Claire Bowern is Professor of Linguistics at Yale University specializing in historical linguistics, language documentation, and Australian Indigenous languages. Her research employs computational phylogenetics to study language evolution and supports language revitalization through digital archives and fieldwork methodologies. Recent publications address: Phylogenetic signal in lexical evolution across language families Digital infrastructure for endangered language documentation (FLEx software analysis) Decolonizing linguistics pedagogy and research practices Her work consistently integrates linguistic, anthropological, and computational approaches to analyze language diversity and change. She contributes to global databases including Grambank and D-PLACE, examining links between linguistic, cultural, and environmental patterns.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Brinkhoff is Chair of the Institute Board and Chair of Geoinformatics at Oldenburg University of Applied Sciences. He leads the Institute for Applied Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics (IAPG) and contributes to institutions like the Association for the Promotion of Geoinformatics in Northern Germany (GiN e.V.) and the Oldenburg Research and Development Institute for Computer Science (OFFIS e.V.). Education: Diploma in Computer Science (Informatik), Universität Bremen (1990) Doctorate in Computer Science (Dr. rer. nat.), Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (1994) Brinkhoff's research spans geodatabase systems, spatiotemporal data processing, geosensor analytics, and location-based services. His work addresses Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), web-based geospatial visualization, and mobile data integration, with applications in traffic management and forensic science. Recent projects include ProSaDi (Digital Provenance and Collection Research) and contributions to the Laboratory for optical 3D metrology . He has served on program committees for ACM SIGSPATIAL (2002-2019), AGILE conferences (2010-2025), and editorial boards of journals like GeoInformatica and TGIS. Notable Lectures: 2024: Forensic applications of tachograph data 2023: Geoinformatics in homicide investigations 2022: Spatiotemporal analysis for sustainability projects 2015: Open geodata standards at FOSSGIS 2014: Mobile sensor data processing
Ruth Mostern is Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of the Institute for Spatial History Innovation (ISHI). She is Vice-President and President-Elect (2025-2026) of the World History Association and leads the award-winning World Historical Gazetteer project. Education Ph.D. in History, University of California, Berkeley, 2003 Research Interests Mostern is an interdisciplinary historian specializing in world, Chinese, environmental, and spatial history. She investigates long-term human–environment interactions at continental and millennial scales, focusing on how societies organize space, resources, and risk. Her work integrates GIS, digital gazetteers, and environmental science to reconstruct historical geographies of empire, water management, and ecological change. Current projects include: Place: A Global History – a study of itineraries, gazetteers, and databases as technologies of spatial knowledge. The Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Global Medieval Era – cultural adaptations to climate change c. 950-1250 CE. Research Trends Her recent publications span digital environmental humanities, historical GIS, Song-dynasty political economy, and pre-industrial Asian political ecology. A dominant theme is the coupling of state power with environmental transformation, exemplified by her 2021 book The Yellow River: A Natural and Unnatural History (Yale), winner of the 2023 Joseph Levenson Prize. Awards & Honors Joseph Levenson Prize, Association for Asian Studies, 2023 NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant, 2023-2025 Digital Humanities Awards 2021 – Best DH Tool (World Historical Gazetteer) Fudan University Fellowship for Studies of Chinese Civilization, 2019 NEH Humanities Connections Implementation Grant, 2018-2020 Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Summer Institute Grant, 2015-2016 NSF Collaborative Research Grant, 2013-2015 ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship, 2011-2012 Advising & Grants Mostern welcomes graduate students interested in environmental, global, Asian, or digital history. She has directed multiple externally funded projects, including the NSF-funded Center for Historical Information and Analysis and NEH-supported initiatives on water in Central Asia and global historical gazetteers. Labs & Teams She directs the Institute for Spatial History Innovation (ISHI) at the University of Pittsburgh, a hub for interdisciplinary research integrating spatial technologies with historical inquiry. ISHI hosts the World Historical Gazetteer , providing open tools and datasets that link knowledge about historical places across world regions.
Reed Maxwell is the William and Edna Macaleer Professor of Engineering and Applied Science in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. He serves as Director of the Integrated Groundwater Modeling Center (IGWMC) and leads a research group comprising graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and staff. His academic appointments include concurrent roles in both the School of Engineering and Applied Science and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. Maxwell's research focuses on understanding connections within the hydrologic cycle and how they relate to water quantity and quality under anthropogenic stresses. His work centers on hard problems in hydrology including groundwater, evapotranspiration and snow. His research group uses integrated hydrologic modeling, field observations, and remote sensing products to study terrestrial freshwater systems. Key research areas include surface water and the terrestrial hydrologic cycle; interactions of the land-surface, surface water and groundwater; and human health risk assessment. Maxwell has authored more than 185 peer-reviewed journal articles with an H-Index of 66 and over 19,000 citations. His recent work emphasizes machine learning applications in hydrology, continental-scale modeling, and physically rigorous scenario generation through projects like HydroFrame and HydroGEN. He teaches courses including CEE 306/ENV 318 Hydrology: Water and Climate and CEE 586/ENV 586 Physical Hydrology. 2020 Distinguished Henry Darcy Lecturer American Geophysical Union Fellow (2019) 2018 Boussinesq Lecturer Belle van Zuylen Chair (visiting), University of Utrecht 2017 School of Mines Research Award recipient Maxwell has mentored 17 PhD students and 20 MS thesis students throughout his career. His current research group includes multiple postdocs, research software engineers, and graduate students working on projects spanning continental-scale hydrologic modeling, groundwater-stream interactions, and machine learning applications in hydrology. The IGWMC maintains an active education and outreach program including STEM fairs, school visits, and digital educational tools like the HydroFrame Education Team's virtual sandtank aquifer model.
Ahmed Eldawy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Riverside. He leads groundbreaking research in databases, big data management, and spatial data processing, with a focus on scalable exploratory analytics through systems like Beast , UCR-Star , Raptor , and Spider . His work spans geospatial data infrastructure, distributed computing, and computational geometry. Research Interests : Databases, big data management, spatial data processing, geospatial analytics, distributed systems, computational geometry. Awards : NSF CAREER award (2021), 10-year Influential Paper Award (ICDE 2025), Best Demo award (SIGSPATIAL 2020). Grants : NSF (IIS-2046236, IIS-1954644, CNS-1924694), USDA (USDA NIFA 2020-69012-31914), UC Office of the President (M21PL3368). Labs & Centers : RAISE@UCR, Data Science Center, Center for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIS), Affiliate of Center for Geospatial Sciences and Winston Chung Global Energy Center. His recent publications focus on LLM-driven geospatial visualization (LASEK), distributed raster analytics (RDPro), learned spatial query optimization, and scalable spatiotemporal systems. He advises numerous PhD and Master’s students, many of whom now work at top tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta.
Associate Professor Mohsen Kalantari is a Geospatial Engineering academic at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Civil and Environmental Engineering , with concurrent roles as co-founder of the startup Faramoon . His career spans roles at the University of Melbourne's Department of Infrastructure Engineering and Victorian government's land administration initiatives through DELWP. Education : PhD in Geomatics Engineering (2008, University of Melbourne), Master of GIS Engineering (2004), Bachelor of Surveying Engineering (2001) His research bridges geospatial engineering with construction automation , focusing on 3D cadastre , BIM-GIS integration , and smart cities . Recent publications show trends in underground land administration , digital twins , and LADM standard implementations . Scientific Awards : National educational recognition (2019), Victorian educational grants (2018), and prestigious fellowships (2012) As a supervisor , he guides PhD candidates in topics ranging from BIM for waste management to underground cadastral systems . His industry engagement includes partnerships with the United Nations , Open Geospatial Consortium , and Singapore Land Authority .
Dr. Yolanda Gil is a Research Professor in Computer Science and Spatial Sciences at the University of Southern California, where she serves as Principal Scientist and Senior Director for Strategic Initiatives in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI). She is also the Director of AI and Data Science Initiatives in the Viterbi School of Engineering and leads the USC Center for Knowledge-Guided Interdisciplinary Data Science (CKIDS). Dr. Gil received her Licenciatura in Computer Science from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, with a focus on artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Her research focuses on developing AI approaches that use knowledge to accelerate scientific discovery processes. Her key research interests include knowledge capture and representation, semantic workflows, ontology tools, scientific discovery methods, task-based collaboration, provenance tracking, knowledge networks, reproducibility in science, and machine learning for data analysis. She collaborates with scientists across multiple domains to improve how scientific knowledge is created, shared, and used. Dr. Gil's work has significant impact across multiple scientific domains including climate science, neuroscience, and omics research. Her projects demonstrate her commitment to building knowledge-guided systems that transform how scientists conduct research. She has pioneered approaches to capture the provenance of scientific experiments and to automate the analysis of complex scientific data. Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 24th President of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Co-chair of the CRA/AAAI 20-Year Artificial Intelligence Research Roadmap for the US Initiator and leader of the W3C Provenance Group that resulted in a widely-used standard for web trust As an educator and leader, Dr. Gil directs the Data Science Program in Computer Science and serves as Co-Director of multiple joint MSc programs including Communication Data Science, Spatial Data Science, Environmental Data Science, Public Policy Data Science, and Healthcare Data Science. She also leads the new dual degree USC-Tsinghua University on Communication Data Science. Her leadership extends to mentoring numerous students and researchers in AI and data science. Through the USC Center for Knowledge-Guided Interdisciplinary Data Science (CKIDS), Dr. Gil organizes DataFest events each semester, fostering collaboration and innovation in data science across disciplines.
Dr. Li Wan is an Associate Professor in Urban Planning and Development at the Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. He serves as Director for the MPhil in Planning, Growth and Regeneration and is a co-investigator of the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction. Dr. Wan is also a Trustee of the IJURR Foundation and leads a research group focused on understanding urban land and transport development through applied modeling and data analytics. Dr. Wan holds a BArch, MPhil, and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining Land Economy, he worked in Architecture and Engineering Departments, giving him a highly interdisciplinary perspective. His research focuses on spatial economic modeling of urban land use and transport systems, with recent interests including strategic planning at city/regional levels, impact studies of flexible working, micromobility, and electric vehicles. Dr. Wan's research group has produced significant work in city digital twins, as evidenced by his 2023 book Digital Twins for Smart Cities: Conceptualisation, challenges and practices . His publications span urban analytics, transport emissions, spatial equilibrium modeling, and economic geography, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of his work. Recent research trends show increasing focus on post-pandemic urban dynamics, digital governance, and sustainable mobility solutions. His research group has secured funding from initiatives like AI@Cam for projects examining how local authorities use AI for urban decision-making. Dr. Wan actively supervises PhD and MPhil students, with his group comprising researchers working on diverse urban topics from land-use efficiency to micromobility impacts. As an educator, Dr. Wan teaches courses including Tripos Paper 10 - The Built Environment, PGR01 - Urban and Environmental Planning, PGR02 - Urban and Housing Policy, PGR05 - Place-based Policy, and RM03 – Spatial Analysis and Modelling. His group has presented at major international conferences including CUPUM and ICML, reflecting his active engagement in the academic community.
Ian Ewart is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading's School of the Built Environment, serving as Head of Construction and Engineering Management and Research Group Lead for Organisation, People and Technology. He chairs the Research Ethics Committee since 2016 and supervises undergraduate/postgraduate dissertations. His academic journey spans engineering and anthropology: DPhil Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, St Hugh's College (2007-2012) MSc Material Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, St Hugh's College (2006-2007) BA (Hons) Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Oxford, Harris Manchester College (2003-2006) Diploma in Management Studies, University of the West of England (1990-1994) BEng (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, Staffordshire University (1983-1987) Ewart's research integrates ethnographic methods with digital technology studies, examining human-technology interactions in construction and domestic settings. His work bridges engineering practice and social anthropology, focusing on skill transmission, sustainable design, and multisensory experiences in virtual environments. Publications from 2025-2013 reveal a dominant trajectory in digital twins for socio-ecological sustainability, VR-based occupant behavior prediction, and HBIM for heritage conservation. The corpus demonstrates consistent cross-disciplinary innovation, merging archaeological reconstructions with healthcare applications while maintaining anthropological rigor. Key recognition: ESRC Future Research Leader fellowship (2013) for Designing Healthy Homes project He supervises PhD candidates like Afolabi Dania (Nigerian sustainable construction) and Joanna Hull (Heritage BIM), leveraging ESRC funding for ethnography-VR health studies. His grants emphasize participatory design and real-world impact assessment in built environments. Leaders the Organisation, People and Technology research group, developing multisensory Roman town reconstructions with sound/smell integration to advance archaeological and architectural experience modeling.
Dr. Dennis Buckmaster is a Professor in Agricultural & Biological Engineering at Purdue University, serving as Dean's Fellow for Digital Agriculture. He holds a B.S. from Purdue University and M.S./Ph.D. from Michigan State University. His research focuses on digital agriculture, machine systems engineering, and data science applications in farming. He co-coordinates the Agricultural Systems Management program and teaches courses like Computing Technology with Applications and Ag Tech and Innovation. He leads the Open Ag Technology and Systems Center (OATS Center), advancing open-source solutions for agriculture through platforms like ISOBlue and OADA. His work integrates IoT, robotics, and machine learning to optimize crop production, livestock management, and farm decision-making. He has authored over 150 publications on precision agriculture technologies. Professional memberships include American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers and Fluid Power Society. He emphasizes data interoperability, edge computing, and bridging engineering with agricultural practices through collaborative frameworks like LATTICE and Meta Ag.
Dr Shu-Ling Lu is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading , serving as Director of the MSc Project Management Programme and a Member of Senate . Her research spans Innovation Management , Quality Control , and Net Zero Transitions in construction, alongside Heritage Building Integration and Gender Dynamics in built environment sectors. Her academic journey includes a PhD , MSc in Construction Engineering , and a Diploma in Architectural Engineering , all from institutions in Taiwan and the UK, complemented by a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education Practice from the University of Salford. Research Interests : Innovation in construction, quality management, heritage conservation, net-zero transitions, gender equity, and system dynamics applications. Article Trends : Focus on defects analysis , heritage integration , gender dynamics , system dynamics , and net-zero strategies across 15 recent publications. Scientific Awards : Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Building (FCIOB) Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA) Full member, Association for Project Management (MAPM) BSI Committee Participation (Quality Management Standards) Supervision & Grants : Mentored 7 PhD students and led/co-led projects funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) , EPSRC , and COST , with total grants exceeding £500,000.
Prof. Dr. Øyvind Eide is a Professor in Digital Humanities at the University of Cologne, affiliated with the Department of Digital Humanities under the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. He holds a PhD in Digital Humanities from King’s College London (2013). His research focuses on transformative digital intermedial studies, critical spatial formalization of cultural heritage information, and the relationship between texts and maps as media. He previously served as Chair of the European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH) from 2016–2019 and is actively involved in ICOM’s CIDOC committee. Eide’s work bridges theoretical and practical dimensions of digital humanities, emphasizing spatial analysis, ontology modeling, and interdisciplinary methodologies. His academic contributions include seminal works on network visualization in humanities, cultural heritage ontologies, and the application of critical formalization in media studies. Current research explores the interplay between verbal and spatial expressions of geography in historical narratives. Eide teaches courses such as 'Modelling and Digital Maps' and 'Digital Cultural Heritage,' reflecting his commitment to both research and education. Notable projects include the Ibsen Manuscripts digitization initiative, the GeoModelText tool for spatial narrative analysis, and contributions to archaeological document interconnection through the CIDOC CRM framework. He is Vice Director of the Scholarly Platform: Reflecting and Shaping the Digital Age at the University of Cologne.
Mohsen Lesani is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz's Baskin School of Engineering. His research focuses on reliability and security of software systems, particularly concurrent and distributed systems, with recent emphasis on secure replicated systems and distributed machine learning. Dr. Lesani received his PhD from UCLA, MS in artificial intelligence from Sharif University of Technology, and BS in software engineering from University of Tehran. He was previously a postdoc at MIT. His educational background provides a strong foundation for his interdisciplinary research spanning programming languages, distributed systems, and security. His research interests center on creating reliable and secure distributed systems. Current projects include resilient and secure distributed systems, heterogeneous and reconfigurable secure distributed systems, automatic analysis and synthesis of replicated objects, verification of distributed systems, data analytics, secure exchange across blockchains, machine learning for performance models, domain-specific languages and type systems, and automatic fence insertion for concurrent systems. His work bridges theoretical foundations with practical implementations to address real-world challenges in distributed computing. Lesani's research has been recognized with several prestigious awards including the NSF CAREER award in 2020 and DARPA YFA award in 2022. His work has also received the SIGPLAN Research Highlight in 2019, a distinguished paper award at OOPSLA 2018, and a best paper award at ISSRE 2015. These accolades reflect the impact and quality of his contributions to the field. He actively mentors PhD students in the Safe and Secure Software (S3) lab, including Xiao Li, Eric Chan, Javad Saber-Latibari, and Tejas Mane. His research has been supported by multiple NSF grants, demonstrating sustained funding for his innovative work. Lesani serves on program committees for major conferences including POPL, PLDI, OOPSLA, and DISC, contributing to the academic community. Lesani leads the Safe and Secure Software (S3) lab at UC Santa Cruz, where his team works on cutting-edge research in distributed systems, programming languages, and security. The lab fosters a collaborative environment where theoretical insights are translated into practical systems that address real-world challenges in reliability and security of distributed applications.
Professor George Buchanan is a leading researcher in human-computer interaction and digital libraries at RMIT University . His work bridges information science, digital humanities, and health informatics, focusing on usability in sensitive contexts like healthcare and misinformation. Deputy Dean, Research at RMIT University Former Director, University of Melbourne iSchool Research Interests: Digital information interaction Health and aging informatics Disinformation analysis Mobile interface design Digital library systems Key Contributions: Developed mobile web usability benchmarks, spatial hypertext tools, and thermal feedback interfaces. Currently seeking PhD students for 2025 projects on digital browsing and view change dynamics. Awards: Over twenty best paper awards and Honorary Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Advising: Accepting Masters/PhD supervision in information interaction and digital health domains.
Itsuro Morita is Professor in the School of Fundamental Science and Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo. Before joining Waseda in 2022 he spent 23 years at KDDI R&D Laboratories, advancing from researcher to executive research fellow, and has been a visiting researcher at Stanford University. He is an IEEE Fellow and IEICE Fellow recognized for pioneering large-capacity, long-haul optical transmission systems. Education: 2004 – 2005 Tokyo Institute of Technology, Graduate School of Science & Engineering, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (Doctoral coursework) 1990 – 1992 Tokyo Institute of Technology, Graduate School of Science & Engineering, Department of Physical Electronics (M.E.) 1986 – 1990 Tokyo Institute of Technology, School of Engineering (B.E.) Research Interests: Morita’s work sits at the intersection of optical fiber communication and software-defined networking. He explores ultra-high-capacity transmission via space-division multiplexing (multi-core/few-mode fibers), real-time MIMO digital signal processing for modal crosstalk mitigation, and SDN/NFV orchestration of disaggregated optical networks. Additional interests include quality-of-transmission estimation using machine learning, telemetry-enabled control planes (gRPC/gNMI), and metro-embedded edge/cloud architectures for IoT services. Publication Trends: Recent articles emphasize two converging themes: (i) petabit-per-second SDM/WDM experiments using novel fiber geometries and real-time DSP, and (ii) cloud-native SDN control frameworks that integrate machine-learning-based QoT prediction, YANG/NETCONF modeling, and open APIs (TAPI/OpenConfig) for multi-domain, partially disaggregated networks. These works collectively push both the physical capacity frontier and the agility of next-generation optical infrastructure. Scientific Awards: C&C Prize 2024 (NEC C&C Foundation) – contributions to WDM optical submarine cable systems IEICE Achievement Award 2021 – pioneering research on 10-Pbit/s ultra-large-capacity SDM transmission Telecom System Technology Award 2021 – 10.16-Pbit/s dense SDM/WDM transmission record IEEE Fellow (2021) – contributions to large-capacity high-speed transmission systems IEICE Fellow (2020) – research on trans-oceanic high-speed optical signal transmission Ichimura Industrial Award – Contribution Prize 2018 – development of terabit-class submarine cable systems Maejima Hisoka Award 2012 – proposal and demonstration of distributed-control soliton communication Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Award for Advanced Technology 2006 – 160 Gbit/s ultra-high-speed optical transmission technology Advising & Grants: At Waseda University Morita advises graduate students on experimental photonic networking and leads externally funded projects on petabit SDM transmission and SDN orchestration. While specific grant numbers are not disclosed, his continuous industry-university collaborative testbeds (with KDDI, CTTC, and others) indicate substantial competitive funding. Labs & Teams: He heads the Optical Space-Division-Multiplexing Laboratory at Waseda, maintaining joint experimental facilities with KDDI Research and international partners (e.g., CTTC, Spain). The group operates real-time coherent MIMO testbeds, multi-domain SDN controllers, and fiber-level SDM prototypes capable of petabit-per-second demonstrations.
