Mohammed Alhessi is a GIS professional and instructor who is interested in geospatial theory, algorithms, and applications. He has a good amount of experience in GIS analysis, development, and training. He has conducted quite a few training courses for people from different backgrounds. The courses have been diverse in terms of subjects and have included, but are not limited to, Enterprise Geodatabase Administration in MS SQL Server, spatial data analysis and modeling, and Python scripting for ArcGIS.

He has worked at the University of Stuttgart as a GIS developer, where he programmed Geoprocessing tools using Java and Python. He is involved in many local GIS projects, providing consultancy for the local community. He is currently a lecturer at the Islamic University—Gaza, Palestine. He also holds classes at University College of Applied Sciences, Gaza.

Mohammed has a master's degree in geomatics engineering from the University of Stuttgart. He also has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the Islamic University—Gaza.

Matthew Bernardo is the senior GIS analyst at Newport Renewables, a renewable energy firm based in Newport. An avid outdoorsman and technophile, he is drawn to the assimilation of environment and technology that GIS offers. Over the last few years, he has used GIS and Python programming to answer complex questions in many fields, including renewable energy, intelligence analysis, remote sensing, marine science, environmental science, and town planning.

He has a BS in environmental science from the University of Rhode Island and a graduate certificate in geospatial intelligence from Penn State.

Rahul Bhosle earned his bachelor of engineering degree in information technology from Shivaji University, India, and a master of geospatial information science and technology from North Carolina State University. Currently, he is a Geospatial Developer at GIS Data Resources, Inc. By profession, he is a geospatial developer. He has experience in the fields of Python, JavaScript, ArcGIS Suite, GeoServer, PostGIS, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Leaflet, Openlayers, Machine Learning, and NoSQL.

Kristofer Lasko earned his bachelor's degree in geographical sciences from the University of Maryland. He subsequently earned a master's degree in geospatial information science from the University of Maryland. He teaches a graduate and undergraduate GIS course at the University of Maryland. He began learning about Python several years ago, when he found it necessary to automate mundane tasks as well as process large volumes of geospatial data.

He is currently a PhD student at the University of Maryland, where he's studying geographical sciences. He has previously worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. He has also worked as a GIS and remote sensing analyst at the University of Maryland. His current research focuses on the burning of crop residue in Vietnam.

His website can be viewed at http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~klasko/cv.html.

Doug McGeehan is a third year PhD student at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla, Missouri, USA, where he's studying computer science under the supervision of Dr Sanjay Madria and Dr Dan Lin. In 2013, he received his bachelor's degree in computer science from Missouri University of Science and Technology, having already published two papers in computational geometry and working as a computational cartographer for the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Ann Stark, a GISP since 2005, has been active in the GIS profession for 20 years. She is passionate about GIS and is an active and engaging member of the GIS community in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, coordinating local user groups and serving as the president of the region's GIS professional group. She is an enthusiastic teacher who explains how to effectively use Python with ArcGIS and maintains a blog devoted to the topic at https://gisstudio.wordpress.com/. She co-owns a GIS consulting business, Salish Coast Sciences, which provides strategic planning, process automation, and GIS development services.

To unwind from technology, Ann enjoys spending time with her husband and son at their urban farm in the heart of the city, where they seek to live sustainably and as self-sufficiently as an urban farm allows.