Director: Professor Cromwell Crawford Ph.D Honolulu Hawaii
Professor of Comparative Religion Medical Ethics in Indian religious traditions. (Book): Hindu Bioethics for the Twenty-First Century. Jain Activities: Speaker at JAINA conventions and Young Jains of America conferences; Advisory Board member of Jain Spirit (London) and Ahimsa Foundation (Delhi); writer for Jain Spirit; Director, The Academic Study of Jainism in North America. Mission: to advance Jain studies in academic centres in the U.S. and abroad.

Padmanabh S. Jaini
Professor P.S.Jaini is renowned amongst Indology scholars for his unique and enduring contributions in the area of Buddhist & Jain Studies. He has written large number of book and research papers in the area of Buddhist and Jain Studies. He is the author of collected papers on Jain Studies. These papers cover a wide range of topics including the Jain View of the nature of reality, the doctrine of karma, the problem of rebirth, the Idea of omniscient and the concept of salvation in Jainism. His most important work on Jainism is his world famous book "The Jaina Path of Purification". Recently he has retired as a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Prof. Christopher Key Chapple, Ph.D., Los Angles
Professor, Theological Studies, and Associate Academic Vice President at Loyola Mary mount University, Los Angles, USA. A Distinguished scholar or Jainism, author of several books, frequent invited speaker at many Jain functions in North America & India. Active supporter of Jain causes.

Prof. John E. Cort, Ph.D
John E. Cort, Professor of Asian and Comparative Religions at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, USA. He is the editor of Open Boundaries: Jain Communities and Cultures in Indian History (Albany, NY, 1998), and Kendall Folkert, Scripture and Community: Collected Essays on the Jains (Atlanta, GA, 1993). He is the author of Jains in the World: Religious Values and Ideology in India (New York and New Delhi, 2001), as well as several dozen scholarly articles on the Jains.

Dr Natubhai Shah, London, UK
Dr Natubhai Shah is a retired medical practitioner, PhD in Jain religion, an academic; visiting Professor in Jain Studies in he Faculty of Comparative Religion at Antwerp a community and interfaith leader and philanthropist; responsible for creation of the beautiful Jain temple in Leicester, UK and the author of Jainism: The World of Conquerors. He was chosen as the 'Man of the Year' by the American Biographical Institute, was awarded 'Jain Ratna' by the Prime Minister of India in 2001. Secretary General of the World Council of Jain Academies.

Sarah Hadmack
She is a graduate student in Religious Student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii, USA. Her special focus is in Jainism: asceticism, diasporic communities, temple worship, relationship to ecology, lay communities, promotion of education of Jainism in America, especially in college religious studies and comparative religion departments.

Hope K. Fitz
is a Professor of Philosophy at Eastern Connecticut State University. She is a comparative philosopher by education, teaching and research. Her PhD is in Asian and Comparative religions. Her book, Intuition: Its Nature and Uses in Human Experience, is in is second printing. She is presently writing the first of four volumes on Ahimsa: a Way of Life. She has numerous articles published in scholarly journals and anthologies. In addition, She is the Director of the Peace Human Rights Committee at her university.

Anne Vallely
PhD is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include questions of asceticism; body, gender, death, sacrifice, violence and nonviolence, as well as that of religion and nature and human-nonhuman relations. The Jaina religio-cultural tradition in India, as well as in the diaspora, has been the primary lens through which she has explored her research interests from an anthropological perspective. Currently pursuing research on the connection in Jainism between non-violence, sacrifice and voluntary death, and working on a volume entitled “Animal Others and the Human Imagination: The Symbolic Role of the Non-Human in Human Self-Understanding.” She has recently created a new course at the University of Ottawa in affiliation with the International Summer School for Jain Studies, entitled “India Seminar: Jainism.” It will take advanced undergraduate and graduate students to India for an intensive month-long study of the academic and lived tradition of Jainism.

Jagmohan Humar
Distinguished Research Professor of Civil Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Published many technical papers and a book on Dynamics of Structures. Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. President of the Jain Society of Ottawa Carleton, Speaker at JAINA convention, Founder Director of a Women Empowerment Project in India, Trustee for the construction and operation of a unique outdoor “Samavsaran” replica in Udaipur.

Dr. Pankaj Jain
Dr. Pankaj Jain was born in a small town Pali in Rajasthan. After qualifying as a software engineer he moved to the USA. It was here, that he was drawn to India's knowledge traditions and this inspired him to pursue the Master's degree (Columbia University) and later PhD in Indic Traditions and Ecology (University of Iowa). He is interested to connect ancient traditions with contemporary issues which led to his dissertation topic "Indic Traditions and Ecology. He is also interested to devise new categories of knowledge for the study of Indic traditions. Some of his articles touching on these themes are being published in journals such as Worldviews, Religious Studies Review, and others. He has also presented papers about Indic Traditions and Ecology at conferences in various universities such as Rutgers, Montclair, Massachusetts, Drew, New Jersey City University, North Carolina State University, and at the AAR conferences. Currently, Pankaj is a lecturer at North Carolina State University where he is teaching Hinduism, Jainism, Ecology, Hindi Films, Hindi language, Hindi/Urdu literature, and Sanskrit. He has also taught at Rutgers, Kean, New Jersey City University, and University of Iowa. Pankaj is excited to offer the first ever online courses on Sanskrit and Jainism in fall 2009 (August – December 2009) from North Carolina Distance Education Program. Pankaj is an active member of several academic and community organizations, is fluent in several Indian languages, and has published poems in Hindi.

Prof. Jeffery Lang University of Pennsylvania

Prof. Gary Francione Rutgers University NJ