Prof Rupert Gouws is presently a full professor in the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at the North-West University (NWU), Potchefstroom. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. After completion of his studies, he joined a company Energy Cybernetics where he was involved with energy audits, measurement and verification activities and energy related research activities. He received an Institutional Teaching Excellence Award from the NWU and was involved in various undergraduate modules for all year groups.

Etienne Barnard obtained his Ph. D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989, writing his thesis on “Neural Networks for Scene Analysis”. He has since then been active in research and development in pattern recognition and speech processing. He has held a number of academic positions, and has also worked in industry. Barnard has co-authored more than 250 refereed scientific publications, on topics including pattern recognition, neural networks, speech recognition and human-computer interaction.

Marelie Davel is a Research Professor at North-West University (NWU), specialising in machine learning and the data-driven modelling of speech and language. Her current research focuses on generalisation in deep learning.

George van Schoor was born in Cape Town, South Africa on November 13, 1963. He received the B Eng, M.Eng and D.Eng degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU), South Africa in 1985, 1987 and 2001 respectively.

Albertus Stephanus Jacobus Helberg obtained his B.Eng (Elektr) cum laude in 1989, his M.Ing (Elektr) cum laude in 1991 from RAU. He completed his D.Eng at the same institute.