Nicholas Allen is a final year PhD candidate at Newcastle University, UK, working on Remote Sensing of habitats in agricultural land. His work currently focuses on parameter extraction through remote sensing methods and model building to assess above ground carbon storage and biodiversity indicators in hedgerow networks, from close up to landscape scales. He has a background in Ecological and Environmental Science and an MSc in soil carbon modelling.

Abigail Barenblit is a Data Analyst in NASA's Biospheric Sciences Lab. She earned her B.S. in Environmental Science and Policy at the University of Maryland and she holds an M.S. in Wildlife & Fisheries Science from Penn State. Her M.S. research focused on the relationship between forest complexity and avian species richness. During her field work days, she worked in Panama studying the courtship behavior of lance-tailed manakins. Her current research focuses on landcover changes caused by small-scale gold mining in Ghana and invasive species encroachment in Nigeria. She also creates tools for science communication through the development of Google Earth Engine programming tutorials and interactive map applications. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Geographic Information Systems researching the use of satellite data to study biodiversity hotspots.

Costanza Borghi earned her Master's degree in 2020 from the University of Florence (Italy) and attained her Doctorate in March 2024, with a thesis titled "Towards Biodiversity Conservation Goals: remote sensing and ground-based data applied to the assessment of forest status". Since April 2024, she has been a research fellow at the University of Florence, focusing her research activity on forest monitoring, integrating both remote sensing and ground-based data. Her main research interests are related to biodiversity assessment and conservation, spanning from primary, old-growth forests to urban environments.

Aline has a background in geography and forestry, with a focus on close-range lidar remote sensing. As a PhD candidate with the Swiss National Forest Inventory, her research includes individual tree biomass estimation and finding ways to enhance point clouds using deep learning.

Lorena Caiza Morales, a feminist and Ecuadorian Geographer specializing in using geographic information for monitoring natural resources, is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Conservation and Sustainable Use of Forest Systems in Spain. Lorena passionately integrates geotechnologies for forest monitoring, particularly remote sensing. Lorena's love for nature and science began when she worked as a support in generating cartography in the Amazonian regions. Collaborating with the Ecociencia Foundation and the SERVIR AMAZONIA-NASA program, she engages in scientific outreach and connects with women scientists in Latin America. Lorena has shared her expertise as a speaker at various workshops and training sessions, emphasizing gender-inclusive geographic tools. As a doctoral student, she concentrates on developing geospatial tools for monitoring changes in forest cover, starting with mangrove monitoring in Ecuador.

The next presentation features research conducted by Aland Chan, whose doctoral studies were overseen by David Coomes, a Professor specializing in Forest Ecology and Conservation and serving as Director of the Conservation Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. Aland and David's expertise lie in utilising airborne lidar data to explore growth and disturbance in forests. Aland research was inspired by walks in the mountains of Hong Kong when he was young. Access to repeated lidar surveys and excellent long-term wind data allowed him to explore the relationship between wind, forest structure and forest dynamics.

Zane is a PhD student at Ghent University in Belgium, where he studies forests and forest disturbance through the lens of Terrestrial Laser Scanning. He began by studying forestry and ecology in California, and is now working to quantify forest structure and measure it's change all over the globe.

Bachelor's and M.Sc. in Forestry Engineering from Santa Catarina State University, Brazil. Graduate Certificate in Pulp and Paper Technology by Viçosa Federal University / Brazil. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Forest Sciences at Laval University, Canada. Engaged in research on silvicultural adaptation to climate and global changes as part of the Silva21 project, focusing specifically on Targeted Assisted Migration of tree species. Possesses 14 years of experience in forestry, including 12 years working as an operations and planning engineer in forest plantations in southern Brazil.

Jason is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland in the Remote Sensing Research Centre and is partnered with SmartSat CRC. Before commencing his PhD, Jason completed a Bachelors in Geomorphology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a Master of Science in Geography of Environmental Risks and Human Security from the University of Bonn and the United Nations University in Germany. His research focuses on improving woodland clearing and regrowth detection by using spaceborne synthetic aperture radar. A combination of optical and radar imagery will be used to explore the distribution and extent of clearing and regrowth in different vegetation communities in southeast Queensland. Deep learning models will also be explored to determine which offers the most improvements over the current Landsat/Sentinel-2 methodology.

Currently works at University of Florence. Dr D'Amico's main research interests are the use of remote sensing for forestry applications. In particular spatialized estimates of forest variables with remotely sensed data such as satellites, lidar, UAVs

Barbara is a PhD student at Q-ForestLab, at the department of Environment in Ghent University. Her research focuses on the structure of individual trees, ranging from urban trees to tropical trees. She is currently working with different LiDAR platforms to assess urban tree structure and to quantify its ecosystem services. She is also part of the Life On Trees research project, which aims to link individual tree structure of large, emergent, tropical trees with biodiversity and microclimate.

Mr. Mark Jayson is currently a Hyperspectral Technologist in Scion. Previously, he has worked on projects utilizing remote sensing technology for agriculture and water quality monitoring.

Steven is a research associate at Colorado State University where he completed his master’s degree and has also recently begun his PhD. His work has spanned an array of remote sensing applications from quantifying forest disturbance with lidar and photogrammetry to using remotely sensed evapotranspiration to estimate ground water pumping in croplands. His primary interest is in testing new remote sensing approaches for monitoring of semi-arid woodlands like the pinyon-juniper woodlands of the western US and savannas of South Africa. Like a typical Coloradoan, Steven loves all things outdoors. Anyone interesting in talking about remote sensing while enjoying an afternoon session of climbing, mountain biking, or hiking in New Zealand is welcome to reach out.

Professor Anthony Finn is Professor of Autonomous Systems at the University of South Australia. He graduated from Cambridge University with a PhD in 1989 and has since published two books and around a three hundred book chapters, journal articles, refereed conference papers, and research reports. From 2011 - 2019 Prof Finn was Director of the Defence and Systems Institute (DASI); and prior to joining DASI in 2010 he worked at the Defence Science & Technology Organisation (DSTO) for almost twenty years, the last ten of which were spent leading a team of around forty scientists and engineers conducting research into the defence applications of autonomous and unmanned vehicles. Prior to joining DSTO, and while based at Cambridge University, Professor Finn worked as a research consultant for a number of large organisations in Europe.

Professor Anthony Finn is Professor of Autonomous Systems at the University of South Australia. He graduated from Cambridge University with a PhD in 1989 and has since published two books and around a three hundred book chapters, journal articles, refereed conference papers, and research reports. From 2011 - 2019 Prof Finn was Director of the Defence and Systems Institute (DASI); and prior to joining DASI in 2010 he worked at the Defence Science & Technology Organisation (DSTO) for almost twenty years, the last ten of which were spent leading a team of around forty scientists and engineers conducting research into the defence applications of autonomous and unmanned vehicles. Prior to joining DSTO, and while based at Cambridge University, Professor Finn worked as a research consultant for several large organisations in Europe.

Dr. Nancy French is a Senior Scientist and Technical Fellow at the Michigan Tech Research Institute in Ann Arbor Michigan. Dr. French's expertise is in research and applications of Earth observation and spatial data to ecology and vegetation studies. Her primary research has focused on the use of remote sensing and geospatial technologies for studying wildfires and their effect on the terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. Her research has included mapping and monitoring burn severity and the development of geospatial methods for quantifying wildland fire emissions of carbon and air pollutants.

Iris Garthwaite is a Presidential Management Fellow with the National Land Imaging Program at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Roger is a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong, in Australia. His research focuses on mangrove vegetation dynamics and investigating possible environmental factors shaping vegetation structure and condition, including climatic perturbations, tidal variations and fire. He is interested in using remote sensing-derived products to assess and monitor wetlands vegetation in Australia and Brazil.

Bernardo González-Mesquida, a PhD student at the Universidad de Valladolid, is deeply passionate about remote sensing methods, particularly LiDAR, for quantifying and estimating forested areas. His educational journey includes an MSc in Forestry Management Based on Data Science and prior roles as a Forest Restoration Coordinator and an Argentinian delegate for the Youth Congress for Sustainable Americas

Hanna Haapala received a M.Sc. degree in agriculture and forestry from the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, in 2023 and is pursuing a Ph.D. Her research interests include forest canopy structure measurements using airborne and satellite-based light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data and forest composition estimation with satellite-based optical data.

Ms Johanna Jääskeläinen is working as a doctoral researcher. Her thesis concentrates in predicting and calibrating current and future tree attributes based on remote sensing data.

Steph Johnson is a geospatial analyst with the CSIRO. Her work involves developing workflows for extracting and processing large spatial datasets, including LiDAR data.

Donatas Jonikavicius is an associate professor at the Academy of Agriculture of the Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania. In 2012, he defended his thesis on the topic "Forest inventory improvement based on satellite images" and this year he works as a teacher and researcher at the Faculty of Forestry and Ecology . The field of scientific research is remote sensing methods in forestry.

Dr. Du Liming is an assistant researcher at the Institute of Resource Information, Chinese Academy of Forestry. Her research areas include multi-sensor LiDAR integration and data processing, multi-scale forest parameter estimation and carbon measurement. She has participated in and led multiple national level projects and sub projects, and published over 20 papers in international journals and academic conferences such as “Remote Sensing of Environment”, “IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems”, “Plant Phenomics”.

Starting his academic studies at the Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a consecutive Master of Science in Biosciences, Mr. Köthe quickly developed a particular interest towards forest ecosystems and the use of remote sensing data in such. As PhD candidate in the Department for Spatial Structures and Digitization of Forests and member of the research training group 2300 at the Georg-August-University Göttingen, Mr. Köthe is part of an interdisciplinary team, investigating the effects of enriching European beech forests with conifers. During his PhD, Mr. Köthe is further investigating the structural complexity – productivity relationship by using fractal analysis in combination with three-dimensional mobile laser scanning.

Ivan Kotzur is a PhD Candidate at Hawkesbury Institute for Environment in the group focused on animal, plants, and interaction. His research is on climate effects on forests and woodlands of koala habitat using remote sensing methodologies. This includes an interest in scaling up nutritional ecology using hyper spectral satellite data at a fine, within-tree resolution.

Dr. Michael Förster is a scientist in Vegetation Remote Sensing at the Technical University Berlin. He did his PhD on "„Integration of Geo-Information in Classification Processes of Satellite Imagery for NATURA 2000 Monitoring“. He worked as guest scientist at the University of Utrecht, the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy. His work primarily explores ecosystem dynamics and plant properties through remote sensing data, aiming to develop innovative environmental indicators. He co-organized the last ForestSAT 2022 in Berlin.

Loredana Oreti. Ph. D. in science technology and biotechnology for sustainability actually Technical researcher at council for agricultural research and economics - Research Centre for Engineering and Agro-Food Processing (CREA-IT). The main research fields are geomatic for environmental management and forest monitoring by remote sensing and field survey of course!

Introducing Emanuele Papucci, a Ph.D. student at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, who will speak about global forest biomass estimations through a comprehensive review study.

Henrik Persson is an Associate Professor in Forest Remote Sensing at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He researches radar, optical and laser scanning based remote sensing for forest monitoring and he works in the BorealScat-2 radar tower project.

Dr. Peter-Contesse is a Researcher at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa whose research focuses on soil carbon dynamics in subtropical and temperate ecosystems. She applies new generative approaches to enumerate soil carbon distributions and drivers in natural and working lands with a particular interest in the spatiotemporal dynamics of carbon cycling.

Priyanganie Samarasinghe Yapa Mudiyanselage is a first-year PhD student at the University of Canterbury, affiliated with the Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis Lab in the School of Forestry. With a background in Agricultural Technology and Management, she holds a BSc degree from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and a master’s degree in Geoinformatics from the same institution. Prior to pursuing her PhD, Priyanganie gained valuable experience as a research officer in the agriculture sector in Sri Lanka. Her current research focuses on assessing urban heat islands and exploring the temperature mitigation capabilities of urban greenery using remote sensing approaches. Committed to making valuable contributions to the field of urban forestry, she looks forward to sharing her research findings with fellow researchers.

Hailey Schmidt is a doctoral student at Texas A&M University in the Department of Rangeland, Wildlife, and Fisheries Management. Her research seeks to understand the interactions between carbon storage and woody plant encroachment throughout the Great Plains region of North America, and is being completed under the direction of Dr. Javier Osorio Leyton and Dr. Sorin Popescu.

Gunjan Sharma, a second-year PhD candidate at the School of Forestry, University of Canterbury, holds a master’s degree in Geography from India and a joint European master’s degree in Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation for Environmental Modelling and Management from ITC Netherlands and Lund University, Sweden. Gunjan has demonstrated a strong commitment to using geospatial technology to address environmental challenges through co-founding her GIS consultation firm in India. She believes that urban forests provide the closest connection to nature for over half of the world's urban population, making them a focal point of her research. Her work aims to leverage remote sensing and geospatial technology to model ecosystem services of urban forests.

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 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.

Val Thomas examines remote sensing of forest condition and change using multitemporal optical data, lidar, hyperspectral, and SAR data, combined with field and other ancillary data. She has an interest in the impact of forest management and other disturbances. She also examine forest structure and physiology (foliar biochemistry, nitrogen isotopes, photosynthesis, and structural/inventory characteristics) to better understand ecosystem function within managed and natural systems.

Mary Buford is a PhD student at University of Canterbury working on combining geospatial and ecological methods to look at habitat connectivity and the wild biodiversity use of non-crop vegetation across the Canterbury Plains agricultural region as a model for agricultural systems elsewhere. She is broadly interested in transitioning food production systems to address global biodiversity decline and work better for feeding the human population.