Nadir Kapetanović, Anja Babić, Ivan Lončar, Igor Kvasić, Vladimir Slošić, Allan Badian
Introduction
It was a busy start of the year for members of the IEEE OES University of Zagreb Student Branch Chapter. As most COVID – related measures have been relaxed, many of the long-due field trials finally got completed. Field trials in bay Bistrina near Dubrovnik as part of the InnovaMare roadshow and field trials in Venice are just some of the sea trial events our members attended lately. Besides that, as every year we participated in the Croatian Festival of Science and took a prestigious award at the 13th International Agriculture Innovation Fair AgroArca in Prelog, Croatia. Most of all, we are excited that our small branch community is growing as visiting students joined our research group and happily shared their experience about working and staying in Croatia.
Field trials in Bistrina bay, Croatia, April 2022
As a part of InnovaMare project, a so-called roadshow demo event named “Transforming Blue Economy for Sustainable Adriatic Sea” was held on the premises of the Laboratory for Mariculture, University of Dubrovnik in Bistrina bay, Croatia. Our members Anja Babić, Nadir Kapetanović, Vladimir Slošić and Kristijan Krčmar prepared the equipment for the demos on site April 25th-28th, while the main demo event took place on April 29th.
The main objective of the demo was to showcase our autonomous vehicles capabilities and ongoing equipment integrations. This included the autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) Korkyra and its subsystems used in autonomous inspection missions, i.e., surveillance camera, integration with Blueye Pro ROV, a tether management system (TMS) for the ROV, a landing platform for a UAV, and WaterLinked UWGPS G2 system for acoustic underwater localization of the ROV.
In spite of the issues such as the punctured hull of the ASV Korkyra that was luckily detected on the first day and fixed right away on the next day, most of the performance tests went well. On Wednesday, April the 27th, while ASV Korkyra’s hulls were getting dried, we managed to have a secondary setup of the underwater acoustic system deployment, so a rubber boat acted as the baseline of the SBL system. This was followed by a successful integration of the GNSS equipment with the UWGPS G2 system for relative-to-global coordinate frame reprojections. Also, the TMS, controlled based on the measured distance of the ROV from the ASV, was successfully tested both on Wednesday and on Thursday, April the 28th, when the ASV was deployed in the sea.
The other main demonstration was that of the newly developed surface unit for the Multifunctional Smart Buoys project. The field trials at Bistrina marked the first deployment of the buoy unit, as well as another test for two previously deployed underwater acoustic sensor units.
The units were deployed in the bay for 3 days total, with the sensor units gathering water quality data and sending it to the surface unit, while the surface unit collected temperature, GPS, and camera data, and relayed all of the acquired information to an online dashboard for user-friendly visualization.
On the last day of our stay in Bistrina bay, Friday, 29th of April, we set up two nearby demo locations for our showcase. Autonomous buoys and sensor units were presented in front of the main building, while ASV Korkyra and its subsystems were showcased at the deployment location nearby. A large gazebo was set up to enable Anja and Nadir to show video streams and measurements from various subsystems on a large screen TV.
The attendees of the demo were very interested in all aspects of the equipment that was presented to them and wished to see these systems developed even further and hopefully even commercially available.
Festival of Science, May 2022
After two years of online events, we finally welcomed another live edition of the Festival of Science in Croatia. The Festival of Science is a manifestation that has been continuously organized in Croatia since 2003 with the aim of bringing science closer to the public through informing about activities and results in the field of science, improving the public perception of scientists, and motivating young people to research and acquire new knowledge. We were all born curious; as small children we wonder why the sky is blue and the grass is green, and when we grow up we become productive members of society. The yearning for additional knowledge and the stimulation of inner curiosity at all ages is a worthy goal for which the Festival of Science stands. The organizers of the Festival are Universities of Split, Zagreb, Rijeka, Zadar and Osijek in cooperation with the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum and the British Council, under the high patronage of the Ministry of Science and Education.
As it was the case in previous years, the IEEE OES UNIZG student chapter and the Laboratory for Underwater Systems and Technologies were happy to participate in one of the 200 or so events at this year’s Festival of Science with the theme – LIFE. As we all know, life on Earth began in water, and science and robots continue to make life easier and better every day. What is the connection between robots and water, what does the underwater world look like in virtual reality, and how robots can help fish and mussel farming were just some of the interesting topics participants could find out about at the Technical Museum Nikola Tesla. For those who were interested in how research robots were brought to life and how they became autonomous and wanted to try controlling underwater and surface robots, presentations were held at the LABUST laboratory at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. Visitors of all ages got the chance of achieving a truly immersive experience and got a different perspective on life and science, because introducing science from a young age means in turn a better future for all of us.
The 13th International Agriculture Innovation Fair AgroArca, Prelog, Croatia, May 2022
Nadir Kapetanović and Kristijan Krčmar participated in the competition programme of the 13th International Agriculture Innovation Fair AgroArca. The fair took place in the small town of Prelog in Croatia, on 13-15th of May, 2022. It was organized by the Croatian Association of Innovators and the City of Prelog and gathered 130 exhibitors from 11 countries.
As a part of the HEKTOR project, they showcased the ASV Korkyra and its subsystems – the landing platform, the tether management system, as well as the acoustic localization system and Blueye Pro ROV integrations. Our colleagues from LARICS laboratory at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing University of Zagreb showcased their all-terrain mobile robot (ATMR) ViV that is developed for autonomous inspection and spraying in steep kartic vineyards.
ASV Korkyra won the Grand Prix, while ATMR won the Golden medal. On that occasion, President of the Croatian Association of Innovators, prof. dr. sc. Miljenko Šimpraga commented on the importance of innovations in agriculture and especially emphasized the development of innovations in cooperation with the academic community. A total of 16 gold, 18 silver and 21 bronze medals in the categories of young innovators and senior innovators were awarded at AGRO ARCA 2022.
Intelligent Autonomous Systems – IAS-17 Conference Zagreb, June 2022
17th international conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-17) was held in Zagreb from June 13th to June 16th, 2022. The conference was organized by Intelligent Autonomous Systems Society, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, KoREMA, ACROSS and DATACROSS. At the conference, our member, Vladimir Slošić, presented the paper “Acoustical Underwater Localization of a Remotely Operated Vehicle in Mariculture” as one of the coauthors. At the beginning, project HEKTOR was presented and its main challenges, after that the integration of the catamaran Korkyra was explained and shown to the audience. At the end, results of the testing of acoustical underwater localization in the pool and at sea were presented and discussed. All the gathered data was made with the Waterlinked Underwater GPS system.
Vladimir Slošić presented the paper at the IAS-17conference
Venice InnovaMare Trials, June 2022
As a part of the InnovaMare project, joint field trials between project partners were held in Venice on 20-22 June. Anja Babić and Martin Oreč participated in the experiments as representatives of LABUST, joined by researchers from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) in Genoa and Venice.
The main objective of the trials was to demonstrate the possibilities of cooperation in innovation on robotic and sensor solutions. Thus, the LABUST Multifunctional Smart Buoy surface unit and the CNR catamaran-like surface vehicle SWAMP (Shallow Water Autonomous Multipurpose Platform) were integrated into a single environmental monitoring and surveying system.
The vehicles communicated via Wi-Fi, with the buoy serving as a relay, sending collected data to an online IoT dashboard, providing real-time access to the status of the SWAMP catamaran as it went about an algae mapping mission.
Initial integration tests were performed in the historic Arsenale of Venice for the first two days of the trials, while the third day was reserved for more challenging deployment off the side of two boats near the abandoned island of Sant’Angelo della Polvere in the Venice Lagoon.
The trials were successful and served as an excellent logistics challenge, offering opportunities to test and practice buoy deployment, retrieval, and mooring options in a variety of conditions, as well as a stress test for the buoy.
Internship story by Allan Badian
In June our SBC got another member – Allan Badian from the Microelectronics & Automation department of engineering school Polytech Montpellier from Montpellier, France. He stayed with us for two months on an internship. Below is the story about his internship experience:
“To validate my 4th year of electrical & automation engineering studies, I carried out a 2-month internship at LABUST. It was my first experience with underwater robotics. I joined the team of Nadir Kapetanović to work on the Tether Management System (TMS) mounted on the autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) Korkyra developed in the scope of the HEKTOR project.
“I polished and refactored the code of the system, and also made a lot of tests in both computer simulation and pool tests with ASV and Blueye ROV in the laboratory. The TMS links the Blueye ROV to the ASV Korkyra and uses underwater acoustic localization (UWGPS) to track the ROV in order to wind/unwind the right amount of tether cable automatically.
“The first challenge was to achieve an in-depth understanding of the way that the TMS operates. As I was going through refactoring steps, I discussed with Nadir about some new ideas and features and a tracking method for the ROV in order to use the TMS motor less. It was really great to debate about what approaches were better to solve problems we had.
“The setup for the pool tests was a bit challenging because the acoustic localization is not as precise in an 8x4x3m pool (due to multipath issues) as in the open sea, but overall it worked quite well.
“During my time in Croatia, I also did a quick trip to Split. I spent time near Diocletian’s Palace, in the old town, and along the Riva promenade. I used one full day to join a group tour by boat to visit Komiža (island of Vis), Stiniva Cove, Budikovac and Town Hvar. Unfortunately, we couldn’t go to the famous Blue Cave because the waves were too big to enter safely.
“Finally, I really enjoyed working with the LABUST team and the project was interesting. It was a great introduction to underwater robotics. I also deepen my experience in projects, programming using ROS, microcontrollers and developing software in Linux OS. It feels good to realize and apply what I learned at school. I would definitely come back to Croatia some day!”
Conclusion and future plans
Finally, it was a busy but fruitful start of the year at the IEEE OES University of Zagreb Student Branch Chapter. All the hard work finally got validated in pool and sea trials and experiment results got accepted or published in 10 conference and 3 journal papers this year. Beside presenting at the aforementioned IAS-17 conference, our members sent four of their publications to the upcoming 14th IFAC Conference on Control Applications in Marine Systems, Robotics and Vehicles (CAMS 2022) and five research papers to the OCEANS 2022 Hampton Roads conference, happening in October this year. Two papers got published in the April and May editions of the MDPI Sensors Journal, and another one got accepted for the Marine Technology Society (MTS) Journal.
In future plans, one of the biggest yearly events co-organized by our SBC, ”Breaking the Surface 2022” workshop, is coming up from September 25th to October 2nd this year. As always, our members are preparing a dedicated social event night related to IEEE OES, many exciting demos and tutorials during the week-long workshop and a novelty of this edition – the Acoustic Localization Challenge. Participants of the challenge will be asked to locate a hidden submerged pinger using nothing but passive acoustic receivers. Teams are going to be guided by world leading underwater acoustics experts through lectures and tutorials on the topic, and the team that obtains the most accurate estimate of the pinger’s location will be awarded. More information about the whole event and registration options at bts.fer.hr.
Suleman Mazhar has been working as a professor in Information & Communication Engineering at Harbin Engineering University (China) since July 2019. He did PhD from Tokyo University (Japan) and postdoctorate from Georgetown University (Washington DC, USA). He had BS-CS from FAST-NUCES (Lahore) and MS from GIK Institute (Pakistan). He is TYSP young scientist fellow (Ministry of Science & Technology China) and have won several research grants from international organizations such as DAAD (Germany), ICIMOD (Nepal), NRPU (Higher Education Commission Pakistan), WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) Pakistan. His research focus is deep learning and signal processing applications for environmental monitoring, with particular focus on underwater acoustics, and marine mammal conservation. He is a reviewer for professional journals such as Journal of Acoustical Society (America), IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE Sensors Journal, Applied Acoustics, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Peng Ren is a full professor with the College of Oceanography and Space Informatics, China University of Petroleum (East China). He is the director of Qingdao International Research Center for Intelligent Forecast and Detection of Oceanic Catastrophes. He received the K. M. Scott Prize from the University of York, the Natural Science award (first rank) from China Institute of Electronics, and the Eduardo Caianiello Best Student Paper Award from 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing as one co-author. He has served as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
Mohd Rizal Arshad is a full professor at the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Malaysia, where he specializes in ocean robotics technology and intelligent system. He received his B.Eng. in Medical Electronics & Instrumentation and PhD in Electronic Engineering from University of Liverpool, UK in 1994 and 1999, respectively. He completed his MSc. in Electronic Control Engineering from the University of Salford, UK in Dec 1995. He has supervised many postgraduate students and published extensively in local and international publications. He is a senior member of the IEEE, and was awarded IEEE OES Presidential Award in 2019.
Itzik Klein is an Assistant Professor, heading the Autonomous Navigation and Sensor Fusion Lab, at the Charney School of Marine Sciences, Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa. He is an IEEE Senior Member and a member of the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation (J-ISPIN) Editorial Board. Prior to joining the University of Haifa, he worked at leading companies in Israel on navigation topics for more than 15 years. He has a wide range of experience in navigation systems and sensor fusion from both industry and academic perspectives. His research interests lie in the intersection of artificial intelligence with inertial sensing, sensor fusion, and autonomous underwater vehicles.
John R. Potter (IEEE M’94, SM’02, F’18) graduated in the previous century with a joint honours Mathematics and Physics Degree from Bristol and a PhD. in Glaciology and Oceanography from Cambridge, UK studying Antarctic ice mass balance, where he spent four consecutive summers. This work helped underscore the non-linear fragility of polar ice to climate change and led to him receiving the Polar Medal from Queen Elizabeth II in 1988.
Nick is a Visiting Fellow at the UK National Oceanographic Center, Southampton His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Technology Committee. He had worked as a Research Associate and Lecturer at University of Birmingham and has been working as a Research Scientist at the Applied Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He has also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research Global. He is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of Acoustical Society of America (ASA). Nick has also been serving as Assoc. Editor for IEEE JoE and JASA. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise are seabed acoustics, parametric array modeling, sonar beamformer, underwater signal processing.
Maurizio Migliaccio (M’91-SM’00-F’17) is Full professor of Electromagnetics at Università di Napoli Parthenope (Italy) and was Affiliated Full Professor at NOVA Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, FL (USA). He has been teaching Microwave Remote Sensing since 1994. He was visiting scientist at Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fur Lüft und Raumfahrt (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He was member of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) scientific committee. He was member of the ASI CosmoSkyMed second generation panel. He was e-geos AdCom member. He was Italian delegate of the ESA PB-EO board. He was Member of South Africa Expert Review Panel for Space Exploration. He serves as reviewer for the UE, Italian Research Ministry (MIUR), NCST, Kazakhstan and Hong Kong Research board. He lectured in USA, Canada, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, Czech Republic, Switzerland and Italy. He was Italian delegate at UE COST SMOS Mode Action. He is listed in the Italian Top Scientists. He is an IEEE Trans. Geoscience and Remote Sensing AE, International Journal of Remote Sensing AE, and was IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering AE Special Issue on Radar for Marine and Maritime Remote Sensing, IEEE JSTARS AE of the Special Issue on CosmoSKyMed, Member of the Indian Journal of Radio & Space Physics Editorial board. His main current scientific interests cover SAR sea oil slick and man-made target monitoring, remote sensing for marine and coastal applications, remote sensing for agriculture monitoring, polarimetry, inverse problems for resolution enhancement, reverberating chambers. He published about 160 peer-reviewed journal papers on remote sensing and applied electromagnetics.
He has developed various types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) and related application technologies including navigation methods, a new sensing method using a chemical sensor, precise seafloor mapping methods, a precise seabed positioning system with a resolution of a few centimeters, a new sensing system of the thickness of cobalt-rich crust; and more. He has shown, by using these technologies that AUVs are practicable and valuable tools for deep-sea exploration.
Donna Kocak has had an outstanding career in defense and scientific projects developing and applying solutions in subsea optics, imaging and robotics. She graduated with an M.Sc in Computer Science in 1997 from the University of Central Florida; an MBA in 2008 from the University of Florida; and M.Sc in Industrial Engineering in 2011 from the University of Central Florida. She is currently a Senior Scientist, Advanced Concepts Engineering, and Fellow at the Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Florida, where she has developed novel optical imaging and communication solutions for under-sea defense and scientific projects. Prior to 2008 Donna Kocak was Founder and President of Green Sky Imaging, LLC (GSI) who developed laser/video photogrammetry software for underwater inspection and survey. Her earlier career positions were with Naval Training Systems Center, Florida; Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida; eMerge Interactive; and the Advanced Technologies Group in Florida.
John Potter has a Joint Honours degree in Mathematics and Physics from Bristol University in the UK and a PhD in Glaciology and Oceanography from the University of Cambridge on research in the Antarctic, for which he was awarded the Polar Medal in 1988. John has worked on polar oceanography, underwater acoustics, ambient noise (including imaging), marine mammals, communications, IoUT, autonomous vehicles and strategic development. He has 40 years’ international experience working at the British Antarctic Survey in the UK, NATO in Italy, SIO in California, NUS in Singapore and most recently at NTNU in Norway. John is a Fellow of the IEEE and MTS, an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, IEEE OES Distinguished Lecturer, PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer & an International Fellow of the Explorer’s Club.
Dr. James V. Candy is the Chief Scientist for Engineering and former Director of the Center for Advanced Signal & Image Sciences at the University of California, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy received a commission in the USAF in 1967 and was a Systems Engineer/Test Director from 1967 to 1971. He has been a Researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 1976 holding various positions including that of Project Engineer for Signal Processing and Thrust Area Leader for Signal and Control Engineering. Educationally, he received his B.S.E.E. degree from the University of Cincinnati and his M.S.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a registered Control System Engineer in the state of California. He has been an Adjunct Professor at San Francisco State University, University of Santa Clara, and UC Berkeley, Extension teaching graduate courses in signal and image processing. He is an Adjunct Full-Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Candy is a Fellow of the IEEE and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and elected as a Life Member (Fellow) at the University of Cambridge (Clare Hall College). He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Phi honorary societies. He was elected as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Candy received the IEEE Distinguished Technical Achievement Award for the “development of model-based signal processing in ocean acoustics.” Dr. Candy was selected as a IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for oceanic signal processing as well as presenting an IEEE tutorial on advanced signal processing available through their video website courses. He was nominated for the prestigious Edward Teller Fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Dr. Candy was awarded the Interdisciplinary Helmholtz-Rayleigh Silver Medal in Signal Processing/Underwater Acoustics by the Acoustical Society of America for his technical contributions. He has published over 225 journal articles, book chapters, and technical reports as well as written three texts in signal processing, “Signal Processing: the Model-Based Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1986), “Signal Processing: the Modern Approach,” (McGraw-Hill, 1988), “Model-Based Signal Processing,” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2006) and “Bayesian Signal Processing: Classical, Modern and Particle Filtering” (Wiley/IEEE Press, 2009). He was the General Chairman of the inaugural 2006 IEEE Nonlinear Statistical Signal Processing Workshop held at the Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He has presented a variety of short courses and tutorials sponsored by the IEEE and ASA in Applied Signal Processing, Spectral Estimation, Advanced Digital Signal Processing, Applied Model-Based Signal Processing, Applied Acoustical Signal Processing, Model-Based Ocean Acoustic Signal Processing and Bayesian Signal Processing for IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society/ASA. He has also presented short courses in Applied Model-Based Signal Processing for the SPIE Optical Society. He is currently the IEEE Chair of the Technical Committee on “Sonar Signal and Image Processing” and was the Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on “Signal Processing in Acoustics” as well as being an Associate Editor for Signal Processing of ASA (on-line JASAXL). He was recently nominated for the Vice Presidency of the ASA and elected as a member of the Administrative Committee of IEEE OES. His research interests include Bayesian estimation, identification, spatial estimation, signal and image processing, array signal processing, nonlinear signal processing, tomography, sonar/radar processing and biomedical applications.
Kenneth Foote is a Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The George Washington University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Brown University in 1973. He was an engineer at Raytheon Company, 1968-1974; postdoctoral scholar at Loughborough University of Technology, 1974-1975; research fellow and substitute lecturer at the University of Bergen, 1975-1981. He began working at the Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, in 1979; joined the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1999. His general area of expertise is in underwater sound scattering, with applications to the quantification of fish, other aquatic organisms, and physical scatterers in the water column and on the seafloor. In developing and transitioning acoustic methods and instruments to operations at sea, he has worked from 77°N to 55°S.
René Garello, professor at Télécom Bretagne, Fellow IEEE, co-leader of the TOMS (Traitements, Observations et Méthodes Statistiques) research team, in Pôle CID of the UMR CNRS 3192 Lab-STICC.
Professor Mal Heron is Adjunct Professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, and is CEO of Portmap Remote Ocean Sensing Pty Ltd. His PhD work in Auckland, New Zealand, was on radio-wave probing of the ionosphere, and that is reflected in his early ionospheric papers. He changed research fields to the scattering of HF radio waves from the ocean surface during the 1980s. Through the 1990s his research has broadened into oceanographic phenomena which can be studied by remote sensing, including HF radar and salinity mapping from airborne microwave radiometers . Throughout, there have been one-off papers where he has been involved in solving a problem in a cognate area like medical physics, and paleobiogeography. Occasionally, he has diverted into side-tracks like a burst of papers on the effect of bushfires on radio communications. His present project of the Australian Coastal Ocean Radar Network (ACORN) is about the development of new processing methods and applications of HF radar data to address oceanography problems. He is currently promoting the use of high resolution VHF ocean radars, based on the PortMap high resolution radar.
Hanu Singh graduated B.S. ECE and Computer Science (1989) from George Mason University and Ph.D. (1995) from MIT/Woods Hole.He led the development and commercialization of the Seabed AUV, nine of which are in operation at other universities and government laboratories around the world. He was technical lead for development and operations for Polar AUVs (Jaguar and Puma) and towed vehicles(Camper and Seasled), and the development and commercialization of the Jetyak ASVs, 18 of which are currently in use. He was involved in the development of UAS for polar and oceanographic applications, and high resolution multi-sensor acoustic and optical mapping with underwater vehicles on over 55 oceanographic cruises in support of physical oceanography, marine archaeology, biology, fisheries, coral reef studies, geology and geophysics and sea-ice studies. He is an accomplished Research Student advisor and has made strong collaborations across the US (including at MIT, SIO, Stanford, Columbia LDEO) and internationally including in the UK, Australia, Canada, Korea, Taiwan, China, Japan, India, Sweden and Norway. Hanu Singh is currently Chair of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Technology Committee on Autonomous Marine Systems with responsibilities that include organizing the biennial IEEE AUV Conference, 2008 onwards. Associate Editor, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, 2007-2011. Associate editor, Journal of Field Robotics 2012 onwards.
Milica Stojanovic graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University in Boston, in 1991 and 1993. She was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 2008 joined Northeastern University, where she is currently a Professor of electrical and computer engineering. She is also a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Milica’s research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She has made pioneering contributions to underwater acoustic communications, and her work has been widely cited. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, and serves as an Associate Editor for its Journal of Oceanic Engineering (and in the past for Transactions on Signal Processing and Transactions on Vehicular Technology). She also serves on the Advisory Board of the IEEE Communication Letters, and chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award.
Dr. Paul C. Hines was born and raised in Glace Bay, Cape Breton. From 1977-1981 he attended Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, graduating with a B.Sc. (Hon) in Engineering-Physics.