Born in San Gimignano (Tuscany) in 1946 and member of its City Council since 1970, Gabriello Mancini has held a number of managerial positions which include: 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 the Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) Foundation's Administrative Board and in 2002 was elected Vice President of the same foundation. He also serves as member of the Sansedoni SPA's Board of Directors and the Toscana Life Sciences Foundation's Guideline Council.
Currently, he is Chairman of the MPS Foundation, the Chigiana Academy of Music, and the Cotec Foundation.
He is also Vice President of the ACRI and the Mecenate 90 Association, the Fondazione per il Sud's Board of Directors, and the Ravello Foundation's Guideline Council.

MAURO BARNI is Emeritus Professor of Legal Medicine in University of Siena. Past Rector, University of Siena and University for Foreigners of Siena; past Major of Siena. Vice President of Italian National Commitee of Bioethics and President of Tuscany Regional Commission of Bioethics. Doctor of Laws h.c., University of Toronto. Author of 500 scientific publications on Forense Medicine, Deontology and Bioethics.

Prof. Luciano Caglioti received his degree summa cum laude in Chemistry and moved to the Organic Chemistry Laboratory at the Federal Polytechnic of Zurich. Following his return to Italy, he worked in the Chemistry Department of the Polytechnic Institute of Milan and as full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Rome "La Sapienza."
He has 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 the Accademia dei XL, of the Hungarian Academy of Science, and of the Accademia di Modena. He is co-ordinator of the Strategic Project of CNR for the utilization of results from public research in the industrial sphere and chairman of the ISRIM (Superior Institute for the Study and Research in Material Science). 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 the S3-Studium, School of Specialization in Organizational Science and President of the Ravello Festival. He conducted research in company organization and has worked as senior manager in various companies in the group Finsider. From 1980 he devoted himself exclusively to university education, vocational training and organisational research in a number of major Italian companies. He is the author of a great number of publications, his latest work being "The Imagination and Concreteness" published by Rizzoli in 2003. He is still working as 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 on Bioethics, co-editor of "Bioetica. Rivista interdisciplinare", member of the Ethics Advisory Board of the European Consortiums Estools (Sheffield,) and Eurostemcell (Lund).
He is the author of about sixty papers on various bioethical problems (particularly regarding the beginning and the end of the human life: new reproductive technologies, genetic interventions, euthanasia) and his last 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 holds 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 used to be a scientific expert at the Italian National Committee of Bioethics and he was appointed as a Italian governmental expert at the UNESCO for the approbation of the Universal Declaration of Bioethics (2005). He is a consultant in clinical trials ethical issue at the Italian National Institute of Health.
He has published four books on ethics (among them see La personne biojuridique, Paris, PUF, 2006) and many articles on ethics published in international reviews (like Oxford Journal). He is a Permanent Visiting Professor for 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 has participated to several European funded programs of research (FP5 & FP6).

Carlo Valerio Bellieni is a neonatologist at the Siena University Hospital. He is member of the Italian Pediatric Society bioethics board, and of the European Society for Pediatric Research. He is an editorialist for 'Avvenire' and 'Osservatore Romano' , and is 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's and baby's health of the Catholic University of Rome. He has produced more than 200 scientific publications on the issues of pain, prenatal sensoriality, neonatal health, bioethics. He has written several books and chapters of scientific books. Among the books, we remind '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 serial TV movie. He is also member of the Italian Society for Pediatric research, Italian Society of Neonatology, where is member of the board of the Study group on neonatal analgesia. He is also president of the cultural association against the discrimination of disability 'Come-Te'.

Phd at the University of Strasbourg, Marco Ventura is full professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Siena, Italy. Since 2004 he is visiting professor at the R. Schuman University of Strasbourg and a member of the local Centre Droit, Societ´ et Religion en Europe. In 2007 he was appointed for the international chair at 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 is the Director of the Centre for Law and Biotechnologies at the University of Siena.
He published widely in English, Italian and French on biolaw, bioethics, law and religion. In particular, he 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 the law in the European Union (La laicite dell'Unione europea. Diritti, mercato, religione, Torino, 2001).
He is also the 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 the 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 Corriere della Sera and the Giornale radio RAI.