Mr. Yunxuan Weng is Dean of the School of Chemical and Material Engineering of Beijing Technology and Business University and Secretary General of the Degradable Plastics Committee of China Plastics Processing Industry Association, and Secretary General of the National Technical Committee 380 on Biobased & Degradable Materials and Products of Standardization Administration of China. He has in-depth study in the fields of biobased materials and degradable plastics, plastic environment and sanitary safety, standard tests of products and quality control. He has published more than 60 papers in SCI, EI and other core journals, and prepared 20 national standards including Plastic Shopping Bags and General Requirement for Plastic Disposal Tableware. His publication includes Biodegradable Plastics and Bio-Based Plastics. He has also hosted National Natural Science Foundation of China project, national quality inspection public welfare project and other projects.

Dr. Chang has over 20 years of experience with food contact materials and food additive regulations. Dr. Chang received her doctorate in Immunology at State University of New York at Buffalo. She went on to work for two years at the Uniformed Service University of Health Sciences as a postdoctoral fellow to investigate gene expression. Afterwards, Dr. Chang worked as a staff fellow at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for one year, where she cloned the immunoglobulin gene for Col-1, which is a monoclonal antibody against carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). In her time with the FDA, Dr. Chang has worked as a regulatory toxicology review scientist, reviewing the safety data related to antibiotic resistance genes as selectable markers in genetically modified plants, GRAS petitions/notifications, antimicrobial agents, as well as direct and indirect food additives. Currently, Dr. Chang works as a consumer safety officer, coordinating the review process of premarket notifications for food contact substances.

Stefan Merkel is currently Head of the Safety of Food Contact Materials Unit at the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). In this role, he is responsible for leading the unit’s review of food contact risk assessments including the BfR Recommendations on Food Contact Materials. Before leading the unit, he worked for five years as a scientific staff member at the BfR where he was active in preparing risk assessments with a focus on food contact materials. He completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry at Humbolt University Berlin and then went on to earn a PhD, where his research focused on analytical chemistry of mycotoxins. During his studies, he completed a research exchange at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba, Japan.

Claudia Roncancio Peña is currently Head of the Food Ingredients and Packaging Unit at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), where she has the responsibility of coordinating the risk assessment for food contact materials, recycling processes and active and intelligent substances, food additives, food enzymes and food flavourings at European Level. She started to work in EFSA in 2004 in the area of feed additives, where she coordinated the European re-evaluation of all feed additives on the market. Before, she worked at the European Commission at the DG Environment as responsible officer for Endocrine Disruptors and Children’s Health and Environment between 2002 to 2004. She holds a Master Degree in Science and has worked in Colombia at the Universidad de los Andes, Escuela de Medicina “El Bosque” and the National Institute of Health.

Mr. Zhou Yao (Master) comes from the Consumer Products Dept. of REACH24H Consulting Group China and is mainly engaged in the statute services of food contact materials in China, America, and the South Common Market. With extensive compliance experience in the field of food contact materials, Mr. Zhou has provided tailor-made plans of product launching for various major enterprises in the South Common Market, America, and China, and assisted several enterprises in new substance declaration in China and declaration for Food Contact Notifications (FCN) in the past several years.