Murugesu Sivapalan is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geography at the University of Illinois. He was founding chair of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) initiative. He has published extensively on catchment hydrology in several international journals and is Executive Editor of the European Geosciences Union's Hydrology and Earth System Sciences journal. Professor Sivapalan also received the European Geophysical Society's John Dalton Medal, the International Hydrology Prize of the IAHS, the Hydrological Sciences Award and Robert E. Horton Medal of the American Geophysical Union. He was also the recipient of the Centenary Medal of the Australian Government and an Honorary Doctorate of the Delft University of Technology.

Thorsten Wagener is Professor of Water and Environmental Security in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Bristol. He is a Vice President of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences, Editor of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, and associate editor of several other journals. Dr Wagener has been awarded DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) fellowships, the IEMSS Early Career Excellence Prize, Best Paper Awards of the Journal of Environmental Modeling and Software, the US EPA Early Career Award, the Walter Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship, and the Education and Public Service Award of the Universities Council for Water Resources.

Gunter Bloschl is Professor of Hydrology, Director of the Centre for Water Resource Systems and Head of the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources Management at the Vienna University of Technology. He has published extensively on subjects related to hydrology and water resources and served as an editor and associate editor for ten of the best scientific journals in the field. Professor Bloschl has been elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the German Academy of Science and Engineering, has chaired the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) Predictions in Ungauged Basins (PUB) initiative and has been elected President of the European Geosciences Union. Recently he has been awarded the prestigious Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). He is also the recipient of the 2015 Robert E. Horton Medal from the American Geophysical Union.