Keynote Speakers
Prof. Sven Erik Jørgensen
Professor
Environmental Chemistry
University of Copenhagen
First Speech Title: Structurally Dynamic Models – a new promising Model Type
Second Speech Title: Application of Ecological Models for Assessment of Sustainability
Sven Erik Jørgensen is professor in environmental chemistry at the University of Copenhagen. He has received a master of science in chemical engineering from the Danish Technical University (1958), a doctor of environmental engineering (Karlsruhe University) and a doctor of science in ecological modelling (Copenhagen University). He is honourable doctor at Coimbra University, Portugal and at Dar es Salaam University (Tanzania). He has received the Einstein Professorship of the Chinese Academy of Science. He has in 1975 founded the journal Ecological Modelling and in 1978 ISEM (International Society of Ecological Modelling). He has received several awards, The Ruder Boskovic Medal, The Prigogine Prize, The Pascal Medal, The Einstein professorship at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, The Santa Chiara Prize for multidisciplinary teaching and the very prestigious Stockholm Water Prize. The Encyclopedia of Environmental Management, edited by Sven Erik Jørgensen, received in 2013 the outstanding publishing achievement, “this year’s Outstanding Academic Title”.
He has published 366 papers of which 252 were published in peer-reviewed international journals and he has edited or authored 78 books, of which several have been translated to other languages (Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese). He has authored a successful textbook in ecological modelling “Fundamentals of Ecological Modelling”, which was published as a fourth edition together with Brian Fath in 2011. It has been translated to Chinese and Russian (third edition). Recently he authored a well received textbook in system ecology entitled “Introduction to Systems Ecology”. It was published as English edition in 2012 and as Chinese edition in 2013. He was editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of Ecology, that was published in 2008, and of the Encyclopedia of Environmental Management, that was published in December 2012. The Encyclopedia of Environmental Management received the award “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2013. He has taught courses in ecological modelling and systems ecology in 32 different countries. He is the editorial board member of 18 international journals in the fields of ecology and environmental management. He is the president of ISEM and he has been elected member of the European Academy of Science’s, for which he is the chairman of the Section for Environmental Sciences.
Prof. Michael Batty
Director
Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA)
University College London
Speech Title: Smart Cities and Virtual Geographic Environments
Professor Michael Batty is in the Bartlett School at University College London where he is Chair of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). He has worked on computer models of cities and their visualisation since the 1970s and has published several books, such as Cities and Complexity (MIT Press, 2005) which won the Alonso Prize of the Regional Science Association in 2011, and most recently The New Science of Cities (MIT Press, 2013). His blogs www.complexcity.info cover the science underpinning the technology of cities and his posts and lectures on big data and smart cities are at www.spatialcomplexity.info. His research group is working on simulating long term structural change and dynamics in cities as well as their visualisation. Prior to his current position, he was Professor of City Planning and Dean at the University of Wales at Cardiff and then Director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He is a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) and the Royal Society (FRS), was awarded the CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2004 and the 2013 recipient of the Lauréat Prix International de Géographie Vautrin Lud.
Prof. Bojie Fu
Professor
State Key Lab. of Urban and Regional Ecology,
Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences,
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Speech Title: Coupling Land Use, Ecological Processes and Ecosystem Services Modelling
Prof. Bojie Fu is Professor at the State key Lab. of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Centre for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is an Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fellow of TWAS. His research areas are landscape ecology and ecosystem services. He service as the Vice President of International Association for Ecology and Vice Chairman of International Long-term Ecological Research Network. He has published more than 300 scientific papers and 9 books, about 160 papers published in the international journals. His prizes include China National Natural Science Prize and Award of Distinguished Service from the International Association of Landscape Ecology.
Prof. Jianya Gong
Academician
Chinese Academy of Science
Director
State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University
Speech Title: Cloud-based Service Methodology for GeoSpatial Modeling and Knowledge Sharing
Prof. Jianya GONG is Academician of Chinese Academy of Science and director of the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, China.
He studied as a PhD candidate at Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping， and Technical University of Denmark during the time period of 1988 – 1992 and got his Ph.D in 1992.
Up to now Prof. Gong has experienced several professional careers in different countries. He worked as a lecturer at Department of Surveying and Mapping, East China Geology College from 1982 to 1988, and an Associate Professor at Department of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping, from 1992 to 1995, and worked as a visiting professor at Department of Geography, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA over the time period Oct.,1995 - Feb.,1996. He has been a Changjiang Chair professor at the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping and Wuhan University since 1996, and during that time period, he was invited as a visiting professor to work at Department of Surveying and Land Information, Hong Kong Polytechnic University from Mar.,1998 to Sep.,1998, a visiting professor to work at Department of Geography and GeoInformation Science in George Mason University from Nov. 2008 to Feb. 2009.
Prof. Gong has been active in organizing international academic exchange. He was a secretary of ISPRS Commission III over the time period Sept., 1990 – July, 1992, a secretary of ISPRS Commission VI over the time period July, 1992 – July, 1996, a chair of Working Group of ISPRS WG IV/2(Federal Database and Interoperability) over the time period July, 2000 – July, 2004, a chair of Working Group of ISPRS WG VII/5(Multi Temporal Data Processing and Change Detection) and a co-chair of Academy Commission of ISPRS XXI Congress over the time period July, 2004 – July, 2008, a member of Working Group (Geographical Information Service) of ISO/TC211 over the time period May, 2003 - Nov., 20012, a chair of Working Group of ISPRS WG IV/4(Virtual Globes and Context-Aware Visualization) over the time period July, 2008- July, 20012. Now， He is the president of the commission VI of ISPRS from July, 2012 to July, 2016.
His research interests include geospatial data structure and data model, geosptial data integration and management, geographical information system software, geospatial data sharing and interoperability, Photogrammetry, GIS and remote sensing application.
Prof. Huang-Hsiung Hsu
Laboratory for Climate Change Research (LCCR)
Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica
Speech Title: Development and Implementation of a Global-to-Urban Climate Model Suite
Deputy Director and Research Fellow in Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica. He got his Ph.D degree in 1986 Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. His Research Experience covers Teleconnection, Intraseasonal Oscillation, ENSO, Asian Monsoon, Subseasonal Multiscale Interaction, Decadal-Interdecadal Variation, Climate Change, Diagnostics of GCM Simulation and Regional Climate Simulation. Until now, he has published more than 60 Journals and Book Chapters and more than 100 conference papers.
Prof. A-Xing Zhu
Professor
Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Speech Title: VGE: an environment for new forms of geographic experiments
Prof. A-Xing Zhu is a full professor, at the Department of Geography, and the Manasse Chair Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he teaches courses on GIS and physical geography, an adjunct professor at Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences as part of the CAS “One-Hundred Talents” program. He is currently a professor at Nanjing Normal University as part of the national “One Thousand Talents” program. He is the president of Pedometrics Commission of the International Union of Soil Sciences.
He obtained his Bachelor degree from the Department of Geography, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China in 1983 and his Master’s in Geography from the University of Calgary in 1987, Canada, and his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Geography, University of Toronto, Canada, in 1994.
His research interests are GIS/Remote Sensing techniques, artificial intelligence methods, high-performance/easy geocomputing, and environmental modeling and natural resource inventory. His work on soil resource mapping using GIS, fuzzy logic, and artificial intelligence has been well recognized both in the research community and in government agencies. In February of 2003, his work was showcased at a congressional briefing hosted by University Consortium for Geographic Information Sciences. He has published 2 books and over 140 research articles and owns 2 invention patents.
Prof. Paul M. Torrens
Director
Center for Geospatial Information Science
University of Maryland
Speech Title: Slipstreaming Human Geosimulation in Virtual Geographic Environments
Paul M. Torrens is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park, with a joint appointment to the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). He is also a Faculty Associate at the Maryland Population Research Center, and a member of the University of Maryland Center for Health-Related Informatics and Bioimaging. Paul is the Director of UMD's new Center for Geospatial Information Science, and also directs the Geosimulation Research Laboratory, where he and his students work on Geographic Information Science and development of geosimulation and geocomputation tools, modeling behavioral geography, modeling complex urban systems, and studying new emerging cyberspaces. Paul is a member of the Editorial Boards of a number of geography journals, including the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Geojournal, and Transactions in GIS. He is also Associate Editor of the new ACM GIS journal, Transactions on Spatial Algorithms and Systems. His research earned him a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the U.S. National Science Foundation in 2007 and he was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers by President George W. Bush in 2008.
Mr. Mansour Raad
BigData Advocate,
Senior Software Architect, ESRI
Speech Title: On GeoProcessing BigData, Machine Learning and Visualization
With over 25 years of experience in the IT/GIS field, Mansour is a Cloudera Certified Hadoop Developer, HBase Expert and a BigData advocate within Esri.
He has performed as team lead in architecting and implementing ArcIMS and the Flex API for ArcGIS.