Bernt S. Aadnøy is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Stavanger and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He worked for several oil companies earlier in his career such as Phillips Petroleum, Saga Petroleum and Statoil. He was also founded Ullrigg, the full offshore size drilling research rig in Stavanger. He has published ten books some in four languages and nearly 400 scientific publications. He holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wyoming, an MS degree in Control Engineering from the University of Texas, and a Drilling. degree in rock mechanics from NTNU. He has also studied petroleum and geophysics from the University of Texas.

Professor Aadnøy has received numerous awards for his work, one among them being the 1999 SPE International Drilling Engineering Award. He is also the only Norwegian national to be elected Honorary Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME). Rasool Khosravanian holds a BS in Drilling from Kerman University and an MS and PhD in Industrial Engineering from the University of IUST. He served as a faculty member and assistant professor from 2011 to 2018 at AUT, accumulating 15 years of experience in academia and industry. From 2019 to 2022, Rasool held a postdoctoral position in the Department of Energy and Petroleum Engineering (IEP) at the University of Stavanger, Norway. Following this, he worked for Aker BP in the DIG D&W as a Halliburton employee, focusing on digitalization in drilling and wells organizations. Rasool has six years of professional experience with EPD companies and has been a strategic planner for large organizations. His research interests include large-scale optimization, data mining, and AI for technology, digitalization, and automation.

He published a book in February 2022 and has authored approximately 40 journal papers in international journals. Rasool is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and Tekna in Norway. Mesfin Belayneh holds a BSc in Physics/Mathematics from Addis Ababa University (AAU), Ethiopia, an MSc in Applied Geophysics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway, and a PhD and Postdoctoral qualification in Geomechanics/drill string mechanics, with a focus on both experimental and analytical modeling, from the University of Stavanger, Norway. He has worked as a geophysicist, seismic data processor, and research engineer at NORCE (Norwegian Research Centre). Since 2010, he has served as an Associate Professor at the University of Stavanger, teaching and conducting research in drilling and well engineering through 2025.