Ingénieur général de l'armement (vice admiral) - retired in 2001

Etienne CAILLIAU chose to enter the Hydrographic Engineer Corps of the Navy in 1961 on leaving the Ecole Polytechnique. In 1964, he joined the French Naval Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service (SHOM) where he held various posts at sea and ashore, in the fields of hydrography and of oceanography. Among others, he was head of the Cartography Department of the Main Establishment of SHOM (EPSHOM) from 1974 to 1978.

From 1986 to 1992, on secondment to the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), he was director of Oceanic Research. On returning to SHOM, he was appointed as Deputy Director and, from 1994 to 2000, Director of EPSHOM. From 2000 to 2001, at the Staff College for Military Engineers, he was Deputy Director, Head of the National and International Sessions Department.

Besides the above, he has been an expert advisor for the technical aspects of maritime delimitations to the French Foreign Affairs Ministry (1983-1986), chairman of the French Committee for the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (1988-1992) and in charge of the marine environment branch of Ecole nationale supérieure de techniques avancées (1989-1995). He was a member of the Scientific Committee of IFREMER from 1996 to 2001.

Dr. Christopher Fox has served as the Director of NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) since April, 2004. NGDC provides scientific stewardship, products and services for geophysical data describing the solid earth, marine, and solar-terrestrial environment, as well as earth observations from space.

Before coming to NGDC, Dr. Fox served 19 years as a Principal Investigator at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, where he led a diversified research program in marine mapping, geophysics, and underwater acoustics.

Prior to joining NOAA in 1985, Dr. Fox worked for the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, where he participated in a wide variety of studies including the numerical modeling of seafloor microtopographic roughness and the development of automated cartographic mapping from multibeam sonar systems. Before joining NAVOCEANO, Dr. Fox worked within the U.S. Geological Survey developing numerical simulations of geothermal reservoir dynamics.

He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory with an emphasis in marine geophysics, a Master's Degree from Brown University in marine geology (paleoclimatology), and an undergraduate degree in geology from the University of Tennessee.

After a degree in geophysics from Durham (UK) and graduate work at Oxford, I spent eight years at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. There, I continued my research interests of lithospheric flexure using shipboard gravity and bathymetry; the construction of satellite-derived geoid and gravity fields; and, the creation of gridded depth databases from echo-soundings and contours. I spent five of those years years working part-time in the SIO Geological Data Centre. I specialised in the acquisition and processing of shipboard multi-beam bathymetry, gravity and magnetics data; in the development of techniques and algorithms to improve the ease and efficiency of data processing; and in spear-heading the SIO-GDC involvement of shallow-water bathymetric surveys.

For GEBCO, I have contributed the 1-minute bathymetric grid for the entire Indian Ocean and Environs based upon Bob Fisher's contours; have manned GEBCO information booths at AGU and EGS conferences; and have helped to develop the GEBCO website. I now work in the marine geosciences database management group at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory which is responsible for managing data for the Ridge2000 and MARGINS initiatives, among others.

Karen Marks has worked as a geophysicist at the NOAA Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry since 1990. She received a Ph.D. in Geophysics from the University of Houston, USA. Her current research includes evaluating bathymetric datasets for United Nations Law of the Sea applications. Her research also encompasses marine tectonic and geodynamic applications of satellite altimetry with emphasis on plate tectonic histories and seafloor spreading.

George Newton is an electrical engineer who served 25 years in the U.S. Navy as a nuclear-trained submarine officer. He retired as a Captain after commanding a nuclear attack submarine. He has been involved in Arctic and Arctic Ocean research for almost 35 years. He has served as an Advisor, Member and Chairman of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission continuously since 1988 under Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Walter H F Smith earned his PhD in marine geophysics in 1990 in the Gravity Department of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University (New York, USA). His thesis was on marine geophysical studies of seamounts in the Western Pacific Ocean. While at Lamont he began his ongoing collaboration with Paul Wessel on the GMT data analysis and map-making software.

From 1990 to 1992 he was a "Green Scholar" at the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, where he began his ongoing collaboration with David Sandwell on the use of satellite altimetry in ocean mapping.

Since 1992 he has been a Geophysicist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in NOAA's Laboratory for Satellite Altimetry in Silver Spring, Maryland. He has also been a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University where he taught Data Analysis and Inverse Theory.

Walter has worked with GEBCO since 1993 and has served as Scientific Advisor, member of the Strategic Planning Committee and the ad-hoc working group on Gridding, Chair of the Integration of Geoscientific Data Working Group, and currently is Chair of the Sub-Committee on Digital Bathymetry.

Lisa Taylor graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in Geology in 1985. She worked for the US Naval Oceanographic Office conducting hydrographic surveys and the US Geological Survey National Water Quality Lab before working in her current job as a geophysicist for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

While working for NOAA, Ms. Taylor has actively participated in the IOC regional bathymetric mapping projects, compiling and reviewing bathymetry for the International Bathymetric Chart of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico (IBCCA) and the International Bathymetric Chart of the Western Indian Ocean (IBCWIO). In addition, she compiled new bathymetry for Lake Erie as part of a joint project with the Canadian Hydrographic Service. She serves on the GEBCO Sub-Committee on Undersea Feature Names (SCUFN) and manages the digitization and quality review of hydrographic sounding sheets. Ms. Taylor is trained in alternative dispute resolution and mediates for NOAA and her community.

Pauline Weatherall graduated from Liverpool University with a degree in Geology in 1987. She has worked at the British Oceanographic Data Centre since 1990 as the GEBCO Digital Atlas Manager, maintaining and updating the GEBCO Digital Atlas (GDA). This has involved carrying out quality control checks on data sets for inclusion in the GDA and doing any necessary digitizing work. She also deals with some of the enquiries regarding the GDA and its data sets.

After completing a Ph.D. in marine geophysics at the University of Cambridge, U.K. in 1967 I joined the then National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) in Wormley, Surrey where I was employed by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) as a research scientist. NIO later became the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences and then the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences Deacon Laboratory (IOSDL). In 1995 IOSDL transferred to Southampton to become a major component, with the Departments of Geology and Oceanography of the University of Southampton, of the brand new Southampton Oceanography Centre (SOC). I retired from NERC employment in 2001 and took on the post of Permanent Secretary of GEBCO in January the same year. I remain a Visiting Professor within SOC's School of Ocean and Earth Science.

My scientific research career covered most aspects of marine geophysics but with special emphasis on wide-angle seismic experiments using ocean bottom seismographs. I worked on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and, latterly, on rifted continental margins where, together with the use of scientific drilling within the Ocean Drilling Program, I specialised in the geological processes that accompany continental break-up and the onset of seafloor spreading.

After graduating from the Faculty of Science of Tohoku University in 1970, Kunio Yashima joined the Hydrographic Department of Maritime Safety Agency (Hydrographic and Oceanographic Department of Japan Coast Guard, present name) in 1971. During more than thirty years service in the Department, Kunio Yashima was mainly involved in nautical charting and bathymetric charting. He obtained a Ph.D. in Submarine Geomorphology from the Tohoku University in 1993. On 1st April 2004, he was appointed Director General of Hydrographic and Oceanographic Department, Japan Coast Guard, which also implies being Chief Hydrographer of Japan. Kunio Yashima has worked with GEBCO since 1993 and has served as a member of the following committees.
   —GEBCO Guiding Committee Member 1993 - until the present
   —GEBCO SCUFN Member 1993 - 2002

He contributed to the revision of the deepest depth of 11,034±10m in the world recorded by the R/V "VITYAZ" U.S.S.R. in 1957 to 10,920±10m, that was surveyed by the Japanese S/V "TAKUYO" in 1987 in the Mariana Trench (Challenger Deep). Kunio Yashima has also effectively contributed to the international standardization of undersea feature names of the N.W. Pacific Ocean as a SCUFN Member. Especially, the international recognition of Japanese collective undersea feature names of special categories, such as Aki-No-Nanakusa (the seven flowers of Autumn) Seamounts, Haru-No-Nanakusa (the seven flowers of Spring) Seamounts and Gengo (Japanese Era) Seamounts is very interesting.