Clemens Reiman (born 1952) holds an M.Sc. in Mineralogy and Petrology from the University of Hamburg (Germany), a Ph.D. in Geosciences from Leoben Mining University, Austria, and a D.Sc. in Applied Geochemistry from the same university. he has worked as a lecturer in Mineralogy and Petrology and Environmental Sciences at Leoben Mining University, as an exploration geochemist in eastern Canada, in contract research in environmental sciences in Austria and managed the laboratory of an Austrian cement company before joining the Geological Survey of Norway in 1991 as a senior geochemist. From March to October 2004 he was director and professor at the German Federal Environment Agency (Unweltbundesamt, UBAS), responsible for the Division II, Environmental Health and Protection of Ecosystems. At present he is chairman of the EuroGeoSurveys geochemistry expert group, acting vice president of the International Association of GeoChemistry (IAGC), and associate editor of both Applied Geochemistry and Geochemistry: Exploration, Environment, Analysis.

Peter Filzmoser (born 1968) studies Applied Mathematics at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria, where he also wrote his doctoral thesis and habilitation devoted to the field of multivariate statistics. His research led him to the area of robust statistics, resulting in many international collaborations and various scientific papers in this area. His interest in applications of robust methods resulted in the development of R software packages. He was and is involved in the Organisation of several scientific evens devoted to robust statistics. Since 2001 he has been dozent at the Statistics Department at Vienna University of Technology. He was visiting professor at the universities of Vienna, Toulouse and Minsk.

Robert G. Garrett (Bob Garrett) studied Mining Geology and Applied Geochemistry at Imperial College, London, and joined the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) in 1967 following post-doctoral studies at Northwestern University, Evanston. For the next 25 years his activities focused on regional geochemical mapping in Canada, and overseas for the Canadian International Development Agency, to support mineral exploration and resource appraisal. Throughout his work there has been a use of computers and statistics to manage data, assess their quality, and maximise the knowledge extracted from them. In the 1990s he commenced collaboration crops. Since then he has been involved in various Canadian Federal and university-based research initiatives aimed at providing sound science to support Canadian regulatory and international policy activities concerning risk assessments and risk management for metals. he retired in March 2005 but remains active as an Emeritus Scientist.

Rudolf Dutter is senior statistician and full professor at Vienna University of Technology, Austria. he studies Applied Mathematics in Vienna (M.Sc.) and Statistics at Universite de Montreal, Canada (Ph.D.). He spent three years as a post-doctoral fellow at ETH, Zurich, working on computational robust statistics. research and teaching activities followed at the Graz University of Technology, and as a full professor of statistics at Vienna University of Technology, both in Austria. he also taught and consulted at Leoben Mining University, Technology, both in Austria. he also taught and consulted at Leoben Mining University, Austria; currently he consults in many fields of applied statistics with main interests in computational and robust statistics, development of statistical software, and geostatistics. He is author and coauthor of many publications and several books, e.g., an early booklet in German on geostatistics.