Channa van der Brug contributes to the sharing of effective practices and to increasing opportunities for collaboration as the HFD’s International Programme Manager. She has 15+ years’ international experience in the education sector and a passion for the role of technology in shaping the future of education. Prior to joining the organisation in June 2022, she worked as a Conference Programme Director at a leading global event on digital learning & training. Channa has been a Academic Representative at two publishing companies as well, and has worked at universities in Denmark and in the Netherlands, where she studied at Utrecht University.

Tina Basner works at the CHE - Center for Higher Education Development as a project manager for the German Forum for Higher Education in the Digital Age. In this role, she is responsible for the Thinktank "Equity & Digital Participation" in HE. Furthermore she is developing opportunities for international knowledge exchange on good practices for digital teaching and learning. Tina studied Adult Education & Lifelong Learning at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Professor Sara de Freitas is an international author, educator and researcher with a specialism in digital technologies. With a PhD in data science, she has worked across sectors exploring how digitization and the use of digital technologies can transform lives. As a researcher and Director of Research, she has supported the foundation of the London Knowledge Lab (now UCL), established the Serious Games Institute and is currently setting up the Digital Futures Institute to push forward on the frontiers of what we know to support improved natural human computer interfaces and implement positive feedback and reward systems. In support of her theoretical studies, based on systems thinking, her field studies have focused upon quality service provision and growth in regional development. Towards that end, Sara has led academic portfolio areas in four campus-based universities, three colleges, two schools and a network of study centres in the UK, Europe and Australia, including the management and support for tens of thousands of on-campus, online and international students.

Dr Samia Chasi is a practitioner, scholar and facilitator in higher education internationalisation. She is currently the Manager: Strategic Initiatives, Partnership Development and Research at the International Education Association of South Africa (IEASA) and a Research Fellow at the University of the Free State (UFS), South Africa. She is passionate about facilitating deeper understanding and connections between diverse people and institutions by creating spaces for critical engagement and constructive dialogue. Her research interests lie in Global South perspectives on higher education internationalisation, with a particular focus on South-North collaboration and partnerships. Dr Chasi has more than 20 years of experience in international education through positions in international offices of German and South African universities, an agency of the European Commission as well as representations of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Nuffic and the British Council in South Africa.

After studying educational science at the University of Regensburg, with experience in the Balkan states, Bernadette Gruber worked as a lecturer for the Robert Bosch Stiftung in China. In addition to her teaching activities, she organised an international conference on digitalisation in cooperation with the Goethe-Institute and the DAAD in Beijing. Freelance work brought her to Berlin in 2019, where she is finishing a part-time distance learning program at the University of Hagen in eEducation: Education and Media. Since 2020, she has been involved in the student community of the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung (HFD). In addition she is working for CODE University of Applied Sciences in a research project on digital inclusive education.

Dr. Muriel Helbig is president of the Technische Hochschule Lübeck and has served as vice president of the DAAD since 1 January 2020.
She was born in Washington, DC in 1975 and grew up in Germany, Lebanon and the USA before she began studying psychology at the University of Potsdam in 1994. She subsequently completed her doctorate in an international German Research Foundation (DFG) research training group at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (2006). Her professional stations led her via graduate funding at the University of Jena (2006-2009) to the Bauhaus University of Weimar, where she was Head of International Relations (2009-2014).