KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
DAVID MARTELL
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto
David Martell is a Professor Emeritus in the Institute of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Toronto. He completed his B.A.Sc., M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto where he studied Management Science and Operational Research and their application to forest fire management. He was assigned to one of the Province of Ontario’s fire incident management teams as research scientist for several years.
He is a past president of the Canadian Operational Research Society, the 2009 recipient of its Award of Merit, and the 2020 recipient of the International Association of Wildland Fire Ember Award for Excellence in Wildland Fire Science. His current research interests include the management of aerial detection and initial attack systems and inter-provincial and international fire management resource sharing.
YU WEI
Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, Colorado State University
Dr. Yu Wei earned his bachelor’s degree in Forest Economics and Management from Hebei Agriculture University, followed by a master’s degree in the same field from Beijing Forestry University. Additionally, he holds an MS degree in Computer and Information Science and completed his Ph.D. in Natural Resource Management at the University of Minnesota. Joining Colorado State University as a professor in 2005, Dr. Wei has been dedicated to applying techniques in operations research (OR) and management science to the fields of wildland fire and forest management, with a research focus on spatially explicit optimization, machine learning, and stochastic programming. Currently, Dr. Wei teaches classes in quantitative analysis in forest management, GIS application, and wildfire economics and management. He served as the chair for the Symposium of Systems Analysis on Forest Research (SSAFR) and currently serves as an associate editor for the Canadian Journal of Forest Research.
JOSÉ C. BORGES
School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon
Ph.D. in Forest Sciences (U. Minnesota), associate professor at the School of Agriculture (ISA), ULisboa. Coordinator of IUFRO Unit 4.04.04 Sustainable forest management scheduling and of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree MEDFOR. Has 25+ years of higher education, research and outreach experience in forest management planning methods and decision support systems. Responsible for forest and natural resources management courses in ISA with participation in several international courses. Acted as PI or as coordinator of the participation of ISA in national and international projects targeting the development of forest management planning methods, of tools to analyse trade-offs between ecosystem services and of business models to attract payments for these services. Co-authored over 100 international peer-reviewed publications.