Prof. Benjamin Zhan received his Ph.D in 1994 from the Department of Geography at the State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY-Buffalo). His doctoral study was supported by the U.S. National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA-Buffalo). He is currently the professor of geography and director of the Texas Center for Geographic Information Science at Texas State University-San Marcos. He also holds a Chang Jiang Scholar guest chair professorship at Wuhan University in China. Professor Zhan’s research interests are in Geographic Information Science and its applications, focusing on four topical areas: (1) spatial data analysis, (2) transportation and network science, (3) health and the environment, and (4) hazards research and crisis management. Professor Zhan’s papers have been cited by researchers in more than 30 countries.

 Jianwei Zhang received BS and MS in Computer science from Tsinghua University, China in 1986, 1989 respectively. His PhD degree was awarded from the University of Karlsruhe in 1994. He is the Professor at the University of Bielefeld from 1994 to 2002. Since August 2003, He is the Full-Professor at the University of Hamburg, Department of Computer Science and head of the institute Technical Aspects of Multimodal Systems. Projects undertaken: a. EURON-IG: Coordinator of the Interest Group Skill Learning / Multimodale Interaction (sponsored for 2001) in the frame of the European Robotics Research Network EURON; b. SFB-D4: Project D4 “Multi sensor-based Exploration and Assembly” of SFB 360 "Situated Artificial Communicators”; c. SFB-D5: Project D5 “Action and Perception Autonomy Interplaying with Instruction” of SFB 360”; d. SFB-A4: Project A4 “Speech-perception based action” of SFB 360; e. “Development of a Laboratory Robot for Sample Management” founded by DECHMA (German Society of Chemical Engineering); f. “An Omni-Directional Image Sensor for Robot Localization”; g. “An Autonomic Zeppelin for Indoor-Flying”; 8. Neuron-Fuzzy Control of Sensor based Robotic Systems”.