Richard Church is a Distinguished Professor, Emeritus of Geography and formern Associate Dean of the Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his PhD in Environmental Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University. Before joining the faculty at UCSB, he was an Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Tennessee. He has taught courses in Geography, Business, Industrial Engineering, and Civil Engineering. Prof. Church's research is concentrated on spatial optimization and Geographic Information Science applied to transportation systems, location and logistics, urban systems and environmental natural resource protection. He has published more than 250 papers in Regional Science, Geography, Transportation, Operations Research, Environmental Modeling, and Engineering. Dr. Church has served as a consultant to a number of companies and governmental agencies on a wide variety of problems (logistics, environmental management, site selection, and transportation). He is a Fellow of the Regional Science Association International and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He received the outstanding Graduate Mentor Award from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2013, the Lifetime Achievement in Location Award (INFORMS) in 2012, and the University Consortium for Geographical Information Science Research Award in 2014. In 2015 he served as President of the North American Regional Science Council and is currently President of SOLA (a section of INFORMS). 

Alan Murray (BS, MA, PhD UC Santa Barbara) is a Professor in the Department of Geography at University of California at Santa Barbara. He previously held academic appointments at Drexel University, Arizona State University and Ohio State University. He is editor of International Regional Science Review, associate editor and/or editorial board member for a range of international journals, including GeographicalAnalysis, Transactions in GIS, Papers in Regional Science, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences and Annals of the Association of American Geographers. His research and teaching interests include: geographic information science; spatial optimization; health informatics; urban growth and development; land use planning; urban, regional, and natural resource planning and development; and, infrastructure and transportation systems. He is the author of two books and over 220 research articles, book chapters and proceedings papers. Finally, he is the recipient of the 2015 Walter Isard Award for Scholarly Achievement from the North American Regional Science Council.