Dr. Hiromasa Okayasu is Director of Data, Strategy and Innovation at the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific. He leads the Regional Office’s work on data and analytics, digital health, responsible artificial intelligence, innovation, research and ethics, capacity building, leadership development and healthy ageing.

Dr. Okayasu has more than 15 years of experience with WHO across Headquarters, Regional Office and Country Office settings. His work has spanned infectious diseases, immunization, malaria elimination, noncommunicable diseases and healthy ageing. Prior to his current role, he served as Director of Healthy Environments and Populations in the Western Pacific Region.

Before joining WHO, Dr. Okayasu worked with McKinsey & Company in Tokyo and New Jersey, advising both public- and private-sector organizations on strategy and organizational transformation. He holds an MD from Keio University School of Medicine and an MBA from Stanford University.

Dr Midori Anami-Akimoto is a Nursing Officer at the World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific. She brings nearly two decades of experience across health policy, nursing and global health, spanning government, clinical practice, academia and international health cooperation.

Her professional experience combines frontline nursing and nursing education with health policy development and international cooperation. She has worked as a registered nurse in acute and critical care, contributed to nursing education, and served as a Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) expert in maternal and child health. At Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, she was involved in the development and implementation of national policies across nursing, patient safety, health insurance and broader health system issues, as well as international health policy.

At WHO, she provides technical support to Member States in strengthening nursing and midwifery policy and workforce development. Her work focuses on shaping a nursing and midwifery workforce that is responsive to changing population health needs and evolving models of care, and on enabling nurses and midwives to contribute fully to people-centred, primary health care–oriented health systems and universal health coverage.

Dragan Gašević is Chair Professor in the Faculty of Education and the School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests center around data analytic, AI, and design methods that can advance understanding of self-regulated and collaborative learning. Previously, he was Distinguished Professor of Learning Analytics in the Faculty of Information Technology and the Founding Director of the Centre for Learning Analytics (CoLAM) at Monash University. He was also a Professor and the Sir Tim O’Shea Chair in Learning Analytics and Informatics at the University of Edinburgh and the Canada Research Chair in Semantic and Learning Technologies at Athabasca University. Professor Gašević is a founder and served as the President of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR). He has served as a founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Learning Analytics and Computers & Education: Artificial Intelligence. From 2019 to 2025, Professor Gašević was recognized as the Australian national field leader in educational technology in The Australian. He led the EU-funded SHEILA project, which received the Best Research Project of the Year Award from the Association for Learning Technology. In 2022, he received the Lifetime Member Award, the highest distinction of the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR), and was named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).