Kevin T. Pickering is Professor of Sedimentology & Stratigraphy in the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London, U.K. He has published ~140 peer-reviewed papers, co-authored 6 books and edited 3 books on aspects of deep-water sediments and global environmental issues. He managed the industry-sponsored Ainsa Project, an integrated outcrop-subsurface drilling project to understand deep-marine channels in the Spanish Pyrenees, and has sailed on four international scientific drilling expeditions (DSDP, ODP, IODP). In 2010, in recognition of his research, Pickering was elected as a Fellow of the Geological Society of America.

Richard N. Hiscott is an Emeritus Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.  His 40 years of process-oriented research covers ancient deep-sea to alluvial facies of Proterozoic to Cretaceous age, four Ocean Drilling Program campaigns including Amazon submarine fan, Quaternary sedimentology of the Labrador Sea, Santa Monica Basin, and the Black Sea region including dynamics of the saline gravity current that enters the low-salinity Black Sea through the Bosphorus Strait.