Dr. Kinshuk is Associate Dean of Faculty of Science and Technology, and Full Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University, Canada. He also holds the NSERC/iCORE/Xerox/Markin Industrial Research Chair for Adaptivity and Personalization in Informatics. He has a PhD from De Montfort University, United Kingdom. His work has been dedicated to advancing research on the innovative paradigms, architectures and implementations of online and distance learning systems for individualized and adaptive learning in increasingly global environments. Areas of his research interests include learning technologies, mobile, ubiquitous and location aware learning systems, cognitive profiling and interactive technologies.
With more than 350 research publications in refereed journals, international refereed conferences and book chapters, he is frequently invited as keynote or principal speaker in international conferences (27 in past five years) and visiting professor around the world (16 in the past five years in China, Hong Kong, Finland, Italy, Japan, and Taiwan). He was awarded the prestigious fellowship of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 2008.
In his on-going sustained professional activities, he has initiated professional movements at international and national levels. At the international level, he is Founding Chair of IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technologies, and Founding Editor of the Educational Technology & Society Journal (SSCI indexed with Impact Factor of 1.011 according to Thomson Scientific 2010 Journal Citations Report). At the national level, he is Founding Chair of the New Zealand Chapter of ACM SIG on Computer-Human Interaction, and Past President of the Distance Education Association of New Zealand.

Dr. Fuhua (Oscar) Lin is Full Professor and the Chair of School of Computing and Information Systems, Faculty of Science and Technology of Athabasca University, Canada. He is the group leader of Multiagent Systems within the NSERC/iCore Chair research program.
Dr. Lin obtained his PhD from Virtual Reality Lab at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1998. Prior to working in Athabasca University, Dr. Lin was a Research Officer of Institute for Information Technology of National Research Council (NRC) of Canada. Dr. Lin did post-doc research at University of Calgary during 1998-1999. He is leading a research group --- Intelligent Educational Systems Research Group. His current main research interest is in Reasoning Capability of Intelligent agents, Multi-criteria and multi-parties decision-making using the Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) approach, Virtual Reality, 3D immersive and intelligent educational environments, and complex systems modeling.
Since 1986, Dr Lin has been conducting research in Intelligent Systems, Multi-Agent Systems, Virtual Reality, and their applications. Dr. Lin has more than 90 publications, including edited books, journal papers, book chapters, conference papers, and reviews. He is the editor of book “Designing Distributed Learning Environments with Intelligent Software Agents” and a co-editor of book “Intelligent and adaptive learning systems: Technology Enhanced Support for Learners and Teachers”. Dr. Lin has been invited to provide more than twenty invited keynotes/lectures/seminars at different academic institutions and international conferences. He has chaired or co-chaired more than 15 international or national conferences/workshops/special sessions. Furthermore, he has acted as principal and co-principal investigator on more than 12 funded research including two NSERC Discovery Grants, one CFI of Canada, two research grants from Ministry of Education of China, and other funding from Athabasca University and South China University of Technology.
Dr. Lin is the Editor-In-Chief of International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (IJDET). He has served as invited reviewers for many international journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Educational Technologies, and International Journal of Computers and Applications.
Recently, Dr Lin obtained 2012 Craig Cunningham Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence (CCMATE) from Athabasca University.

Dr. Vivekanandan S Kumar was born and raised in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Completing a bachelors degree in Physics with Mathematics minor followed by a masters in Computer Science in India launched his professional career as a Scientist at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing in Mumbai, India. During this tenure, he won a fellowship of the United Nations to work with Prof Alan Lesgold at the Learning Research and Development Centre (LRDC), University of Pittsburgh, USA. His research on 'model tracing' at LRDC won him a full PhD scholarship at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada, where he worked with Prof. Gordon McCalla and Prof. Jim Greer. He graduated his PhD as the Best Graduating Student of 2001 and launched his academic career with Simon Fraser University as Assistant Professor.
In 2006, he consulted for the Asian Development Bank as Team Lead and worked with the Open University of Sri Lanka in Colombo to develop an online learning infrastructure and a master’s programme in Educational Technology. He then moved to New Zealand to take up an academic position with Massey University in Wellington. In August 2008, he came back to Canada as an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University to continue his beloved research in online learning technologies.
Vive(k)'s research centers around Technology-Enhanced Teaching, Learning, and Research that extends to BIG data learning analytics, mixed-initiative human-computer interaction, causal modelling, model tracing, automated instructional design, lifelong learning, cognitive modelling of self-regulated and co-regulated learning, semantics of online learning interactions, and competency modelling in portfolios. Vive(k) has been successful in attracting major research funds from NSERC and SSHRC in Canada. He is active in the research community with quality publications, service contributions to journals and conferences, funding proposal reviews for NSERC, and establishing Indo-Canadian collaborative research. His personal interests include social change through science fiction, empowerment of women through information and communication technologies, and comparative analyses of native cultures.

Dr. Maiga Chang is Associate Professor in the School of Computing Information and Systems at Athabasca University, Canada. He has a PhD from Chung-Yuan Christian University, Taiwan. His researches mainly focus on mobile learning and ubiquitous learning, museum e-learning, game-based learning, educational robots, learning behaviour analysis, data mining, intelligent agent technology, computational intelligence in e-learning, and mobile healthcare.
He is executive editor of International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (an EI journal) and editor in chief of Technology for Education and Learning. He is guest editor of Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning. He is co-chair of ICCE Conference on Digital Game and Digital Toy Enhanced Learning and Society (GTEL&S), a sub-conference of ICCE 2013 and GCCCE Conference on Joyful Learning and Society, sub-conference of GCCCE 2013.
He was guest associate editor of IEEE Technology and Engineering Education, guest editor of International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (a SSCI journal), the local chair of IEEE DIGITEL 2008, general co-chair of Edutainment 2009, program co-chair of Edutainment 2011, special area chair in pervasive education of International Conference on Systems and Networks Communications 2012, and advisory co-chair of International Conference on Mobile, Hybrid, and On-line Learning 2012.
He has given 45 talks and lectures in different conferences, universities, and events; he has participated in 177 international conferences/workshops as a Program Committee Member; and, he also has (co-)authored more than 158 book chapters, journal and international conference papers. In September 2004, he received the 2004 Young Researcher Award in Advanced Learning Technologies from the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology (IEEE TCLT). He is an IEEE member for seventeen years since 1996 and also a member of ACM (since 2001), AAAI (since 2001), INNS (since 2004), and Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society.

Dr. Sabine Graf has a PhD from Vienna University of Technology, Austria, and is presently an Assistant Professor at Athabasca University, School of Computing and Information Systems, in Canada. Her research expertise and interests include adaptivity and personalization, student modeling, ubiquitous and mobile learning, artificial intelligence, and learning analytics. She has published more than 80 peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters, and conference papers in these areas which have been cited over 900 times and three conference papers were awarded with a best paper award.
Dr. Graf is Executive Board Member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technologies, Editor of the Bulletin of the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology, and Associate Editor of the International Journal of Interaction Design and Architectures. She is an active member of the research community, serving as editorial board member of five international journals, workshop chair and organizer of eleven international workshops, doctoral consortium chair at four international conferences, and guest editor of three special issues. Dr. Graf has been invited to given keynote/invited talks at universities, companies and conferences in Austria, Canada, Colombia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and UK. Furthermore, Dr. Graf is reviewer for research funding applications for programs in Austria, Canada, Chile, France, and United Arab Emirates.

Dr. Qing Tan is an associate professor in School of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University. He earned his PhD in Cybernetics Engineering for Robotics from the Norwegian Institute of Technology in 1993. The Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute invited him in 1994 as a foreign senior research fellow. He joined Athabasca University in 2007 with extensive IT industrial experience. Dr. Tan is teaching and developing undergraduate and graduate courses including Mobile Computing, Computer Networking, E-Commerce, Enterprise Modeling, and Cloud Computing. Dr. Tan’s research interests include Location-Based Technologies, Mobile Computing, Adaptive Mobile Learning and Commerce, Wireless Sensor Networks, Computer Network and Cyber Security, Cloud Computing, and Telepresence Robotics. Dr. Tan was one of the first people to introduce the location awareness of mobile devices into mobile learning applications. He has developed a research framework for his location-based mobile learning research. Dr. Tan has additionally proposed a 5R adaptation framework for mobile learning system. While Dr. Tan’s research studies the theoretic and academic problems, he also strives to solve the application issues. He is working on building a telepresence robot for remote labs at Athabasca University to allow online students to conduct lab work via the Internet. He also collaborates on the development of a mobile fieldtrip system to assist online students with their fieldwork. Dr. Tan received many research grants and published many papers on International journals and conferences. Overall, Dr. Tan’s pioneering research is greatly impacting distance education and learning.

Dr. Dunwei Wen has been an Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Information Systems at Athabasca University (AU), Alberta, Canada since Jan. 2007. He received his PhD in pattern recognition and intelligent systems from Central South University in 2001, and MSc from Tianjin University and BEng from Hunan University in 1988 and 1985 respectively. Prior to his current position at AU, he was a visiting scholar in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta, Canada, and a Full Professor in the School of Information Science and Engineering at Central South University, China.

His research interests include artificial intelligence, natural language processing, statistical machine learning and intelligent systems, and their application in industrial and educational information systems.  He has published more than sixty journal and conference papers, supervised thirty graduate students and research assistants, and taken part in eighteen research and development projects. He has been serving on many program committees of international conferences in computing and information systems including Canadian AI and ICALT. He was elected as a member of board of directors of CAAI in 2001 and has been a member of IEEE, ACM, and AAAI since 2007.