Knut Søraas was born in Oslo, Norway and holds an MSc from The Norwegian Institute of Technology and an MBA from University of Washington, USA . He has spent his entire career with Esso / ExxonMobil in refining, purchasing, supply and marketing. This has included several foreign assignments in the UK, Chile and France.

For the last 17 years he has worked almost exclusively on asphalt related matters. He was Global Technical Advisor, Bitumen, for ExxonMobil from 2001 to 2003, responsible for the bitumen product line, its performance, technical support, maintenance and development worldwide, a position he held until he became Eurobitume Director General in October 2003.

From 1995 Knut was the Esso / ExxonMobil representative to Eurobitume and in 2002 - 2003 he served as the President of the association.

Mike Southern is a chemistry graduate of the Royal Holloway College, London University, who has dedicated over 20 years to the technical support of bitumen and its downstream products.

Following seven years with Colas Roads, working on polymer modified binder rheology, emulsion development and ISO 9000 Quality Assurance Systems, Mike joined Shell Bitumen UK as Senior Development Engineer. Here he provided technical support for the UK bitumen business, binder quality and R&D project management.

In 1994 he moved to the Bitumen Marketing Division at Shell International Oil Products, where for over nine years his main responsibilities included manufacturing liaison, R&D project management and product HSE support. During this time he also chaired the Eurobitume HSE Committee. He joined Eurobitume as Technical Director in 2005, where his main focus is HSE and, among other activities, he acts as Secretary of the HSE Committee and Chairman of the Technical Committee.

Photography available for download in the Press Centre /Image Gallery