Bettar O. el Moctar studied Naval Architecture at the University of Hamburg/Germany. He graduated in 1997 and has since then worked as a research assistant in different departments of the Hamburg University of Technology, where he has specialized in computational fluid dynamics. He completed his doctorate at the Hamburg University of Technology with a dissertation entitled Numerical Computation of Hydrodynamic Forces Acting on Maneuvering Ships. In 2000 he joined the Hamburg Ship Model Basin (HSVA) and worked as a research engineer. He was the head of department of fluid dynamics at Germanischer Lloyd/Germany from 2002 to 2013 and the global head of research at DNV GL advisory services/Germany from 2013 to 2016. Since 2008, he has been working at the University Duisburg-Essen as a full professor for ship technology and Ocean Engineering and the head of the institute of sustainable and autonomous maritime systems.
 
Thomas E. Schellin: Thomas E. Schellin has been lecturing at the Institute of Ship Technology, Ocean Engineering and Transport Systems (ISMT) of the University of Duisburg-Essen, since the beginning of 2016. Currently, he also works on a freelance relationship for DNV GL SE. In 2004, after his formal retirement from Germanischer Lloyd (now DNV GL SE), he spent a semester teaching Ship Dynamics at Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, and from 2007 to 2014 he taught also at the Technical University of Berlin. His work at Germanischer Lloyd (GL) comprised the development of hydrodynamic analysis methods for ships and offshore structures, coordination of nationally and internationally sponsored research projects, and formulation of class rules for fast ships, offshore structures, and offshore service vessels. He has published widely and is a life fellow of ASME and SNAME.

Heinrich Söding: Heinrich Söding was born in Dresden (Germany) in 1936. Grown up in Münster and Hamburg, he began studying physics in Hamburg, then Naval Architecture in Hannover and Hamburg, receiving a Ph.D. in 1967 from the Hamburg University. He then joined Germanischer Lloyd from 1967 to 1970, mainly developing and applying load predictions of large containerships. From 1970 to 1979 he was a professor for computer-aided ship design at the Technical University Hannover and from 1980 a professor for ship theory at the Hamburg University until his retirement in 2001. He led about 50 scholars to their Ph.D. degree in the fields of ship design, seakeeping, and maneuvering. Besides his university obligations, he performed numerous investigations for industry and courts of justice on the fields of lines fairing, hydrostatics, damage stability, resistance, seakeeping and maneuvering of ships and airplane ditching. His computer programs for these topics are used widely.