Keynote Speakers

	Prof. Ola Lindroos Ola Lindroos was born in Sundsvall in 1976. He studied to become a forester at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Umeå and graduated in 2000. After a few years of practical work as a forest inspector in southern Skåne, he began a doctoral education at SLU in Umeå, and he defended his thesis in 2007 on efficiency and safety in family forestry. This was followed by continued research and teaching at SLU. From 2010 to 2011, he spent time as a postdoctoral researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria, which was followed by a visiting researcher affiliation with this institute until 2014. In 2011, he was accepted as Associate Professor of Technology at SLU. Ola Lindroos' research is about technology development in forestry, not least when it comes to forest machines. From 2012 to 2015, he was editor-in-chief of the scientific journal "International Journal of Forest Engineering". An acknowledgement of his interest and aptitude for education is that in 2014 he was awarded SLU's individual pedagogical prize.
	Ms Miranda Wilson Miranda Wilson is a geospatial professional with a keen interest in driving change and continuous improvement using geospatial science as the foundation for innovation. With a background in Geography and Computer Science, she has worked in a wide range of industries, including Utilities management, Mining, Sustainability and Environmental management, and most recently in Forestry. Before joining Mondi South Africa in 2019, She received international recognition in the form of the Special Achievement in GIS Award from ESRI Inc. for pioneering a multi-disciplinary geospatial decision support platform to integrate data from remote mining locations across Africa and centralise data for analytics, visualization and reporting. Miranda's passion for utilizing geospatial technologies to drive business improvement and innovation has resulted in a shift in the widespread adoption of these technologies to support the precision forestry agenda within Mondi.
	Prof. Kanshukan Rajaratnam Professor Kanshukan (Kanshu) Rajaratnam joined Stellenbosch University as the inaugural director of the School for Data Science and Computational Thinking in January 2020. Prior to 2020, he was an associate professor of finance at University of Cape Town, where he also held multiple leadership roles - faculty strategic projects manager, deputy dean and acting dean of the Faculty of Commerce. His research is in the application of data science and operations research in finance and banking. He is currently rated an internationally acclaimed researcher by the National Research Foundation (NRF). He has work experience in industry – Accenture and Nedbank in South Africa and Capital one in the United States America. Prof Rajaratnam leads a School with a vision to be a world-class institution in data science and computational thinking in and for Africa. It has since its launch in July 2019, achieved global recognition and impact. One of its researchers led the sequencing of the Omicron variant of the novel Coronavirus, which resulted in that researcher gaining recognition by Nature Publications as one of the ten most exciting scientists globally for 2021.