGE Technical Committee 209 on Offshore Geotechnics.

Joek Peuchen is a geotechnical engineer at Fugro, Netherlands. He has over 30 years of experience in geotechnical site characterisation, geohazards, special foundation solutions, offshore & onshore, mainly for the global energy sector and major infrastructure.
His main technical interests are in integrated site characterisation, with particular focus on geotechnical parameter value determination. Other areas include innovative development of in-situ test equipment and knowledge transfer by guest lectures at the Fugro Academy, Delft University of Technology and other institutions.
Mr Peuchen is (co-)author of more than 50 publications on geotechnical topics, invited speaker at international specialty conferences including keynotes, and peer reviewer of journal and conference publications. Professional memberships include geotechnical societies and ISO standardisation.