Michael Hudec is a structural geologist with degrees from Amherst College, the University of Southern California, and the University of Wyoming. He worked 8 years at Exxon Production Research, and 3 years at Baylor University and for the past 10 years has worked at the Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin, where he is co-director of the Applied Geodynamics Laboratory, an industry-funded consortium studying salt tectonics. His current research interests include palinspastic restoration of salt structures, salt-sheet-emplacement mechanisms, and early history of the Gulf of Mexico salt basin.

Martin Jackson is a structural geologist with degrees from the University of London and the University of Cape Town. His outcrop-based research on salt tectonics in the Paradox Basin (Utah), Sverdrup basin (Arctic Canada), Katangan Copperbelt (central Africa), Great Kavir (Iran), Haute Provence (France), and Mars has been complemented by subsurface studies in the Gulf of Mexico, East Texas Basin, Mediterranean Sea, Bay of Biscay, Red Sea (Yemen), offshore Angola, offshore Gabon, and offshore Brazil and by physical modeling at the Applied Geodynamics Laboratory (Austin) and the Hans Ramberg Tectonic Laboratory (Uppsala). He founded and co-directs the Applied Geodynamics Laboratory.