Willi Freeden completed his studies in Mathematics, Geography, and Philosophy at the RWTH Aachen University. In 1971, he obtained his Diploma in Mathematics, in 1972 his Staatsexamen in Mathematics and Geography, in 1975 his PhD in Mathematics, and in 1979 his Habilitation. In 1981/1982, he was a visiting Research Professor at The Ohio State University, Columbus (Department of Geodetic Science and Surveying). He became a Professor of Mathematics at the RWTH Aachen University (Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics) in 1984 and later in 1989 joined the University of Kaiserslautern as Professor of Technomathematics (Industrial Mathematics). He was appointed Head of the Geomathematics Group since 1994, and he was the Vice-President for Research and Technology at the University of Kaiserslautern, a position he held from 2002 to 2006. He has organised more than 45 international conferences and mini-symposia all over the world including several Oberwolfach conferences, mini-symposia and Special Sessions at meetings of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). He has published 26 books as author and/or editor and has made more than 225 journal contributions in mathematics and geosciences. He is a Member of the editorial board of a large number of international journals, and in 2009 was founding and executive Editor-in-Chief of the Springer International Journal on Geomathematics (GEM). Together with T. Sonar, M.Z. Nashed, he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer Handbook of Geomathematics (First and Second Edition). Since 2014, he is Editor-in-Chief of the Birkhäuser book series Geosystems Mathematics (together with M.Z. Nashed) and Lecture Notes on Geosystems Mathematics and Computing (together with M.Z. Nashed, O. Scherzer), and several other book series and journals. In 1989, he became a fellow of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG), and in 1996, a member of the German Geodetic Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Munich. He is the recipient of the 2018 IPMS (Inverse Problems: Modeling & Simulation) award and the 2020 Vening Meinesz Medal, an award of the European Geosciences Union (EGU). Helga Nutz completed her studies in Technomathematics (Industrial Mathematics) at the University of Kaiserslautern. In 1998, she obtained her Diploma in Technomathematics, and in 2002 her PhD. She worked as Research Officer at the University of Kaiserslautern from 2002 to 2003 and later as Research Associate at the Geomathematics Group (headed by Prof. Dr. Willi Freeden) from 2006 to 2016. From 2012 to 2016, she was coordinator in the BMWi joint project GEOFÜND. She joined CBM - Gesellschaft für Consulting, Business und Management mbH, Bexbach in 2016 as research associate. She is currently the deputy project manager in the BMWi projects SPE and SYSEXPL.