Pauline van den Driessche is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Victoria, Canada. Her research focuses on aspects of stability in biological models and matrix analysis. Recent research projects include human disease transmission models that are appropriate for cholera, HIV/AIDS and COVID-19; whereas previous models considered are for SARS, TB, influenza, and malaria. Most models include control strategies (e.g., vaccination and antiviral drugs for influenza), some include human movement, and aim to address questions relevant for public health. The linear algebra methods developed are also applied to control strategies in ecology for age structured populations, suggesting ways to quantify control of invasive species spread. She has helped to organize, given lectures and mentored at several schools and workshops on mathematical biology, in Canada, USA, South Africa and India. Awards received include the Tenth Bellman Prize (with J. Watmough) , the Canadian Mathematical Society Krieger-Nelson prize, the first Olga Taussky Todd lecturer at ICIAM, election as a SIAM Fellow, Craigdarroch Gold Medal for Career Achievement in Research at the University of Victoria, Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Research prize and Hans Schneider Prize in Linear Algebra.

Steve Kirkland is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Manitoba, and currently serves as an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Graduate Studies. His research is in matrix theory and graph theory, with particular interest in the theory of nonnegative matrices, spectral graph theory, and combinatorial matrix theory. He is also interested in the use of matrix-theoretic techniques in various applied settings, including quantum state transfer, network science, and population dynamics. He has published upwards of 160 refereed journal publications, conference proceedings, and book chapters, as well as one book and three edited volumes. Since 2006 he has been an Editor in Chief of the journal Linear and Multilinear Algebra, and he was president of the International Linear Algebra Society for the period 2008-2014. In 2008 he received the University of Regina Alumni Association Award for Excellence in Research, and in 2017 he was recognised with the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Science Award for Research Excellence.

Mark Lewis is Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Biology at the University of Alberta. His passion is developing applying new mathematical methods to solve problems in ecology and environmental biology. With a research focus in spatial ecology, he has supervised over 50 graduate students and postdocs and has published 8 books and more than 250 papers. Research prizes include the CRM-Fields-PIMS Prize for Exceptional Research in Mathematics and the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Research Prize. Until recently he was Chief Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Biology, is former President of Society for Mathematical Biology and of the Canadian Mathematical Society. He is a Fellow of the Fields Institute, the Society for Mathematical Biology, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the Canadian Mathematical Society and the Royal Society of Canada.