Naphtali Rishe is the Founder, CTO, and Director of the High Performance Database Research Center and its NASA Regional Applications Center. Dr. Rishe's methodology for the design of database applications and his work on the semantic binary database model were published as a book by Prentice-Hall in 1988, and his semantic modeling theory was published as a book by McGraw-Hill in 1992. Rishe is the editor of three books and author of 23 papers in journals (including IEEE KDE, DKE, Information Systems,  and Fundamenta Informaticae ), seven chapters in books and serials (including three in Springer Verlag's prestigious Lecture Notes in Computer Science ), three papers in the Wiley Encyclopedia of Engineering,  over 60 papers published in proceedings (including VLDB, ACM SIGMOD, PDIS, IEEE DE, ACM SIGIR, SEKE, ARITH, FODO), and three patents. Dr. Rishe's industrial experience includes eight years of employment as head of software and database projects (1976-84) and later consulting for companies such as Hewlett-Packard and the telecommunications industry. Since Rishe completed his PhD at Tel Aviv University in 1984, he has served as Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1984-1987), and Associate Professor (1987-1992) and Professor (1992-present) at Florida International University (FIU). Dr. Rishe chaired the program and steering committees of the PARBASE conference and is on the steering committee of the PDIS conference series. Dr. Rishe is the first FIU faculty member to receive the Outstanding Professor Award.

Maxim Chekmasov, Manager of the High Performance Database Research Center, has a great deal of experience in database design and implementation. In particular, he led a team that designed an Oracle database to store all of the observations made by scientists at Everglades National Park since the 1920s. This database includes physical observations, remotely sensed data, and in situ  data. Dr. Chekmasov completed his PhD in Probability Theory and Mathematical Statistics at St. Petersburg University, Russia, in 1995. His academic experience includes four years working for the High Performance Database Research Center, where he currently holds a position as Visiting Associate Professor. Dr. Chekmasov has published three papers on database management, database design and implementation, and semantic database systems.

Martha Gutierrez, Manager, NASA Regional Applications Center, completed her MS in Computer Science at Florida International University in 1997 and has published four papers on database management, spectral sensing, and database design and applications. Ms. Gutierrez has extensive knowledge of the remote-sensing industry.

Andriy Selivonenko, Technical Project Manager for TerraFly, has extensive experience in remote-sensing data, database systems, and the design and implementation of Internet applications. His graduate degree is from Poltava, Ukraine.

Steve Luis, Director of Infrastructure, is the grant program manager for the HPDRC/FIU's NSF High Performance Connection, which established FIU's Internet 2 connection. He chairs FIU's I2 research advisory board and works with the university's faculty, providing I2 education and consulting services. Mr. Luis also manages the three million dollar research and instructional computing laboratories for FIU's School of Computer Science.

Eric Johnson, Director of Networking, completed his BS in Computer Engineering at the University of Florida in 1992. Mr. Johnson holds a position as Network Administrator for the School of Computer Science at Florida International University and has extensive experience in Abilene (Internet 2) and AMPATH technologies.

Nagarajan Prabakar received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Queensland, Australia, in 1985. He has published five papers on imaging science, systems, and technology, semantic database systems, and real-time systems. Dr. Prabakar has nine years of academic experience at Florida International University, where he now serves as Associate Professor.

Artyom Shaposhnikov, Senior Scientist, has published eight papers on massively parallel processing, data compression, and nonlinear and coherent optics. He also published a US Patent on novel database technologies. Dr. Shaposhnikov completed his PhD in Computer Science at Florida International University in 1998. He has served as a Research Associate at Florida International University (1993-1998) and currently holds a position as Visiting Assistant Professor at the High Performance Database Research Center.