Dr. Michael S. Watt received a MForSc and a Ph.D. in
Forestry from the University of Canterbury in 1999 and 2003, respectively. He
is a Principal Researcher who specializes in remote sensing and the development
of models to characterize the growth, health, and wood quality of forest
resources. He works extensively with the New Zealand forest industry and has a
track record of undertaking science that has been adopted by the industry. He
is co-leader of the Remote Sensing cluster group, which is one of the most
well-attended industry focus groups within the New Zealand forestry sector. He has many
international links with other research groups in Europe, Australia, and South
America.
Dr. Eben North Broadbent received an MS in Forest Resources
and Conservation from the University of Florida in 2015. He received a Ph.D. in
Biology from Stanford University in 2012. He is an associate professor of
forest ecology and geomatics in the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics
Sciences at the University of Florida, where he codirects the Spatial Ecology and Conservation Lab (www.speclab.org) and the GatorEye and GatorAI programs (www.gatoreye.org). Over the last decade, he has conducted research focusing on the tropics, including in the
Brazilian, Bolivian, and Peruvian Amazon, Papua Indonesia, Hawaii, Costa Rica,
and Mexico, and also including work in California and his childhood forests
of Vermont. He has worked as a research ecologist in the Department of
Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University,
at the Instituto Boliviano de Investigación Forestal in Santa Cruz, Bolivia,
and at Hudsonia Ltd. at Bard College. He is involved in projects linking social
sciences with forest ecology, conservation biology, and remote sensing,
including current projects investigating feedback between soil fertility and
land use decision-making in the context of rapid infrastructure development in
the Amazon and linking land use change with water quality and biodiversity in
Costa Rica.
Dr. Tarig Ali is a Professor in the Department of Civil
Engineering at the American University of Sharjah. He received a MS and a PhD from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering from the The Ohio State University in 1999 and 2003,
respectively. He has taught at East Tennessee State University (ETSU) and the
University of Central Florida (UCF). He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the International Society for
Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. He is the recipient of the Earle J. Fennell
Award, the Esri Award for Best Scientific Paper in Geographic Information
Systems, the ETSU Faculty Excellence Award, the American Shore and Beach
Preservation Educational Award, and The Ohio State University’s Duane C. Brown
Jr. Award. His research interests include Coastal Mapping, Spatial Analytics,
Remote Sensing and Coastal Ecosystems, and Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (GeoAI).
