Dr. Glynn is, from 2014 to the present, Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine and Executive Team Member, Mayo Clinic Global Bridges Initiative. From 1998 to 2014, he was Director, Cancer Science and Trends and Director, International Cancer Control at the American Cancer Society (ACS). Prior to the ACS, Dr. Glynn was, from 1991 to 1994, Associate Director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Cancer Control Science Program and, from 1991 to 1998, Chief of the NCI's Cancer Control Extramural Research Branch.. From 1983 to 1991, he was Research Director for the NCI's Smoking, Tobacco, and Cancer Program and from 1978 to 1983, he was a Research Psychologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Glynn has published widely on cancer and tobacco use prevention and control, both in the scientific literature and for consumer, professional, and patient education. In addition to his work at the ACS and NCI, he has served as a consultant on cancer control and tobacco issues to such groups as the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the WHO, a variety of pharmaceutical organizations, and national, state and local governments. He has also served as a Senior Scientific Reviewer for the U.S. Surgeon General's Reports on Tobacco and Health, as Director of the World Health Organization Study of Health, Economic, and Policy Implications of Tobacco Growth and Consumption in Developing Countries, and has been active in tobacco control programs in Eastern Europe, Central America, and India. He is a Fellow of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and his awards include the U.S. National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the Polish Ministry of Health Service Award, the Guatemala National Council for Tobacco Prevention and Control Meritorious Service Award, the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco John Slade Award, and the American Society of Preventive Oncology Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award.  

Neal L. Benowitz, MD, is Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Research Program in Clinical Pharmacology, Division of Cardiology, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He was Chief of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at UCSF for 35 years. Dr. Benowitz’s research interests have focused primarily on the human pharmacology and toxicology of nicotine and cannabis. He has published extensively and contributed to several US Surgeon General’s Reports on Smoking and Health in the areas of nicotine addiction and the cardiovascular effects of tobacco use, including cigarettes, water pipe and electronic cigarette use.  Dr Benowitz maintains an active clinical practice in cardiovascular medicine and medical toxicology. Dr Benowitz was a scientific editor of the 1988 United States Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health: Nicotine Addiction; a scientific editor of the 2001 NCI Monograph 13 Report on Risks Associated with Smoking Cigarettes with Low Machine-Measured Yields of Tar and Nicotine; and served as section editor for the 2010 Surgeon General’s Report on How Tobacco Smoke Causes Disease. He, has served as a member of the National Institutes of Health Pharmacology Study Section and the FDA Nonprescription Drug and Tobacco Products Science Advisory Committees. He has served as President of the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and as President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. Dr Benowitz has received the Ove Ferno, Alton Ochsner, and Rawls-Palmer Progress in Medicine awards, and the Oscar B. Hunter Memorial Award in Therapeutics for his research on nicotine, tobacco, and health, and was the 2002 UCSF Annual Distinguished Clinical Research Lecturer.  

Dr Sun is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Health Policy and Organization at UAB. She received her training in health economics and operations research/decision sciences. Dr Sun applies a variety of quantitative methods in her research, including agent-based modeling, econometric methods, social network analysis, mathematical modeling and optimal control, to study health behaviors and evaluate public health interventions. Her main research interests include tobacco control, youth electronic cigarette use, infectious disease modeling, and substance use and addiction. She has published in leading journals in her field, such as JAMA Pediatrics, JAMA Network Open, Addiction, Nicotine and Tobacco Research, and Journal of Medical Internet Research. Her studies have been covered by national media outlets such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, and United Press International. Dr. Sun received her undergraduate degree from College of William and Mary, a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.    

Dr. Jonathan Foulds has spent most of his career finding ways to help smokers beat their addiction to tobacco. He has been a principal investigator on grants totaling well over $27 million and has been invited to speak on smoking cessation in more than 15 countries. Dr Foulds trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Glasgow, and obtained his PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He worked at St George’s Hospital Medical School as the UK’s first “lecturer in tobacco addiction” and then moved to University of Surrey and continued to work as a principal clinical psychologist at Broadmoor Hospital, a large maximum security facility for mentally disordered offenders. He has spent most of his career developing and evaluating methods to help smokers beat their addiction to tobacco. He was on the Management Group of the Hungarian Anti-Smoking Campaign (1995-6), has been a technical leader of a World Health Organization project to improve the regulation of tobacco dependence treatment in Europe (2000), and was Director of Research for the UK charity, Quit, which ran the largest telephone helpline for smokers in the world at that time. From 2000-2010 he was the director of the Tobacco Dependence Program at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey (now Rutgers) – School of Public Health. Although primarily funded for service activities, TDP program members published over 90 articles on tobacco during that period. He has been a principle investigator or co-PI on grants totaling over $50 million and has published over 200 scientific papers and book chapters on tobacco and nicotine. He has been invited to speak on smoking cessation in over 15 countries. He acts as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies developing smoking cessation products, and has testified to FDA on behalf of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco on regulation of nicotine replacement therapies. He continues to teach on smoking cessation and conduct research on tobacco and health at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. In 2025, along with Jill Williams MD, he published the book “Treating Addiction to Tobacco and Nicotine Products” (American Psychiatric Association Publishing).

Robin Mermelstein, PhD. is Distinguished Professor, Psychology Department; Director of the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and Co-Director of UIC’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science.  Dr. Mermelstein has been active in health-behavior research for 30 years, with continuous NIH funding as a Principal Investigator on grants since 1986. Dr. Mermelstein was acknowledged by the NCI as a Research Pioneer in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences. She is nationally recognized for her expertise in understanding trajectories and developmental patterns of youth tobacco use, for employing novel approaches to studying contextual factors in the development of nicotine dependence and health risk behaviors, for developing innovative health behavior clinical interventions for adolescents and adults, and for methodological issues in conducting tobacco-related research. She has been the PI of several large-scale, multidisciplinary program project and center grants, as well as the Director of a national program or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Mermelstein has served on many NIH advisory and review committees, including being a former standing member of the NCI-A Cancer Centers review committee; a former member of the External Scientific Advisory Panel for the NCI’s Science of Research and Technology Branch; co-Chair of the NCI’s Tobacco Control Priorities Consultant Group; a former standing member of the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s K-award study section; and a current member of the External Scientific Advisory Board for the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study) of NIH. She has been acknowledged for her scientific accomplishments by several national and international research societies, including being named a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and a Fellow of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco. She is a past President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (2015-2016).  

Brian King, PhD, MPH, was the Director of the Center for Tobacco Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Prior to joining FDA, he served as the Deputy Director for Research Translation in the Office on Smoking and Health (OSH) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. King joined the CDC in 2010 as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer, before which he worked as a Research Affiliate in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York. Dr. King has worked for over 20 years to provide sound scientific evidence to inform tobacco control policy and to effectively communicate this information to key stakeholders, including decision makers, the media, and the general public. He has authored or co-authored over 225 peer-reviewed scientific articles pertaining to tobacco prevention and control, was the lead author of CDC’s 2014 update to the evidence-based state guide, “Best Practices for Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs,” and was the Senior Associate Editor of numerous U.S. Surgeon General's Reports on tobacco. Dr. King holds a PhD and MPH in Epidemiology from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Ben Youdan started his career running the UK’s No Smoking Day Campaign in the early 2000’s before moving to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2006 to take on the role of ASH Director. He worked on the campaign for the Smokefree 2025 goal, and the policy steps to accompany it. In 2013 he took time out of tobacco control to work as the election campaign director for the New Zealand Green Party, and setting up a community led social change project in highly deprived communities in South Auckland. After working with these communities where vaping was disrupting generations of smoking, he returned to ASH with a particular interest in harm reduction as a tool to reduce inequity, and achieve Aotearoa New Zealand’s smokefree 2025 goal.  He currently splits his time between ASH, and as policy adviser to the New Zealand Heart Foundation.  

Dr. Cummings is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and member of the Hollings Cancer Center’s Cancer Control Program where he co-leads the tobacco control research program. He is widely recognized for his research on smoking behavior, product marketing, consumer risk perceptions, and the influence of cigarette design on smoking behavior. Dr. Cummings is one of the co-founders of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project) which has focused on comparing between country differences in tobacco product regulations and how these policies influence the smoking behaviors of adults and teens. He has published more than 650 peer-reviewed scientific papers, contributed to multiple US Surgeon General Reports on Smoking and Health. He has served as an expert witness in litigation against cigarette manufacturers over 200 cases dating back to the mid-1990s. Over the past decade, Dr. Cummings has focused his efforts on ways to improve the delivery of smoking cessation treatments to patients in health care settings and more broadly on establishing a tobacco and nicotine products regulatory framework based on relative risks that incentivize manufacturers to move away from selling addictive and deadly combustible tobacco products.

Olivia A. Wackowski, PhD, MPH, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Behavior, Society, and Policy at the Rutgers School of Public Health and Core Member of the Rutgers Institute for Nicotine & Tobacco Studies. Her primary research interests and work lie in the areas of tobacco communication, product perceptions, and product use trends. She uses qualitative and quantitative methods to characterize the types and content of tobacco and nicotine related communications to which the public are exposed, their potential impact on tobacco-related beliefs and behaviors and to develop effective communications to improve public health. She has published over 145 peer-reviewed publications and led nine NIH grant-funded studies as PI or MPI. She became a Fellow of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in 2025 and serves as an Associate Editor and Senior Associate Editor for the research journals Nicotine & Tobacco Research and Behavioral Medicine. She has also served as an invited ad-hoc consultant to the FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee since 2018, contributing to the Committee’s review and discussion of multiple Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) applications for tobacco products seeking FDA authorization to make lower-risk advertising claims.

Sharon Cox is a Principal Research Fellow within the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at University College London. Collectively, she has over 20 years’ experience within substance use treatment and research. Her research focuses on tobacco dependence and cessation amongst people living with severe, and often unchanging, health and social needs. She has a special interest in tobacco harm reduction, specifically how quitting smoking using non-combustible nicotine products can improve health outcomes and quality of life among people experiencing homelessness and those with other drug dependencies. 

Kathy Crosby is the CEO and President of Truth Initiative, the nation's largest nonprofit public health organization dedicated to achieving a culture where all young people reject smoking, vaping and nicotine, and a future where commercial tobacco and nicotine addiction are a thing of the past. She leads all aspects of the organization’s lifesaving work, including developing innovative and high-profile public education campaigns, groundbreaking research initiatives, impactful community and youth engagement programs, and highly effective nicotine cessation tools for all ages. Crosby's commitment to public health and her belief in the power of education and communication to create meaningful behavior change have been evident throughout her distinguished 30-year career. Before joining Truth Initiative in October 2023, Crosby served for 12 years in the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) as its first Director of the Office of Health Communication and Education. In this role, she spearheaded a range of impactful public education and regulatory communication programs that have contributed significantly to reducing tobacco use and the successful implementation of the Tobacco Control Act. At FDA, Crosby also served on CTP’s executive leadership team where she shaped national policy development, cutting-edge social science research, regulatory actions, communications, and strategic outreach. Notable accomplishments under her guidance include her involvement in the formulation of health warnings for cigarette packages and advertisements, groundbreaking research on health equity, and regulations and marketing restrictions for emerging and newly authorized tobacco products. Crosby’s previous experience includes serving as Senior Vice President, Group Campaign Director of the Washington office of the Ad Council, the national nonprofit behind major social impact campaigns. Prior to that, she also worked at advertising agency Arnold Worldwide as Vice President of Strategic Planning, where she helped launch Truth Initiative’s very first iconic truth® campaign, igniting her passion and commitment to help people live healthier lives.

Dr. Jaqueline Avila has a PhD in Population Health Sciences and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Gerontology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Her work focuses on social determinants of health outcomes among older adults who smoke in the U.S. and Latin America. The main disciplines in her research are tobacco control, population aging and social epidemiology.  

Nancy Rigotti, MD, is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Associate Chief of the Division of General Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), founder and director of MGH’s Tobacco Research and Treatment Center, as well as Past President of the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco and Past President of the Society of General Internal Medicine.  Dr. Rigotti is known for her leadership to incorporate the delivery of tobacco use treatment into routine health care delivery settings. She led JAMA’s 2022 Clinical Review, Treatment of Tobacco Use and co-led the American College of Cardiology’s Consensus Decision Pathway on Tobacco Cessation Treatment. Her research includes evaluations of tobacco control public policies, clinical trials of behavioral and pharmacologic smoking cessation treatments, and evaluation of system-level interventions for various inpatient and outpatient health care settings in the U.S. and globally. Dr. Rigotti was a member of the committee that produced the 2018 U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Report, Public Health Consequences of Electronic Cigarettes.  Her subsequent research on this topic has addressed the role of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation and harm reduction and interventions to assist e-cigarette users to quit.

Ken Warner is a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. On the faculty from 1972-2017, he served as Dean from 2005-2010. He is currently a co-investigator in the University’s NCI-FDA funded Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations. His research has focused on economic and policy aspects of tobacco and health. Ken served as the World Bank’s representative to negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He also served as the Senior Scientific Editor of the 25th anniversary Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health. He is a past President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. Ken recently completed a term on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee. He currently serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of Northwestern Michigan College. Ken received his AB degree from Dartmouth College and MPhil and PhD in economics from Yale University.    

Prof Sarah Jackson is a Professorial Research Fellow in the UCL Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group. Her work focuses on monitoring population trends in smoking, vaping, and alcohol use and evaluating the effectiveness of smoking cessation aids, interventions, and policies at the individual and population level. To do this, she makes use of large, population-based datasets such as the Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Study. She has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications relating to nicotine and tobacco, alcohol, and other health-related issues such as obesity and cancer. She has also contributed to influential reports on smoking, vaping, and health by the Royal College of Physicians. The contribution of her work has been recognised by several awards, including the Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA)'s Impact Prize and early career awards from the SSA (Fred Yates Prize) and UK Society for Behavioural Medicine. Prof Jackson holds leadership positions in associations relating to nicotine and tobacco research. She is Past President for Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco's European Chapter (SRNT Europe) and sits on Action on Smoking and Health’s advisory council. Dr Jackson is also a Senior Editor at the journal Addiction and Social Media Editor for Nicotine & Tobacco Research. She has served as a reviewer for numerous peer-reviewed publications, including large evidence reviews on nicotine vaping in England commissioned by Public Health England and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.

Dr Alex C. Liber, specializes in the analysis of retail scanner data to track tobacco market dynamics and policy impact and designs and implements rigorous policy evaluation methodologies. He also conducts systematic evidence synthesis to inform regulatory decision-making and models tobacco policy impacts on consumer behavior and industry response. Dr. Liber is an expert in comparative analysis of regulatory frameworks across international context. He assesses quantitative market substitution effects following policy implementation. At RTI, Dr. Liber leads projects that leverage scanner sales data for tobacco market surveillance and policy evaluations, as well as provide critical intelligence for state and federal regulatory decisions. His work includes systematic reviews of tobacco policy interventions and development of evaluation methodologies that track the real-world impacts of tobacco regulations. Dr. Liber's comparative analysis of international tobacco control policies provides insights for effective domestic regulatory approaches. Prior to joining RTI, Dr. Liber served as Assistant Professor at Georgetown University (2020-2023) and Senior Scientist at the American Cancer Society (2011-2020). He developed the "regulatory stances" framework for analyzing commercial determinants of health and has extensively studied policy impacts on tobacco markets worldwide. Dr. Liber has contributed to multiple editions of The Tobacco Atlas global reference and led evaluations of flavored tobacco restrictions, menthol bans, and tobacco 21 policies.

Peter Hajek is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Health and Lifestyle Research Unit at the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London. His research is concerned primarily with understanding health behaviours, and developing and evaluating both behavioural and pharmacological treatments for dependent smokers and for people with weight problems. Professor Hajek is a member of a number of expert groups, advisory bodies and editorial boards, and has authored or co-authored over 400 publications.

Tord Finne Vedoy's career has been dedicated to advancing knowledge of substance abuse and tobacco use in Norway. His research has significantly advanced understanding of the impact of e-cigarettes, snus, and nicotine replacement therapy products on smokers and non-smokers alike. Vedoy's work has been pivotal in shaping public health policies and addressing the challenges posed by substance abuse in the country

Dorothy K. Hatsukami, Ph.D. is the Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Forster Family Chair in Cancer Prevention of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota.   Her areas of expertise include nicotine addiction and its treatment and tobacco regulatory science assessing the toxicity, appeal and addictiveness of various tobacco products.  She has over 500 peer reviewed publications.  She has served on numerous scientific advisory boards or councils for the U.S. government including the FDA Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee. the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse, and the National Advisory Panel for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.  She is currently a member of the World Health Organization Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation and the National Cancer Institute Board of Scientific Advisors.  She served as president of two scientific organizations, the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.

Tim Phillips is the founder and managing director of ECigIntelligence, the leading provider of independent, detailed global market and regulatory analysis, legal tracking, and quantitative data for the e-cigarette sector worldwide. Tim is a UK-qualified attorney, having worked at the European Commission, BSkyB and Herbert Smith (an international law firm), AOL Europe, as director of public affairs at Betfair (IPO in 2010 valued at £1.5bn), and as a partner in a New York VC-funded start-up in the diamond sector. Tim holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the University of Law, London and a Masters in Geology from Oxford University.