Lynne Billard is a multi award winning University Professor of Statistics at the University of Georgia, USA. Her areas of interest include epidemic theory, AIDS, time series, sequential analysis, and symbolic data. A former President of the American Statistical Association as well as the ENAR Regional President and International President of the International Biometric Society, Professor Billard has co-edited 6 books, published over150 papers and been actively involved in many statistical societies and national committees.

Edwin Diday is a Professor in Computer Science and Mathematics, at the Universite Paris Dauphine, France. He is the author or editor of 14 previous books. He is also the founder of the symbolic data analysis field, and has led numerous international research teams in the area.