Dr. Yas Banifatemi is a founding partner of Gaillard Banifatemi Shelbaya Disputes. Prior to that, she was co-Head of the International Arbitration group of Shearman & Sterling. 

She acts as counsel, arbitrator and expert, in both commercial and investment arbitration. She also advises and represents clients on public international law and State-to-State disputes. Besides, Dr. Banifatemi is a member of the SIAC Court of Arbitration, a former Vice-President of the ICC International Court of Arbitration and a former member of the LCIA Court. She is listed on the ICSID panel of arbitrators, appointed by the Chairman of ICSID’s Administrative Council. Furthermore, she is the President of the International Arbitration Institute (IAI).

Yas Banifatemi has authored numerous publications on international arbitration and public international law. She teaches at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School and Panthéon-Sorbonne University. 

Professor Dr. Kaj Hobér is an is an Associate Member of 3 Verulam Buildings, where his arbitration practice encompasses investment treaty, public international law and commercial disputes. Prior to that, he held a partnership at Mannheimer Swartling.

His arbitration experience includes representing both East and West European, American, Russian and Chinese parties as well as parties from developing countries in international arbitrations. Professor Dr. Kaj Hobér is involved in numerous oil and gas arbitrations, relating primarily to Northern Africa, the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. He has acted as counsel and arbitrator, including chairmanships in more than 400 international arbitrations, including representation of the claimant in the first ECT award, and is participating in numerous ongoing investment arbitrations.

Since 2016, Kaj Hobér has been Chairperson of the board of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce. Moreover, he is past chair of the IBA sub-committee on Investment Treaty Arbitration and the author and editor of several books on international arbitration as well as numerous articles on international arbitration, Russian, Soviet and East European law and international investment and trade law. Kaj Hobér was a member of the Board of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce from 1992 to 2009. He is a member of the LCIA Court and of the Board of Directors of the American Arbitration Association and also a member of the AIPN Educational Advisory Board.

Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Dr. h.c. Stephan Hobe is the director of the Institute of Air Law, Space law and Cyber Law as well as co-Director of the International Investment Law Centre Cologne. He is member of various scientific associations , inter alia the Vice President of the German Society of International Law. His scientific Ouevre encompasses 3 books on Public International Law (11th ed. 2020), European Law (10th ed. 2020) and Space Law (1st ed. 2019) as well as editorships (e.g. of the Cologne Commentary on Space Law) and 350 articles on German public law, public International law, international investment law, air law space law and cyber law. He teaches as a guest professor at various universities in Europe, Africa and Asia.

Martin Metz is a Senior Legal Counsel and Investment Manager based in the Cologne office of Omni Bridgeway, where he is responsible for providing legal analysis and advice on funding enquiries and will manage funded cases with a focus on Arbitration matters.

Martin specializes in advising German and foreign clients on cross-border legal disputes in arbitration proceedings and commercial litigation. He will also focus on expanding Omni Bridgeway’s Arbitration practice in German speaking countries. In addition, he is also a member of our Latin America Group, contributing to Omni Bridgeway’s commercial arbitration, litigation funding and judgment enforcement efforts in Latin America.

Martin joined Omni Bridgeway in 2021 from DLA Piper, where he specialised in advising clients in the automotive, energy, technology, and insurance sectors. Prior to DLA Piper, Martin spent two years as a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law where he conducted research for his Ph.D. on transnational human rights litigation.

He is admitted to both the Cologne and California Bar and lectures on "Transnational Commercial Litigation" at the EBS (European Business School) University in Wiesbaden. He has also lectured at the University of Cologne and the China EU School of Law in Peking.

Martin graduated with a law degree at the University of Cologne and holds an LL.M. from the French and German Masters-Programme of the University of Cologne and the Université de Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne).

Susanne Schwalb is a partner in the Munich office of CMS Hasche Sigle. She primarily advises and represents clients in international arbitration proceedings and has a focus on international commercial arbitration and the protection of foreign investments where she advises both on the structuring of investments and in contentious proceedings. Susanne also has extensive practical experience in third-party funding.

In commercial arbitration, Susanne particularly represents clients in shareholder and post-M&A disputes as well as in disputes concerning failed (large-scale) projects. When it comes to the protection of foreign investments, Susanne provides advice on the planning and implementation of investments as well as during the investment period. She also represents clients in investor-State arbitration proceedings and related domestic court proceedings. Susanne has many years of experience acting as party representative and as secretary/assistant to the arbitral tribunal in a large number of commercial arbitrations, including under the ICC, DIS, Swiss, LCIA, HKIAC and JCAA Rules as well as in more than 15 investor-State arbitrations under the ICSID Convention, UNCITRAL and SCC Rules. Susanne also regularly acts as arbitrator.

In addition, Susanne has negotiated comprehensive third-party funding agreements for several domestic as well as international arbitration proceedings and can therefore draw on extensive practical experience in the evaluation of the commercial and legal funding terms as well as the day-to-day handling of funded arbitration and court proceedings.

Susanne joined CMS in 2014 and became partner in 2022.

Dr. Christian Tietje is rector of the University Halle in Germany and Professor (tenure) for European Law and International Economic Law, director of the Institute for Economic Law, and director of the Transnational Economic Law Research Centre (TELC) at the Law School of Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. His primary research interests lie in the areas of EU common commercial policy and international economic law (world trade law, investment protection and arbitration, global financial markets). Christian Tietje received his legal education at the Universities of Kiel/Germany, Paris V, and University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor. He holds two German law degrees with distinction and is a Professor of Law since 2001. He has published several books and more than 150 articles and has advised Governments, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, business associations and multilateral companies in the above-mentioned research areas. He has been appointed legal expert and arbitrator in several commercial and investment arbitrations

For a full list of publications see: http://tietje.jura.uni-halle.de/de/node/41

Tilbe Birengel is an Associate at Erdem & Erdem Law Firm, Istanbul. She is specialized in arbitration, litigation and corporate consultancy. She represents clients in commercial, sports and investment treaty disputes before arbitration institutions and assists arbitral tribunals under various institutional rules. She represents clients before local courts, and coordinates overseas lawsuits.

She was awarded Jean Monnet Scholarship of the European Union for her LL.M. studies in European and International Business Law at Leiden University. She wrote her thesis on reflective loss claims of shareholders in investment treaty arbitration. She holds an LL.B. and a minor degree in opera studies from Bilkent University.

Bianca Böhme LL.M. is a Research Associate and PhD Candidate at the Chair for Public Law, Public International Law and European Law and the Jean Monnet Chair for International Dispute Settlement and the Rule of Law of Prof. Dr. Marc Bungenberg at the Europa-Institut in Saarbrücken (Germany). Her research focuses on International and European Economic Law and International Dispute Settlement, in particular Investment Arbitration. She is also the managing editor of the Journal for European Studies (Zeitschrift für Europarechtliche Studien, ZEuS). She holds an LL.M degree in International Law, International Trade, Investment and Arbitration from Heidelberg University and Universidad de Chile and an LL.M. in International and European Law (with specialisations in International Economic Law and Dispute Settlement) from Saarland University.

Jonathan Brosseau is a PhD Candidate (Doctoral Contract) at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and a Research Fellow at the United Nations University. His PhD thesis examines the procedural rules implementing State immunity from execution. He is a graduate from the BCL/LLB Honours program at McGill University (Gualtieri-Doran & Cook Awards) and the LLM program at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge (Volterra Fietta & Nappert Prizes). A member of the Quebec Bar (Canada), Jonathan has gained practical training in international law at the global law firm Freshfields, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations, and Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has authored or coauthored more than a dozen scholarly publications on diverse international law topics.

Anton Burri is a PhD candidate at the University of Lucerne and Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research analyzes the emerging field of third-party funding of legal disputes from a law and economics perspective, with a special focus on collective redress. Anton is a Swiss-qualified lawyer, holds an MLaw, BLaw, and a BA in Political Economics from the University of Lucerne, and spent an exchange year at the University of Notre Dame in the US. He worked in law firms in Switzerland and Mexico, in the inhouse legal department of a global chemical company, and at a court of first instance. Besides, he was a coach of Lucerne’s Willem C. Vis Moot team for several years. His research is funded by a Doc.CH grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Agata Daszko works as a Research Fellow at University of Göttingen, Institute of International and European Law, where she is also undertaking her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Peter-Tobias Stoll. Prior to joining the Institute, she was employed by a large international law firm in its international arbitration group. Agata holds an undergraduate degree in Law with German and German Law from the University of Nottingham and an LL.M. in Public International Law from Leiden University. Besides international investment law and arbitration, her research interests also extend to international humanitarian law, international environmental law and general public international law.

Carlo de Stefano is Lecturer in international law at the Department of Law of Roma Tre University in Rome. He has earned in 2016 a Ph.D. in International Law and Economics at the Bocconi University of Milan. During his doctoral studies he has been a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law (Fall 2015), junior visiting fellow at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies (IHEID) of Geneva (Spring 2015) and visiting researcher at Yale Law School (Spring 2014). He has been lecturer and post-doc researcher in international law at Roma Tre University (since 2016) and post- doc visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law of Heidelberg (2017) and at the Department of Law of the Catholic University of the Sacred Hearth of Milan (2018). He has also been lecturer and research tutor for the Master of Laws in International Trade Law of the International Training Centre (ITC) of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Turin. Carlo is involved in the international arbitration practice, as counsel as well as administrative secretary of arbitral tribunals. His book “Attribution in International Law and Arbitration” was published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

Mohammed A. El Sherif is  junior associate at the Arbitration Department of Matouk Bassiouny & Hennawy, since 2020. Mohammed obtained his LL.B. from Faculty of Law, Alexandria University with honours. Mohammed handles international commercial and investment arbitration cases under various rules, including ICC, ICSID, CRCICA, DIFC-LCIA, ADCCAC, ADGM and UNCITRAL in relation to disputes involving oil and gas, construction, intellectual property, media & entertainment and tourism. He also handles high profile competition matters.

Mohammed has been admitted in the Egyptian Bar Association since 2020.

Mohammed is currently the Director of AlexandriaU-CRCICA Arbitration Initiative. He is also a graduate student at the Master of Laws in Comparative and International Law Program of the American University in Cairo.

Aikaterini Florou is a Lecturer in international economic law at the University of Liverpool, the School of Law and Social Justice, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She is also the General Editor of the OUP Journal of World Energy Law and Business. Aikaterini holds a PhD in international investment law from Sciences Po Law School in Paris.

Previously, she was an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Law and Economics in the University of Hamburg. Prior to academia, Aikaterini worked for several years as a legal and policy officer at the Energy Directorate of the European Commission. 

Hannah Grandits is a PhD-student at the Department of International Law and International Relations at the University of Vienna. She has been working as a University Assistant (prae-doc) at the Department of International Law since July 2021.
Hannah studied law at the University of Vienna (2016-2021) and spent an Erasmus-semester in Lund. During her studies, she gained practical experience in different law firms (in arbitration and real estate law). Before joining the Department of International law, she also worked as a Research Assistant at the Institute for Roman Law and on a project on “Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Rights”.

Lena Hornkohl is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law in the Department of European and Comparative Procedural Law.

She holds a PhD from Heidelberg University. She studied in Heidelberg and Uppsala and undertook her practical training at the Higher Regional Court Karlsruhe. In 2017, she spent a research visit at Cambridge University and received an award for promising young researchers from the German Comparative Law Society. In 2019, she obtained an LLM in European Law and Economic Analysis from the College of Europe. Previously, she worked as a research assistant at the Institute for Civil Law, Corporate and Commercial Law, European Law and Comparative Law of Heidelberg University and as a lawyer for competition law in an international law firm in Brussels. She is Editor of the Journal of European Competition Law & Practice and Deputy Editor for the Kluwer Competition Law Blog. She taught European, competition and commercial law at Heidelberg University and German civil law at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. Her research interests include European law, competition law, civil procedural law, European, comparative and German civil law.

Nihan Kir is a current candidate at the Geneva LL.M. in International Dispute Settlement (MIDS). Prior to joining the MIDS, she worked in an Istanbul-based law firm that specialized in international arbitration and litigation. Nihan holds an LL.B. from Galatasaray University. She has taken part in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot and kept ties with the Vis Moot as coach and arbitrator. She is admitted to the Istanbul Bar.

Laura Létourneau-Tremblay is a doctoral fellow at the PluriCourts Centre of Excellence (Oslo University). She holds an LL.M. in Public International Law (University of Oslo) and a Bachelor of Laws (Université Laval). Her doctoral project, part of the research project on the Responses to the 'legitimacy crisis' of international investment law (LEGINVEST), focuses on international investment law and environmental protection.

Ivan Levy holds a J.D. degree from the University of Buenos Aires Law School and an LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School as a Fulbright Scholar. He was a member of the winning team of the global rounds of the Willem C. Vis moot in 2016. He currently works in investment arbitration in Morgan Lewis LLP in Frankfurt.

Arman Melikyan is a Research Fellow in the Department of International Law and Dispute Resolution Max Planck Institute for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law. He pursues his dual doctorate at the University of Luxembourg under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Hélène Ruiz Fabri and Université catholique de Louvain under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Henti Culot. His Ph.D. research focuses on the nexus of international trade and sustainable development, particularly the effectiveness of dispute settlement and enforcement mechanisms under the sustainable development chapters of free trade agreements.

Before joining the Institute, Arman worked for the European Court of Human Rights, the Constitutional Court of Armenia, the European Parliament, as well as in the private sector.

In addition, he holds an LL.M. in European Law from the College of Europe in Bruges (2019), an LL.M. from Public Administration Academy of Armenia (2018) and a dual Bachelor’s degree in law (LL.B.) from Jean Moulin Lyon 3 University and French University in Armenia (2016). His broader research interests include European law, international trade law, WTO law, state-to-state dispute settlement, investment arbitration, human rights law and litigation.

Lilit Nagapetyan is a PhD candidate and a Teaching Fellow at the School of International Arbitration, Queen Mary University of London. Her doctoral research focuses on corruption in international arbitration, and in particular the emergence of transnational responses to evidentiary issues and legal consequences of corruption in international arbitration.

Lilit is a qualified lawyer and a chartered forensic accountant (ACA, CFE), and she currently works at a dispute resolution boutique in London, CANDEY where she specialises in international disputes. She has previously been involved in a wide range of litigation and international arbitration disputes, as well as EC and CMA Monitoring Trustee mandates. She has also worked on a number of fraud and financial crime investigations and quantum assignments which have involved a variety of international locations.

Pratyush Panjwani is a lawyer qualified to practice in India and registered as a foreign lawyer in Belgium.

Pratyush is currently a Senior Associate at Hanotiau & van den Berg, Brussels, where he works extensively as counsel in annulment and enforcement proceedings arising out of investor-State arbitrations. He also works as tribunal secretary in (ad hoc and institutional) arbitrations spanning across various sectors, including corporate, construction, hospitality, renewable energy, and licensing disputes. Pratyush has frequently published in journals of repute on issues relating to commercial arbitration (such as the arbitrability of disputes and the adaptive understanding of arbitral consent) as well as investor-State arbitration (such as the interpretation of bilateral investment treaties under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and the viability of investor-State mediation).

Pratyush obtained an LL.M. from the Geneva LL.M. in International Dispute Settlement (MIDS) in September 2016. Prior to that, he worked in a boutique dispute resolution law firm in New Delhi, after graduating from the National Law University, Delhi in 2014.

Mohamed Samy Elzomor is a senior associate at the Arbitration Department of Matouk Bassiouny & Hennawy, since 2015. Mohamed has more than 6 years of experience in international arbitration. He handles international commercial and investment arbitration cases under various rules, including ICC, ICSID, CRCICA and UNCITRAL, in relation to disputes involving oil and gas agreements, mergers and acquisitions, construction, distribution, telecommunications, international investment, private equity, hotel management and competition law. Mohamed also works on enforcement proceedings of domestic and foreign arbitral awards before Egyptian courts. 

Mohamed obtained his LLB from the Faculty of Law, English Section, Cairo University, with distinction first class honors, in 2015. He obtained an LLM from Cairo University in 2017, and an LLM from the University of Cambridge in 2019, where he studied international investment law, arbitration, and English civil and corporate laws.

Mohamed is currently a teaching assistant of public finance and economic legislation at Cairo University. He is also preparing his PhD at Queen Marry University of London in International Investment Law.

Sanjana Sharma is an Indian qualified lawyer with a Masters in International Dispute Settlement (MIDS), Geneva. She has been practising dispute resolution since 2014 after her graduation from National Law University, Jodhpur with dual honors in Policy Sciences and Law and a specialisation in criminal law. She has actively advised and represented State and private entities in cross border litigation and arbitrations across industries ranging from foreign investment, electricity, construction and infrastructure. 

Nataša holds a Ph.D. from Saarland University. During her Ph.D. studies she undertook a research stay at the Faculty of Law, University of Belgrade, Serbia as well as took part in an International PhD Colloquium at the Europa-Institut of Saarland University and in a PhD Workshop at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia. She holds an LL.M. degree in European and International Law from the Europa-Institut of Saarland University in Germany, with specialisations in European Business Law, Foreign Trade and Investment, and International Dispute Resolution and an LL.B. degree from the University of Banja Luka, Faculty of Law, Bosnia and Herzegovina. For her master thesis she was awarded the „Europa Preis der Villa Lessing“. Throughout her high school, LL.B., LL.M. and Ph.D. studies she was awarded scholarships from 10 different foundations/fund providers (some of which were re-awarded 3-4 times). Her research has been focused primarily on the fields of International and European Economic Law, especially Investment Law. Apart from her native Serbian, she is fluent in English, German, Slovenian and Croatian and has an intermediate knowledge of Spanish and French. She works at the Institute for Digital Law Trier at the Trier University in Germany.

Yang Wan is a PhD candidate at the University of Cologne. Her doctoral research is about the justiciability of the foreign direct investment screening in the European Union, which is analysed from three perspectives: (1) foreign investors’ access to judicial review; (2) relevant legal grounds; and (3) relevant liabilities.

Meanwhile, Yang works as Greater China Representative of the leading Dutch law firm HOUTHOFF and represents the firm in the Greater China area. She advises foreign investors on greenfield investments and cross-border acquisitions in the Netherlands or other European countries through the Netherlands. Since joining HOUTHOFF in 2014, she has worked on many China-related projects, including several landmark Chinese investments in the Netherlands, e.g., Shenzhen Goodix’s acquisition of VAS business from NXP Semiconductors, the establishment of Dutch offices of China Construction Bank and Xiamen Airlines etc.

Yang received her LL.M. degree in European Law from Leiden University (the Netherlands, 2013) and her LL.B. degree from Beijing Normal University (China, 2012). She received her Chinese bar qualification certificate in 2011.

Gerlind Wolf studied law at the LMU Munich, Germany, with a focus on public international law. Additionally, she built a strong theoretical background in the field of dispute resolution by attending a variety of additional courses such as a summer school on commercial arbitration. She graduated from university in 2018 as one of the top candidates of her year.

Gerlind worked as a trainee at leading law firms between 2016 and 2021. Here she gained early practical experience in the field of dispute resolution especially focusing on national and international arbitration. Gerlind is admitted to the German bar since July 2021. Also in 2021 she joined the dispute resolution practice group of Hengeler Mueller as an associate. Her practice covers a broad range of litigation, arbitration and other forms of alternative dispute resolution.

Gerlind is trained as a mediator for commercial disputes. She is fluent in German and English and has a basic understanding in Spanish.

Memberships: DIS40, Young ICCA, YMI (Young Mediators Initiative)