Dr. Peter Scarth is a Director at Ozius, leading Big Data and AI efforts. He specializes in creating precise data management frameworks and mathematical models to capture and visualize dynamic changes in global vegetation. Leveraging extensive earth observation datasets, Peter drives innovation in spatial data applications, striving to make them accessible to a broader audience. His interdisciplinary approach ensures that complex environmental data translates into actionable insights for land management, benefiting researchers and policymakers alike.

Dr. Narumasa Tsutsumida is a geographic information scientist who is interested in GIScience, geoAI, earth observation, and spatial statistics. Specific topics cover not only forest monitoring, but also land cover mapping, spatial accuracy assessment, flood monitoring, and social sensing. His background is environmental studies, and he now works as a PI at the department of informatics and computer science at Saitama University.

Dr Laven Naidoo completed his PhD in Geoinformatics at the University of Pretoria in 2017 and specialized in using Earth Observation technologies to monitor savannah, forest and wetland vegetation. He is interested in using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data for mapping and modelling woody structure in South African Savannahs. He has expanded his areas of interest in savannah tree species mapping using hyperspectral and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) airborne sensors and assessing soil moisture and grass biomass in Afromontane wetlands using SAR technologies. Within the GCRO, he will expand his research into the development of advanced AI/machine learning techniques, geospatial data science approaches and novel remote sensing applications within the urban environment and Sustainable Development Goals space. He is also currently a Y-rated scientist by the South African National Research Foundation.

Professor Finn joined the University of South Australia in 2010 as a Research Professor of Autonomous Systems at the Defence And Systems Institute (DASI) and was appointed Director in 2012. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1989 with a PhD in Engineering. Before moving to South Australia to join the Defence Science and Technology Organisation in 1991, he worked as a research consultant for a number of commercial and government organisations in Europe. His current research interests are in the application and integration of Autonomous and Unmanned Systems, but he has a wide range of technical expertise in other fields including: remote sensing; radio wave and acoustic propagation; atmospheric modelling; tracking, target motion analysis and geolocation; geodetic surveying; satellite navigation; electronic warfare (EW); communications; spacecraft design and environmental test; hardware-in-the-loop (HITL) simulation; systems engineering; and, systems of systems integration.

During his career, Nicolò has mainly focused on the use of remote sensing to map and monitor forest ecosystems. He favored the use of LiDAR sensors, both airborne (airplane and UAV) and terrestrial, to study forest structural complexity, to effectively monitor ecological restoration plantings (at the individual tree-level in Tasmania’s temperate forest) and in disturbed tropical ecosystems (at the plot level in the tropical lowlands of Sumatra, Indonesia). Nicolò has also worked with imaging spectroscopy (hyperspectral) sensors (mounted on satellite, airplanes, and UAVs), to successfully segregate between species and between genetic provenances of the same species (individual tree and provenance phenotyping). His current research is focusing on (i) the monitoring of forest health status and disease expression though satellite imagery, and (ii) on the use of regional level airborne laser scanning (ALS) to map, quantify and monitor the growth of the exotic forest estate of New Zealand.

Dr. Svetlana Saarela defended her doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki in 2015. Currently, she is employed as a researcher at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in Ås, Norway. Her main research interest is developing statistical frameworks for forest inventories by combining remotely sensed data from different sensors with field sample data.