Dr. Astrid Schmidt-Kloiber is a river ecologist with a background on benthic invertebrates. She has extensive expertise in database design, development and management. She founded and maintains freshwaterecology.info, a European trait database for invertebrates, fish, macrophytes, diatoms and phytoplankton. Together with three European institutes she founded and maintains the Freshwater Information Platform (FIP), which aims at pooling freshwater related research information from multiple projects and initiatives to make it easily accessible for scientists, water managers, conservationists and the interested public. 

Over the past decade she has been working in the field of freshwater biodiversity, focusing amongst others on data mobilisation, quality control and online presentation of data. She is experienced in handling all kinds of freshwater-related (meta)data, she manages the Freshwater Metadatabase and has founded the Freshwater Metadata Journal. 

Astrid is co-chair of the IUCN Mayfly, Stonefly, Caddisfly Specialist Group, regional coordinator of Freshwater BON and steering group member of the Alliance for Freshwater Life.

Craig has been interested in aquatic invertebrates since his schooldays. His particular passion is for mayflies and stoneflies and he is co-chair of the IUCN Mayfly, Stonefly and Caddisfly Specialist Group.

Craig is a founder member of the Riverfly Partnership and continues to provide training on the identification of mayflies, stoneflies and other freshwater invertebrates. He is particularly interested in investigating their distribution and ecology, and developing and implementing conservation action for them and their habitats. Craig has written a number of identification guides for amateurs and experts, and enjoys writing popular articles on mayflies in the fishing press and elsewhere.

As Conservation Director, Craig heads up the Conservation team at Buglife – The Invertebrate Conservation Trust. He leads on Buglife’s freshwater work and is particularly interested in developing conservation action for less well known species and overlooked freshwater habitats. For the past decade Craig has been studying the Upland summer mayfly (Ameletus inopinatus) and the potential impacts of climate change on this montane species. Recently he has been working on the Northern February red (Brachyptera putata) – an endemic stonefly, now thought to be restricted to rivers in in the north of Scotland.