Dr. Phaedon Kyriakidis
Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics of the Cyprus University of Technology
Dr. Phaedon Kyriakidis is a Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics of the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT), as well as an Affiliated Professor at the Department of Geography of the University California Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the USA. He currently serves as the Research Coordinator of the Eratosthenes Center of Excellence; he also formerly served as the Dean (2017-2020) of the School of Engineering and Technology at CUT, and as a Chair (2016-2017) of the Department of Civil Engineering and Geomatics at CUT. Dr. Kyriakidis was on the Faculty of the Department of Geography at UCSB — Assistant Professor (2001-2005), Associate Professor (2005-2012) and Full Professor (2012-2015), as well as a Professor of Spatial Analysis (2009-2015) at the Department of Geography of the University of the Aegean in Greece. He obtained his BSc (1994) from the Department of Geology of the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, his PhD (1999) from the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences of Stanford University, USA, with specialization Geostatistics in the Earth Sciences. He also worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow (1999-2000) at the Earth Sciences Division of Berkeley National Laboratory, USA, where he also held a Faculty Staff appointment (2001-2013).
Dr. Kyriakidis’s research interests include geostatistics, geocomputation, and geoinformatics, as well as their applications to geographic information science and systems, remote sensing, earth, atmospheric and environmental sciences, as well as public health and archaeology. He has co-authored more than 65 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and has made numerous contributions in conference proceedings and edited volumes. He has co-authored (with Andre Journel) the book entitled “Evaluation of Mineral Reserves: A Simulation Approach”, published in 2004 by Oxford University Press. He has received a best full paper award (with Rui Zhu and Krzysztof Janowicz from UCSB) for his 2017 AGILE conference paper on quantifying spatial patterns in geographic fields, a best paper award in the journal Mathematical Geosciences for his 2013 publication (with Petros Gaganis from the University of the Aegean) on efficient simulation of (log)normal random fields for hydrogeological applications. He has also been an invited keynote speaker in several international workshops and conferences, the most recent one being the “Scale and Spatial Analytics Workshop” organized in February 2020 by the Spatial Analysis Research Center of the Arizona State University in the USA. His research has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, NASA, NOAA, the Greek Secretariat for Research and Technology, as well as (more recently) by the European Commission and the Research and Innovation Foundation of Cyprus. He is currently the Principal Investigator (PI) on two research projects coordinated by CUT, and the CUT-PI on two other projects, all funded by the Research and Innovation Foundation of Cyprus.
Dr. Kyriakidis has served on the Scientific Committees of numerous international conferences and has reviewed manuscripts and proposals for a wide spectrum of scientific journals and international funding agencies, respectively. He is currently a member of the Editorial Boards of Cartographica (since 2018), and of Spatial Statistics (since 2012). He has served as an Associate Editor for Geographical Analysis (2014-2107), a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Geographical Information Science (2007-2017), as well as a Board Member of the Hellenic Geographic Information Systems Society (2015-2016). He is a member elect (since 2018) of the Council of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE), and was the Chair of the Scientific Committee of AGILE 2019, the 22nd AGILE Conference on Geoinformation Science organized at CUT’s premises in Limassol in June 2019.
Dr. Giorgos Mountrakis
Professor in Environmental Resources Engineering at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Dr. Giorgos Mountrakis is a Professor in Environmental Resources Engineering at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Maine in Spatial Information Engineering and Science (2004). He is the Founder of the Intelligent Geocomputing Laboratory at SUNY-ESF. His areas of expertise include:
i) environmental monitoring using remote sensing methods (deep learning for classification/regression, for three-dimensional LiDAR processing, for accuracy assessment and for image fusion),
ii) interdisciplinary studies linking land cover dynamics, socioeconomic patterns and environmental covariates (climate pattern analysis, forest consolidation dynamics, biodiversity responses to climate/land cover changes, tornado prediction, urban growth modeling).
Dr. Mountrakis has been successful at securing external competitive grants from NASA, NSF, USDA Forest Service, USAID and Syracuse Center of Excellence. He has been the lead PI for approximately $3.2M in research funds, through individual and collaborative grants ($3.6M including Co-PI status). He has published in numerous journals and books and has presented his work in various national and international conferences. He is the recipient of several awards including SUNY ESF’s Exemplary Researcher Award (2015), NASA’s New Investigator Award (2008), ISPRS Excellent Reviewer Award (2012) and a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Sciences (2004).
His teaching is innovative through student-engaging activities (e.g. incorporating inquiry-based learning) and it includes courses in Digital Image Analysis, Spatial Statistics, Remote Sensing, Surveying, GPS and Artificial Intelligence in Geography. Notable service activities include being an Associate Editor for the ISPRS journal, chairing an ASPRS National Committee on Academic Engagement, Guest Editorship in the October 2008 Special Issue on “Artificial Intelligence in Remote Sensing” for the Photogrammetric Eng. & Remote Sensing Journal, and his involvement in a United Nations FAO Thematic Study on Trees Outside the Forest. In 2012 he was a Keynote Speaker at the 32nd EARSEL Symposium.
Dr. George Grekousis
Associate professor Spatial Analysis and Human Geography at the International School of Geography and Planning, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
Dr. George Grekousis is an Associate professor Spatial Analysis and Human Geography at the International School of Geography and Planning, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China (ranked 89 worldwide and 7th best university in China). He is also affiliated with the Guangdong Key Laboratory for Urbanization and Geo-simulation, China, and the Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center for Public Security and Disaster, China. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography and a Master of Science in Geoinformatics from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. He has also been a postdoctoral fellow for two years at the State University of New York-USA, College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Dr. Grekousis’ interdisciplinary research couples geographical modeling and machine learning with social data for better decision-making toward a sustainable future. Among others, he focuses on the environment-society relationships, such as how physical and mental human health are related to urban greenness, air pollution, or how the natural and built-environment factors shape the socio-economic profile of urban neighborhoods. His research interests also include geodemographics, public health, public safety, and urbanization.
Dr. Grekousis has been awarded several grants from well-known international bodies (e.g., European Social Fund, National Natural Science Foundation of China – NSFC) and his research has been published in 26 SSCI journals either as first or corresponding author including, Computers Environment and Urban Systems, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Applied Geography. He has presented his research at more than twenty international scientific conferences and he is the author of the book ‘Spatial analysis methods and practice: Describe, Explore, Explain through GIS’ published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.