Prof. UR. Piotr Wężykhas 33 years of experience in research and teaching at BSc., M.Sc., and postgraduate level and in Doctoral Schools as well in domain of geoinformatics, geomatics in forestry, urban forestry, LiDAR, satellite remote sensing, landscape architecture at UAK Krakow (Poland), LMU München (Germany), BOKU (Austria), UAM Poznan (Poland), and UJ Krakow UNIGIS (Poland). He was organizer, lecturer and co-editor of books and e-learning tutorials for courses prepared for public administration (over 750 participants), e.g., usage of LiDAR or satellite remote sensing. He has professional experience from many international and national projects on research, development and commercial implementation of GI technologies. Piotr Wężyk is senior expert in the field of airborne (ALS) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS/MLS, HLS), VHR satellite remote sensing, digital photogrammetry, UAV/UAS, image analysis GEOBIA/ classification, 3-D and 4-D GIS spatial analyses in forestry and UF, landscape audits, precision agriculture, GNSS app. and Ecosystem Services.

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." 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.

David is in the second year of his PhD with the School of Forestry and the Geospatial Research Institute at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. His thesis is exploring the relationship between tree loss and housing intensification in urban areas. David is presenting the first stage of his research, which focusses on a method to detect and quantify urban tree loss at the property scale. Prior to commencing his PhD, David completed his Masters in Landscape Architecture focussing on natural regeneration of woody vegetation on pastoral hill country. David previously spent 11 years working as an environmental lawyer.

As a highly dedicated researcher and geospatial specialist, I have spent the past several years pursuing my PhD at University of Canterbury in the field of remote sensing data analysis, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence (AI) techniques. 

I am currently engaged in an exciting project that involves using aerial imagery for individual tree detection and crown delineation (ITDCD). This project employs cutting-edge AI techniques such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), self-supervised learning, and synthetic data to resolve data scarcity issues and improve training efficiency for this specific downstream task (ITDCD). 

Some of my recent findings not only contribute to forest management but also are transferable to wider domains. My goal is to use these AI techniques to unlock more valuable information from remote sensing data and ultimately benefit broader geospatial applications.

Justinn J. Jones is a Graduate Research Assistant in the LASERS Lab in the Ecology and Conservation Biology department at Texas A&M University and is a two-time recipient of the Carder Fellowship to research urban forest resource management. His current lab projects focus on collecting / processing lidar data from various sources, including mobile (e.g., GeoSLAM), airborne (e.g., USGS 3DEP), and spaceborne (e.g., ICESat-2) platforms for mapping, modeling, and monitoring vegetation height and growth. His work uses aerial and mobile lidar with high-resolution imagery to estimate biophysical parameters of urban trees.

Orion Cardenas-Ritzert is a Research Associate at Colorado State University in the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. He recently obtained a Master of Science degree in Ecosystem Science and Sustainability from Colorado State University where his thesis work focused on examining urbanization patterns across Africa using a remote sensing and spatial analysis based approach. His thesis and current work builds on a larger NASA Land Cover Land Use Change Africa project. As Orion continues to develop his remote sensing and spatial analysis skills, he hopes to further contribute to research addressing environmental and sustainability issues in transforming urban environments.