Speakers

Speakers' Introduction

Prof. Pedro Cabral (PC) is a Full Professor at NUIST, China. Currently, he is teaching Observing Earth from Space and Introduction to Earth System Sciences to Phd students. His research interests are Ecosystem Services, Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems. He got a PhD Applied Mathematics to Social Sciences at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France. He holds a MSc in GIS (IST, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa). He was a post-doc Researcher at UMR AMURE (Ifremer-UBO, Brest) where he worked in marine and terrestrial ecosystem services.

He has published in top academic journals, such as Ecosystem Services, Marine Policy, Land Use Policy, Biological Conservation, Journal of Cleaner Production, among many others. He is associate editor of the Journal of Urban Planning and Development (ASCE) and editorial board member of Geographies (MDPI) and Frontiers in Environmental Science. PC has been listed on the Scopus World’s Top 2% Scientists 2021, 2022 and 2024.

He is a committee member for major international conferences including AGILE and IGARSS. PC is Principal Investigator of several research and capatcity building projects related to Ecosystem Services, GIS and Remote Sensing. He has also coordinated work packages and participated as team member in several research and capacity building projects. He has (co)supervised >150 MSc concluded thesis and 10 PhD concluded thesis. He regularly participates as expert for selection of international projects (e.g. European Commission).

Dr. Muhammad Bilal is currently affiliated with King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Saudi Arabia. He earned his Ph.D. in Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing from the Department of Land Surveying & Geoinformatics (LSGI) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU: 65th QS World Ranking), Hong Kong, under the prestigious Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship Scheme (2010/2011). Notably, he was the first Pakistani selected for this fellowship in its pioneer batch of 2010, out of 300 applicants from Pakistan.

Dr. Bilal servied as a Professor in the School of Surveying and Land Information Engineering at Henan Polytechnic University, Jiaozuo, China. Previously, he held the position of Professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China, from October 2017 to September 2022. From 2014 to 2017, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at PolyU (HK). In recognition of his exceptional research contributions, the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education awarded him the title of “Distinguished Professor” in October 2018. Additionally, he was ranked among the Top 2% of World Scientists in Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences for the year 2019 by Stanford University, USA. Dr. Bilal’s expertise and contributions continue to advance the fields of photogrammetry, remote sensing, and atmospheric sciences.