Matej David (PhD) has background in shipping/maritime transport, he is ships officer, continued his career at a university starting as assistant and researcher, became professor and leader of different projects. In his doctoral degree he developed a ballast water management decision support system, which is the first worldwide in this field. Dr. David lectured different subjects on maritime transport, his research focus for more then 15 years was on the ballast water issue, risk assessment and management, decision support systems, and in general maritime transport and environmental issues. He was for different years consulted by the Slovenian government on these subjects, involved in regional and subregional activities, attended IMO MEPC, BLG and BWWG meetings when the BWM Convention and guidelines were prepared and adopted, and contributed to the GESAMP BWWG. He now runs his own consultancy company being involved in different international projects, consultancies include internationalorganisations (e.g., IMO, WWF, HELCOM), training of maritime authorities in Europe and abroad, shipboard tests of ballast water management systems, and research of ballast water management and sampling methods on merchant vessels worldwide. Stephan Gollasch (PhD) is a marine biologist with more than 20 years experience in various ballast water related subjects. His doctoral degree was based upon the first European ship sampling programme on ballast water, tank sediments and ship hull fouling, which was also world-wide the first thesis based on ship sampling. Dr. Gollasch became a member of several international working groups, e.g., ICES, IMO, BMB and the GESAMP BWWG. In addition to laboratory and desk studies he sampled ballast water of more than 250 vessels during several ship sampling programmes. As an independent scientific advisor he runs his own consultancy company since 1999 and is today involved in projects related to biological invasions (e.g. ballast water treatment, ship sampling, risk assessment). Other contracts include German ministries, the German Federal Agency for Shipping and Hydrography, IMO, HELCOM, EMSA and European Commission. He was involved in several EU-funded projects and has undertaken performance tests of several ballast water treatment systems on different merchant vessels.