Cara Wilson is a satellite oceanographer for the Environmental Research Division (ERD) at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center in Monterey CA and is the PI of two regional nodes of NOAA’s CoastWatch program – the West Coast Regional Node and PolarWatch, which are both housed at ERD. Her research interests are in using satellite data to examine bio-physical coupling in the surface ocean, with a particular focus on determining the biological and physical causes of the large chlorophyll blooms that often develop in late summer in the oligotrophic Pacific near 30°N. She received a Ph.D. in oceanography from Oregon State University in 1997, where she examined the physical dynamics of hydrothermal plumes. After getting her PhD she worked as the InterRidge Coordinator at the University Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France. Her introduction to remote sensing came with a post-doc at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center which involved analyzing TOPEX and SeaWiFS data. She joined NOAA in 2002 and has been active in increasing the satellite usage within the National Marine Fisheries Service. She is also the treasurer for PORSEC (Pan Ocean Remote Sensing Conference) and the current chair of the IOCCG (International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group).

Werner Alpers is presently a Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Oceanography of the University of Hamburg, Germany. He studied physics at the Universities of Hamburg, Zurich, and Wisconsin-Madison and received in 1967 the Ph.D. (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Hamburg in theoretical physics (elementary particle physics). After working from 1968 to 1973 in the field of space physics and cosmic ray physics, he switched in 1973 to oceanography, specializing on remote sensing of the ocean using radar techniques. From 1973 to 1985 he worked as a research scientist at University of Hamburg and the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology, from 1985 to 1989 as a professor of physics at the University of Bremen, and from 1989 to 2001 as a professor of oceanography at the University of Hamburg, where he established the research group Satellite Oceanography. Since then, he is still active in research at the University of Hamburg.

Barnabas Bede is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Mathematics at DigiPen institute of Technology, Redmond, WA. He served as Faculty Senate Chair, and he currently helps developing DigiPen’s machine learning curriculum. Prior to joining DigiPen in 2011, he held positions at the University of Texas- Pan American (currently University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), University of Texas at El Paso, Óbuda University in Budapest Hungary, and University of Oradea, Romania. He received his PhD degree in Mathematics from Babes Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2004. His research interests include: machine learning applications in climate sciences, interpretable neural networks, fuzzy sets and fuzzy systems, connections between fuzzy systems and neural networks, modeling under uncertainty, fuzzy methodology in remote sensing applications and in climate sciences. His publications include more than 100 papers in peer review journals and conference proceedings. His book, entitled Mathematics of Fuzzy Sets and Fuzzy Logic, published by Springer in 2013, was selected to ACM computing reviews “Best of 2013” list of notable publications in computing, and it is used as a textbook on the theory and applications of Fuzzy Systems. He is a member of North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society, active in organizing the society’s conferences.

Dr. Yongseung Kim is a Principal Researcher at Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). He earned his Ph.D. in 1991 at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, New York, USA, specializing satellite remote sensing related to climate studies. From 1991 to 1995 he was Post-Doctoral Research Associate and Associate Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where he studied the effect of clouds on climate system using satellite data and general circulation model output. He joined KARI in 1995 and has been working in the area of data processing and applications for KOrea Multi-Purpose SATellite (KOMPSAT). He was the former Executive Director of Satellite Information Research Laboratory at KARI. He served as a committee member of the International Ocean Colour Coordinating Group (IOCCG) from 2001 to 2004. He also served the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies (KAGIS) as president for the period of 2012 to 2013. He is currently working as a colead of GEO AOGEOSS Coordination Board.