Jaap van den Herik studied mathematics (with honours) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and received his PhD degree at Delft University of Technology in 1983. In 1984 he was visiting professor at the McGill School of Computer Science in Montreal. Thereafter, he was subsequently affiliated with Maastricht University (1987-2008), Tilburg University (2008-2016) and Leiden University (2014-2021) as full professor in Computer Science / Artificial Intelligence and Law. He is the founding director of IKAT (Institute of Knowledge and Agent Technology), TiCC (Tilburg center for Cognition and Communication) and LCDS (Leiden Center of Data Science) and was supervisor of 95 PhD researchers. 

Xinbo Gao obtained his Bachelor Degree in Electronic Engineering, Master and Ph.D. Degrees in Information and Communication Engineering from Xidian University, Xi'an, China, in 1994, 1997 and 1999, respectively. From 1997 to 1998, he was a Research Fellow in Prof. Hiroyuki Iida's Lab, Department of Computer Science at Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan. From 2000 to 2001, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Prof. Xiaoou Tang's Multimedia Lab, Department of Information Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong SAR, China.