Leena Ylä-Mononen is the Executive Director of the European Environment Agency since 1 June 2023. She was born in Pohjaslahti, Finland in 1963. Ms Ylä-Mononen has a master's degree in environmental sciences from Helsinki University, specialising in ecotoxicology and chemicals risk assessment and management.

Before joining the European Environment Agency, she was Director General at the Ministry of Environment of Finland. She managed the Climate and Environmental Protection Department, dealing with environmental policy issues and EU files related to climate change, air pollution, industrial pollution, circular economy, sustainable consumption and production, waste management and the prevention of environmental risks from chemicals.

Before joining the Ministry in 2019, Ms Ylä-Mononen worked for over 11 years in management positions in the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in Helsinki. Before joining ECHA in 2007, she worked in the European Commission, Directorate-General for Environment, on policy files related to chemicals and pesticides.

Earlier in her career she worked in the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) on environmental risk assessment and management of industrial chemicals, biocides and pesticides. Throughout her career, Ms Ylä-Mononen has been involved in international cooperation at the Nordic, European, OECD and global levels, and in the negotiations and implementation of multilateral environmental agreements on chemicals, waste and climate change.

Ms Ylä-Mononen speaks fluent English, in addition to her native Finnish, and has working level skills in French and Swedish. She enjoys nature, visual arts, literature and history.

Dr Andrea Ammon, MD, MPH, was appointed Director of ECDC in June 2017. From April 2011 to April 2015, Andrea Ammon was Deputy to the Director and Head of Unit for Resource Management and Coordination. From May 2015, she was ECDC's Acting Director. Andrea joined ECDC as the Head of the Surveillance Unit in 2005. The unit was responsible for developing The European Surveillance System (TESSy), implementing a long-term surveillance strategy for the European Union (EU), evaluating the Dedicated Surveillance Networks (DSN), performing step-by-step transfer of DSN activities to ECDC, revising the EU case definitions and producing an Annual Epidemiological Report on infectious diseases in the EU. Prior to joining the ECDC, Dr Ammon served in several roles at the Robert Koch-Institute, in Berlin, Germany, most recently as Head of Department for Infectious Disease Epidemiology. In this capacity, she maintained and further developed the German national surveillance system; coordinated the national outbreak response team for current and emerging infections; coordinated emergency planning for influenza; directed the national Field Epidemiology Training Programme; coordinated epidemiological research programmes in infectious diseases and provided scientific advice for government Ministries, Members of Parliament, and the public.

Ewan Birney is Deputy Director General of EMBL. He is also Director of EMBL-EBI, and runs a small research group.

Ewan completed his PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute with Richard Durbin. In 2000, he became Head of Nucleotide data at EMBL-EBI and in 2012 he took on the role of Associate Director at the institute. He became Director of EMBL-EBI in 2015. In 2020, Ewan became the Deputy Director General of EMBL. In this role, he assists the EMBL Director General in relation to engagement with EMBL Member States and external representation.

Ewan led the analysis of the Human Genome gene set, mouse and chicken genomes and the ENCODE project, focusing on non-coding elements of the human genome. Ewan's main areas of research include functional genomics, DNA algorithms, statistical methods to analyse genomic information (in particular information associated with individual differences in humans and Medaka fish) and use of images for chromatin structure.

Ewan is a non-executive Director of Genomics England, and a consultant and advisor to a number of companies, including Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Cantata Bio. Ewan was elected an EMBO member in 2012, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. In 2019, Ewan became a Board Member of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). Ewan serves on a number of Scientific Advisory Boards (SABs), including the DKFZ, ICR, OICR, Institute Pasteur and Riken institute.

He has received a number of awards including the 2003 Francis Crick Award from the Royal Society, the 2005 Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology and the 2005 Benjamin Franklin Award for contributions in Open Source Bioinformatics.