Born in San Gimignano (Tuscany) in 1946 and member of its City Council since 1970, Gabriello Mancini has held a number of management positions for entities such as A.S.L.7 (the Local Public Health Office), the Regional Administrative Office of Tuscany, and the University of Siena. In 2001, he became member of Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) Foundation's Administrative Board and in 2002 was appointed Vice President of the same foundation. He also serves as member of Sansedoni SPA's Board of Directors and of Toscana Life Sciences Foundation's Steering Committee. He is currently Chairman of the MPS Foundation, Chigiana Academy of Music, and Cotec Foundation. He is also Vice President of ACRI and Mecenate 90 Association, the Board of Directors of Fondazione per il Sud, and the Steering Committee of Ravello Foundation.

MAURO BARNI is Emeritus Professor of Legal Medicine at the University of Siena, past Dean of the University of Siena and of the University for Foreigners of Siena, and past Major of Siena. He is Vice President of Italian National Bioethical Committee and President of Tuscany Regional Commission of Bioethics. Doctor of Laws h.c., University of Toronto. Author of 500 scientific publications on Forensic Medicine, Deontology and Bioethics.

Prof. Luciano Caglioti received his degree cum laude in Chemistry and then moved to the Organic Chemistry Laboratory of the Federal Polytechnic of Zurich. When he returned to Italy, he worked for the Chemistry Department of the Polytechnic Institute of Milan and was appointed full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Rome "La Sapienza." He published more than a hundred scientific papers, is the author of three books, and has eight industrial patents to his credit. He holds seminars and conferences and has often carried out assignments for various Ministries in the fields of Energy, Natural Resources, Industry, etc. He is a member of the New York Academy of Science, of Accademia dei XL, of the Hungarian Academy of Science, and of Accademia di Modena. He is coordinator of the Strategic Project of CNR for the utilization of results from public research in the industrial sphere and chairman of the ISRIM (Center for research and education on special materials for advanced technologies and the environment). He is the Italian delegate to the EEC Commission for Environmental Research.

Domenico De Masi is full professor of sociology at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" where he was also Dean of the Faculty of Communication. He is also founder of S3-Studium, School of Specialization in Organizational Science, and President of Ravello Festival. He conducted research in corporate organization and worked as senior manager in several companies of the Finsider group. Since 1980, he has been devoting his efforts exclusively to university education, vocational training, and organizational research in a number of major Italian companies. He is author of a great number of publications, his latest work being "La fantasia e la concretezza" published by Rizzoli in 2003. He is still working as a consultant for many leading Italian companies and cooperates with the most important Italian newspapers.

Demetrio Neri is full professor of Bioethics at the University of Messina, member of the National Committee for Bioethics, co-editor of "Bioetica. Rivista interdisciplinare", member of the Ethics Advisory Board of the European Consortiums Estools (Sheffield,) and Eurostemcell (Lund). He wrote about sixty papers on various bioethical issues (most notably on the beginning and the end of human life: new reproductive technologies, genetic interventions, euthanasia) and his latest book is: La bioetica in laboratorio.Cellule staminali, clonazione e salute umana, Prefazione di Rita Levi-Montalcini, Roma, 2001 (II ed. 2005) (Bioethics in Laboratory. Stem cells, cloning and human health).

Stéphane Bauzon (University of Rome Tor Vergata) is a philosopher of law. He has a Ph.D. in Law (University of Paris 2), a Master degree in Law (University of Nancy), and a Master degree in Political Sciences (University of Strasburg). He was a scientific expert for the Italian National Committee of Bioethics and was appointed Italian governmental expert at UNESCO for the approval of the Universal Declaration of Bioethics (2005). He is a consultant for ethical issues regarding clinical research for the Italian National Institute of Health. He published four books on ethics (among them see La personne biojuridique, Paris, PUF, 2006) and many articles on ethics published in international reviews (e.g. Oxford Journal). He is a Permanent Visiting Professor of Ethics & Law at the University Paris-Est (France), and an Adjunct Professor of Applied Ethics at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Rome). He also participated in several research programs funded by European entities (FP5 & FP6).

Carlo Valerio Bellieni is a neonatologist at Siena University Hospital. He is a member of the Bioethical Board of the Italian Pediatric Society, and of the European Society for Pediatric Research. He is an editorialist for 'Avvenire' and 'Osservatore Romano' and a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life and of the Bioethics Center of the University of Siena. He is member of the central board of the association 'Scienza e Vita' and of the Scientific Committee of the Center for mother and child health of the Catholic University of Rome. He published over 200 papers on the issues of pain, prenatal sensoriality, neonatal health, bioethics. He wrote several books and chapters of scientific books. His books include 'L'alba dell'io' (SEF ed.) on the development of fetal sensoriality, which has been already translated and published in Spanish and French, and 'House MD' (Cantagalli ed.) on the ethics of the homonymous TV series. He is also a member of the Italian Society for Pediatric Research, the Italian Society of Neonatology, where is member of the board of the Study group on neonatal analgesia. He is also president of "Come-Te", an association fighting discrimination of disabilities.

Marco Ventura obtained his Phd from the University of Strasbourg and now is full professor at the Law School of the University of Siena, Italy. Since 2004 he has been working as visiting professor at the R. Schuman University in Strasbourg and has been a member of the local Centre Droit, Société et Religion en Europe. In 2007 he was appointed international representative of the University Libre de Bruxelles. Previously he visited the University College of London (2002) and the University of Oxford (2004). He also lectured in Leuven, Utrecht, Paris, Oslo, Oviedo, Tibingen, Budapest, Thessaloniki, Coimbra, Copenhagen. In 2001 he was appointed rapporteur on the patentability of biotechnologies for the European Parliament. Since 2004 he has been Director of the Centre for Law and Biotechnologies at the University of Siena. He published several papers in English, Italian and French on biolaw, bioethics, law and religion. He specifically focused on assisted reproduction (Procrer hors la loi. Loi civile, loi morale et loi canonique face la nouvelle procreation, Strasbourg, 1994), on the management of conflicts of conscience within the legal framework of the Catholic Church (Pena e penitenza nel diritto canonico postconciliare, Napoli, 1996), and on the relationship between ethics and law in the European Union (La laicite dell'Unione europea. Diritti, mercato, religione, Torino, 2001). He is also co-author of the first Italian textbook of medical humanities (see Medicina e diritto: la reciproca influenza, in Manuale di medical humanities, a cura di R. Bucci, Roma, 2006, pp. 159-174) and editor of the 2007 special issue on "Biolaw and Religion" of the Spanish yearbook "Derecho y Religion". More recently see Biotech as the New Frontier for Biolaw and Ethics, in Collection of Texts from the EU-Macao Co-operation in the Legal Field, Macao, 2007, pp. 421-432; and La frontiera biogiuridica del diritto ecclesiastico, Introduzione a F. Botti, L'eutanasia in Svizzera, Bologna, Bonomia University Press, 2007, pp. VII-XII. He also works with the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera and the radio news program Giornale radio RAI.