Fausto Ferreira, Vice President for W&S
Nearing the end of the year, it is now time to make a balance and lay down plans for 2023. As you will be able to read in this Beacon, 2022 was a very intense year with many conferences and well attended events. I am very glad to see that all types of conferences (hybrid, virtual and in-person) were successful and that even the in-person only events had a large audience. In terms of organization of the portfolio and improving communication with conference organizers, it was also a very productive year. After having the Policies and Procedures (PnPs) for VPWS approved mid-year, I have nominated the Workshops & Symposia (W&S) Committee for the term 2022-2024, which is formed by Hari Vishnu, Kenneth Foote, Harumi Sugimatsu, Andreas Marouchos, Gerardo Acosta. As per the PnPs, the committee nominees come from different backgrounds and geographical regions. Finally, we had a first W&S Committee meeting at OCEANS 2022 Hampton Roads and a meeting with all OES conference organizers in what was a first of what I expect to be a very useful and successful series of meetings. The goal was to improve the coordination of the different W&S, share experiences and best practices and hear suggestions for improvements from the organizers and a series of action points came out of this meeting as will be detailed below. Next year looks exciting as well with several established conferences and plans for new conferences coming up!
Underwater Communications and Networking (UComms) 2022
The 2022 Sixth Underwater Communications and Networking (UComms) took place in Lerici, Italy, from 30 August to 1 September, 2022, with almost 90 participants in-person. In the occasion of 10th anniversary of this high-quality single-track conference, VPWS awarded the LOC a commemorative plaque highlighting and thanking the LOC for their efforts over the past 10 years. A full report on UComms 2022 is included in this Beacon edition.
2022 IEEE OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) Symposium
The IEEE OES Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV) 2022 took place in a hybrid format, both in Singapore and online from the 19th to the 21st of September, 2022. Over 80 attendees attended (mostly in-person) this high-quality single track OES Symposium. One innovation brought by AUV 2022 was the discussion panel with the presenters at the end of each technical session. Moreover, awards were given by the Autonomous Marine Systems Technological Committee. I would like to congratulate the awardees Nikola Mišković, Blair Thornton and Hanumant Singh! More about AUV 2022 can be found in the dedicated report.
Breaking the Surface (BTS) 2022
The 14th edition of International Interdisciplinary Field Workshop of Maritime Robotics and Applications – Breaking the Surface (BTS) 2022, co-organized by the OES University of Zagreb Student Branch Chapter (SBC) was held from the 25th to the 30th of September in Biograd na Moru, Croatia. BTS 2022 had around 200 participants going back to pre-COVID attendance levels which is excellent news. More about BTS 2022 can be found in the OES University of Zagreb SBC report in this Beacon.
Marine Litter session and workshop at Sea Tech Week
OES has organized a special session entitled “Marine Litter: Solutions for Monitoring, Mitigation and Prevention” on the 27th of September, 2022, during the Sea Tech Week in Brest, France. This session preceded a 2 day workshop on “Marine Litter: Solutions for a Cleaner Ocean” on the 28th-29th of September co-organized with the Laboratory for Ocean Physics and Satellite remote sensing (LOPS). A full report on these two events is in this Beacon.
2022 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for the Sea (MetroSea 2022)
The 2022 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for the Sea (MetroSea 2022) took place from the 3rd to the 5th of October in Milazzo, Italy. The OES Italy Chapter was involved in the organization for the first time of this conference with over 100 participants and papers! A dedicated report is also included in this Beacon edition.
IEEE 9th International Conference on Underwater System Technology: Theory and Applications (USYS 2022)
USYS 2022 will take place from the 5th to 6th of December in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and online. USYS 2022 is being organized by our OES Malaysia Chapter. By the time you will be reading this newsletter, USYS will already be finished. A report is expected in the next Beacon edition.
2023 IEEE Underwater Technology (UT)
The International Symposium on Underwater Technology (UT23) will take place from the 6th to the 9th of March, 2023, in Tokyo, Japan. 125 abstracts were submitted and 99 were accepted. In addition to the technical sessions program and to the 3 keynote talks, including one dedicated to the UN Ocean Decade, a pre-event Workshop on Career Path Benefits of AUV/ROV Competitions will take place on the 6th of March. Early bird registration is open until the 20th of January. For registration and more information please check http://www.ut23.org/
10th Annual IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech 2023)
The 10th Annual IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech 2023) will take place from the 19th to the 22th of April 2023 in Portland, U.S.. IEEE SusTech pursuits of environmentally sound development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the future. It is technically co-sponsored by OES while having many other IEEE societies and sections as financial and technical co-sponsors including Region 6 and the IEEE Standards Association among others. While the paper submission is now closed for regular papers, late paper submissions will open in January so there is still a chance to submit your work. Please follow the updates on https://ieee-sustech.org/
Workshops & Symposia meeting at OCEANS 2022 Hampton Roads
As mentioned, an inaugural meeting dedicated to all OES W&S organizers took place on the 20th of October during OCEANS 2022 Hampton Roads (and online). A good and diverse attendance, including organizers from Asia, Australia, Europe, North and South America, made this meeting very fruitful. Among the topics discussed was the need to revise the Guidelines due to some omissions. These are currently being revised by the W&S Committee and then will be open for comments from the W&S organizers as well. Another topic widely discussed was the need for good reviewers. As part of the effort to better include the OES technical community in the reviewing process, TC chairs will contact TC members regarding potential reviewing assignments. Finally, another major point discussed was the different paper/abstract management systems and registration systems. As each W&S uses different systems, we have discussed briefly benefits and cons of some of these systems. However, a study on potential options will be conducted by the W&S Committee to understand what are the best options available to organizers.
Future Plans for 2023
2023 is ramping up with events. Besides UT 2023, OES is supporting RAMI 2023 to take place in July in Italy, Breaking the Surface 2023, to take place in Montenegro in late September and MetroSea 2023, to take place in Malta in early October, making sure we widen our geographic reach and attracting new people to our society. More news on these events will come at a later stage.
Moreover, two other events in new geographical areas are under confirmation and will hopefully be announced in the next Beacon.
On the other side, we plan to present revised guidelines and the result of the paper management system study in the first quarter of next year so that upcoming conferences in late 2023, and in 2024, can be informed by the results of the study and can follow the revised guidelines.
Future Plans for 2024
Albeit it may seen early, I would like to remind all OES W&S planning to organize W&S in 2024, wishing to have a financial (co-)sponsorship or a technical sponsorship with financial implications, that requests for these sponsorships should be sent to VPWS before Spring Administrative Committee takes place as per the guidelines https://beacon.ieeeoes.org/conferences/workshops-and-symposia/. Dates are still under confirmation but even if you are not sure of all the details, please contact me directly vp-workshops-symposia@beacon.ieeeoes.org in the first quarter of 2023.
As always, I would like to remind any OES members that wish to get involved in current workshops, or propose new ones, to feel free to contact me. We are here to serve the OES members and the larger community, and if you have ideas on improving current workshops, you are more than welcome to forward them to me!
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.