Wei-Jun Cai is a Professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware, Newark. Prior to this position, he was a Professor at the University of Georgia. He studies air-sea CO2 exchange, carbon cycling, and ocean acidification in coastal waters and marine sediments, and develops sensors for carbon cycle research. He has worked in coastal systems around the world including the US southeastern rivers and shelf, the Mississippi River plume and northern Gulf of Mexico shelf system, the South and East China Seas, and the Arctic Ocean. He has published more than eighty articles in refereed journals. Cai is currently Associate Editor of the journal Marine Chemistry. He has served on many national committees and is currently a member of the US Carbon Cycle Science Steering Group.

Thomas S. Bianchi is a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he holds the Jon and Beverly Thompson Endowed Chair of Geological Sciences. His general areas of expertise are organic geochemistry, biogeochemical dynamics of aquatic food chains, carbon cycling in estuarine and coastal ecosystems, and biochemical markers of colloidal and particulate organic carbon. He has published more than 130 articles in refereed journals and four books, including Biogeochemistry of Gulf of Mexico Estuaries (1999, lead co-editor with Pennock and Twilley), Biogeochemistry of Estuaries (2007), Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (2010, co-author with Dale et al.) and Chemical Biomarkers in Aquatic Ecosystems (2011, lead co-author with Canuel). In 2012, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.