Naoto NAKAGAWA, has 25 years’ experiences of government in the Japan. In his carrier, he engaged in making policy and national laws related to maritime security, safety, marine environment protection and shipping. From 2017 to 2020, he worked at Japan External Trade Organization Houston office, and worked together with major oil and gas companies and arranged establishing the Nippon Foundation & DeepStar joint program. From 2020 to 2022, as the Japanese head of delegation, he participated in the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and contributed to the rulemaking process. 

Osamu initially joined the Navigation Section of IMO in 1997 as the Associate Professional Officer, seconded by the Government of Japan. After 3 years of service, he returned back to the Japanese Coast Guard where he obtained further operational and managerial experiences at sea and ashore, in various coast guard functions, in particular, Safety of Navigation and Search and Rescue (SAR).  He was recruited back to the Maritime Safety Division of IMO in 2010 and as a consequence gave up the uniform.

2 decades of service with the Coast Guard at sea and ashore made him a perfect fit to be involved in regulatory aspect of maritime safety from the international context as an officer technically responsible for safety of navigation and SAR at the IMO Secretariat. 

This is his 16th year in the Maritime Safety Division in total, assisting IMO Member States to enhance the safety of navigation.

His experiences at sea include the Commanding Officer/Master of two Coast Guard patrol ships, safeguarding the navigation around the busy coastline including in the vicinity of heavily congested Tokyo Bay. He is also a certified master mariner with the Certificate of Competency (first class - unlimited) granted by the Government of Japan. 

Mr. Hoffmann is Policy desk for Autonomous ships as well as for European cooperation on Coast Guard Functions at the European Commission, Directorate General for Transport and Mobility (DG MOVE). He holds a degrees in Political Science and Public Administration as well as Sustainability Science. In his work for maritime safety, he has responsibilities related to Vessel traffic monitoring and information systems and has been part of the European Expert subgroup MASS since its foundation 5 years ago. He looks at the arrival of autonomous ships in particular from a land-centric perspective and the impacts it will have on authorities. With the Norwegian Forum for Autonomous Ships and Norwegian ministries, he is co-organising the annual Autonomy Summit, which will see its 4th edition this year in June at Norshipping.

James Fanshawe retired from the Royal Navy in 2005 after Commanding HMS HURWORTH, CLEOPATRA and FEARLESS, the UK Task Group and the Devonport Flotilla. 

James chairs the UK’s Maritime Autonomous Systems Regulatory Working Group, which has released the Industry Code of Practice for the safe operation of Maritime Autonomous Ship Systems. He is a member of the UK Maritime Autonomous Systems Steering Group, the UK MASG Council, NFAS and ICMASS. He is the moderator for the UNECE work on Autonomy on Inland Waterways.  He works within a mixed commercial portfolio. He is a Director of ZULU Associates and The Anglo Belgian Shipping Company. He is a Board Advisor to SEA-KIT International  and is the Director of Maritime Strategy for Drone Major Group. 

He joined Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha (NYK Line) on 2005 as Third Grade Navigation Officer and was promoted to Master in 2020. The vessels he has boarded on are LNG carriers, LPG carriers, container carriers, car carriers, heavy lift carriers, and dry bulk carriers. In land-based operations, he was engaged in Dry Bulk Marin Quality Control Group, Cape Size Bulker Group.

He seconded from NYK to MTI in 2018 to work on the development of autonomous vessels.

In the development of autonomous vessels, He conducted a demonstration test using a tugboat for remote operation in 2019 and a domestic crewless vessel in 2022 at MEGURI 2040. 

Ifor started his career as an airline pilot and instructor, before progressing into senior management for two major airlines.

He was then offered the opportunity to join Sea-Kit, which designs and manufactures remotely controlled Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs) for multiple mission configurations. Ifor was part of the Sea-Kit team that developed the technology for the GEBCO-Nippon Foundation team that won the Shell Ocean Discovery X-Prize. 

Ifor is a member of the IMarEST MASSIG and the UK Maritime Autonomous Systems Regulatory Working Group (MASRWG) as well as being the Secretary of the MASSPeople working group, which is made of up of world-wide Flag State administrations with a goal of creating global training standards that will hopefully be adopted by the IMO.

Leanne Page is the Assistant Director for UK Technical Service Ship Standards at the Maritime Coastguard Agency, heading up a team of 30 policy officials who develop the regulations and guidance for the UK maritime industry on environmental and safety issues across full range of vessels sizes and types. She has held this role since December 2022, but has been with the Agency for over 20 years and has previously held roles in regulatory delivery, auditing and counter pollution. 

His professional career started in 1984 when he graduated from the Coast Guard Academy and was given a first assignment on board JCG cutter as a radio officer.  Since then, he has engaged in a variety of shore/sea services of the JCG across the country as below. He has served the Maritime Safety Division of the International Maritime Organization in London from 1989 to 1991 as a professional officer in charge of GMDSS, SAR and STCW. 

He retired from the Coast Guard in March 2022 and was re-assigned to the senior post responsible for maritime security and international strategy, including Japan’s MDA policy making and the maritime surveillance UAV program. He is also serving the JCG maritime traffic safety services as the IALA Councilor for Japan. 

CDR Joel Coito serves as Chief of the Prevention Law Division, Office of Maritime and International Law, at U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters in Washington, DC. Previously, he has served as the Coast Guard Liaison Officer, Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs, U.S. Department of State, and as an operations law attorney at the Coast Guard Pacific Area and Eleventh District Legal Offices. CDR Coito graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in 2005. He received a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law in 2013, where he was a publishing editor of the California Law Review. CDR Coito earned a Master of Laws degree from Yale Law School in 2020, focusing on international law.

Anna Petrig holds the Chair of International Law and Public Law at the University of Basel in Switzerland. She has a PhD in the field of the law of the sea and human rights law and an LL.M. from Harvard Law School. Anna is a member of the Bar of the Canton of Berne (Switzerland) and the New York State Bar. Her broad legal experience includes work in private practice, the courts, and the Legal Division of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Anna is the author of various monographs, notably pertaining to the law of the sea and transnational crime (see, e.g., Anna Petrig, Human Rights and Law Enforcement at Sea, Brill-Nijhoff 2014; Robin Geiss & Anna Petrig, Piracy and Armed Robbery at Sea, Oxford University Press 2011); and she has widely published on legal aspects relating to the use of autonomous ships. Anna has served as Judge ad hoc for Switzerland on the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Cases 27 and 29.

Etsuro SHIMIZU was received the Ph.D. degree of Control Engineering from Tokyo Institute Technology in 1999. He became an instructor and an associate professor of Tokyo University of Mercantile Marine in 1999 and 2000, respectively. He was an associate professor of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology from 2003 to 2017. Now he is a professor of Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology. From March 2005 to March 2006, he was a visiting professor of Norwegian University of Science and Technology. 

His current research interests include nonlinear control theory and its application, and the realization of maritime autonomous ship systems (MASS) from the viewpoint of not only technological aspects but also regulatory aspects.

Mr. Noguchi graduated from the Japan Coast Guard (JCG) school in 1980. He studied Aids to Navigation (AtoN) service at the USCG headquarters as the government short-term fellowship student. He was appointed as the coordinator of IMO NAV Correspondence Group on AIS-AtoN in 2011-2013. He has been appointed as the Chair of the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) e-Navigation Committee that is the leading Committee for the development of the IALA Guideline on MASS, since 2017. He also chaired the first IALA Workshop on MASS in 2021 hosted by the JCG.

He graduated from the Tokyo University in 1981 and joined the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism.

At the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, he held key positions in the Civil Aviation Bureau, the Ports and Harbours Bureau and the Japan Coast Guard, where he was involved in planning and coordination related to the measures of each bureau, etc. He retired from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in 2014 after serving as a Deputy Director at the Transport Safety Board, and was appointed President of the Japan Association of Marine Safety in 2021.

Captain Jun KAWAI was appointed as the Managing Director of the Japan Association of Marine Safety London Research Office, a public interest incorporated association, on 15th April 2022. With his quarter-century achievements, he has expertise in a wide range of coastguard functions i.e. maritime rescue operations, navigation safety and maritime law enforcement.