Eric Biltonen

Economist

Eric is an economist who specializes in resources with an aim toward achieving sustainable development. He has over 10 years of experience consulting overseas on natural resource projects, primarily with water resources. He has worked with the governments of East and Southeast Asia in areas of feasibility studies, strategic planning, integrated water resource management, project evaluations, and the drafting of laws.

His economic areas of activity have included flood management, irrigation, river basin management, water supply and sanitation, poverty alleviation, forestry, and land use. Prior to working as a consultant, he was employed by the International Water Management Institute based in both Sri Lanka and Thailand.  He has worked in 18 countries and was based in Vietnam for the better part of 8 years. His current areas of research interest include water resources, bio-fuels, and the economics of climate change.

Education
Ph.D. (Agriculture and Resource Economics) Colorado State University
B.A. (Economics) Colorado State University
B.A. (English) Virginia Commonwealth University

Mitesh Thakkar

Education

Mitesh Thakkar has extensive experience in education-policy, development-research, and project management. He has worked globally - from being a research analyst at the World Bank in Washington D.C., to consulting for organizations like Palm Inc., the Ministry of Education in Vietnam, UNICEF in Afghanistan and others. Mitesh holds a B.A. in Astronomy from University of Texas, Austin; an Ed.M. in Education Policy from Harvard University; and a MBA from INSEAD (France/Singapore).

Prof. Do Dinh Sam

Forestry

Prof. Do Dinh Sam is one of the leading sciencetist in the field of Forestry.

Prof. Sam was the Director of Forest Science Institute of Vietnam. After his retirement in 2001, he still working for FSIV as an principal researcher and a member of FSIV academic board. Prof.  His main field of knowledge include: forest plantation, sustainable forest land use, environmental monitoring and forest policy.

Prof. Sam has his Ph.D degree in foresty from Forestry Academy, Sain Petersburg, Russia in 1977 and Doctor of Science from same Academy in 1990.

Giovanni Crudele

IT development

Crudele have 15 years experience in IT industry. He has worked for several communication technology company such as Infostrada and Omnitel in Italy. After that, he moved to banking sector developing management system for back-office. He have worked for Bank of Scotland in the UK, Bank of Credem in Italy, and SaxoBank in Denmark.

Crudele have extensive experience working in Vietnam,  he was the CIO of Saigon Securities Inc (SSI), the largest securities company in Vietnam. He was also worked as a consultant for for several research in image processing, data visualization and GIS.