Edwin Budding is a recently retired Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences, at the Victoria University of Wellington, also the Carter Observatory, Wellington, and Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. In recent years he has been a Visiting Professor at the Department of Physics at Çanakkale 18th March University (COMU), Turkey. He has authored/edited five books, and been closely involved with the production of around 200 peer-reviewed articles, mostly in the field of close binary stars. In previous years he has held the presidency of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand and editorship of its journal, as well as chairing Aotearoa-New Zealand's national astronomy committee.
Osman Demircan is the Founder and Director of the Çanakkale University Observatory and Professor at the Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (ÇOMU), Turkey. From 2000 - 2010 he was the Vice Rector, Consultant, Dean and Vice Dean at ÇOMU, having previously been Professor at Ankara University, Turkey. Prof. Demircan has authored four books and over 160 journal articles. His areas of research are on the astrophysics of close binary stars, the analysis of photometric and spectrographic data, and on exoplanet research, in particular transit observations and modelling.
