Carlos Alberto Silva is an Assistant Professor of Quantitative Forest Science in the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences (SFFGS) at the University of Florida (UF) where he directs the Forest Biometrics and Remote Sensing Lab (Silva Lab). He is interested in understanding how forest ecosystems changes over time due to natural and anthropogenic disturbances and their impact on the carbon cycle. His core research consists of developing statistical frameworks and cutting-edge open-source tools, such as rGEDI, TreeTop, rLiDAR, ForestGapR, and leafR for remote sensing data processing and forest resources monitoring. He is particularly interested in using lidar (light detection and ranging) data, from airborne (ALS), terrestrial (TLS), and satellite platforms, combined with multi- and hyperspectral satellite data, advanced statistical methods and AI to address ecological questions related to forest ecosystem structure, function, and composition dynamics at a variety of spatial scales.

Dr Michael Watt is a Principal Scientist who specialises in remote sensing and development of models to characterise growth, health and wood quality of the forest resource. He has published over 190 refereed papers around these and other topics within forestry. Michael 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. Michael has many international links with other research groups in Europe, Australia and South America.