Andrew J. Collins, Ph.D., is an associate professor at Old Dominion University in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering. He has a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Southampton, and his undergraduate degree in Mathematics was from the University of Oxford. He has published over 80 peer-review articles. He has been the Principal Investigator on projects funded to the amount of approximately $5 million. Dr. Collins has developed several research simulations including an award-winning investigation into the foreclosure contagion that incorporated social networks.

Gary Polhill did a degree in Artificial Intelligence and a PhD in Neural Networks before spending 18 months in industry as a professional programmer. Since 1997 he has been working at the Institute on agent-based modelling of human-natural systems, and has worked on various international and interdisciplinary projects using agent-based modelling to study agricultural systems, lifestyles, and transitions to more sustainable ways of living. In 2016, he was elected President of the European Social Simulation Association, and was The James Hutton Institute’s 2017 Science Challenge Leader on Developing Technical and Social Innovations that Support Sustainable and Resilient Communities.

I am a full professor at the College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, and the Executive Dean of the Digital Agriculture Research Institute.

Bashar Ourabi is a principle consultant at arabianconsult of Syria where he has been chairman since 2003. He holds Bsc. Eng., A Grad. Certificate in Project engineering from the University of Central Florida; and a MS. in Public Administration from the Doha Graduate Institute in Qatar.

Bashar completed his graduate studies at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and his undergraduate studies at the Unversity of Central Florida. His research interests lie in the area of systems modelling, ranging from theory to design to implementation. He has collaborated actively with researchers in several other disciplines of computer science, system design, and bigData Artificial Intellegence, particularly BigData Expert System and Automated decision Making.

He has served on many international posts overlooking public infrastructure design and operations, varying from public transport, urban design and operations management. These posts spanned over the the US and the Middle East including Florida, UAE and Qatar.

Bashar has served on many conferences and workshop program committees and has succesfully delivered many corporate training programs..

Eric has graduate degrees in urban planning and policy and sociology and an undergraduate degree in biology. He has worked on multiple collaborative and interdisciplinary projects and is skilled at engaging communities and other stakeholders. He is adept at qualitative research and has earned a Certificate in Geospatial Analysis and Visualization, demonstrating proficiency in Adobe Suite, ArcGIS, agent-based modeling and system dynamics modeling. He is currently writing manuscripts for publication based on his work on motivating energy retrofit decisions, energy-related urban planning, municipal decision-making on infrastructure investments, and other work on resilience and sustainability.