Venugopalan Pallayil & Craig A. Peterson, General Co-Chairs
The first ever virtual IEEE OES/MTS OCEANS conference, Global OCEANS 2020: Singapore-U.S. Gulf Coast, was held during 05 to 31 Oct 2020. This virtual conference was also unique as it combined two regional OCEANS into a single Global OCEANS. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made it impossible for delegates to meet and greet through an in-person conference. However, technology has made it possible to keep us connected over virtual platforms. This may not have been a replacement for the usual in-person conference, but we had made every effort to make it as rewarding and exciting as possible working within the various constraints. The decision to host a virtual conference has been based on our desire to stay active, engaging and relevant considering that the ongoing pandemic and its effects are likely to stay for a year or more. It was also the best way (and possibly the only alternative) to provide an opportunity for our researchers, who have spent time and resources, to prepare their research contributions and showcase them to a wider scientific community. It was also an opportunity for many of our ‘old schools’, who have not been too optimistic about success of a virtual OCEANS, to get accustomed to virtual technology platforms. Whether we like it or not, virtual conferences have become the order of the day and we expect the trend to continue at least for the year 2021, and perhaps even beyond.
Way to Virtual Conference
OCEANS 2020 Singapore, which was originally scheduled during 6-9 April 2020 was initially rescheduled to Aug 2020, when the first signs of the COVID-19 virus spread became evident. This was also considering the fact that a good percentage of our research papers came from China, and our proximity to where the virus had first been detected. The above decision was taken when the CV-19 was not yet declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the transmission of the virus was mostly contained to Asia. However, soon after, most of Europe and the U.S.A. started to feel the havoc created by the deadly virus, and the COVID-19 was declared as a pandemic by WHO. Many countries declared travel restrictions as well as a shutdown of all main businesses and meetings. This forced Singapore to move the conference into a virtual mode, and the plans were underway to host a virtual conference. At the same time, the OCEANS 2020 Gulf Coast organizing committee was also considering moving into a ‘virtual OCEANS’, as the spread of CV-19 in the U.S became uncontrollably high and in-person conferences were banned for the foreseeable future. A decision was soon taken, with the approval of both LOCs and JOAB, in consultation with the society leadership, to host a joint virtual conference. Two of the Co-Chairs of the two organizing committees held many meetings online prior to this decision, which helped planning to smoothly progress. A joint virtual conference made more sense both technically and operationally, as many delegates would not have wanted to or been able to attend two virtual OCEANS back to back.
Global Organising Committee, PCO Selection and Virtual Platform Selection
The first step in the organization of a joint virtual conference was the formation of an organizing committee to run the show. The easiest way to do this was to merge the two LOCs, and that is exactly what we did. We held our first meeting in June 2020 and we had little over 3 months to plan and execute the conference organization. Since then, the Global Organising Committee met twice every week to charter, discuss, and monitor the progress of work towards a successful execution.
There were two major steps involved before we could move with the organization. One was the selection of a PCO and the other was identifying a virtual platform suitable to host our conference. MCI USA had been appointed as the PCO to run North American in-person conferences from 2016-2021, however, they did not have good experience running virtual technical conferences. Furthermore, they had limited exposure to virtual platforms. The committee had to come out with a new SOW for the PCO, as there existed no SOW pertaining to virtual conferences. Note also that the committee was inexperienced with organizing a virtual conference and unfamiliar with most jargon associated with it. Nevertheless, in the interest of time and ease of transition, MCI-USA was maintained as the PCO to run the Global OCEANS 2020 conference. The willingness and confidence shown by MCI-USA also boosted the confidence of the joint organizing committee.
Prior to joining hands, the two LOCs had already run through some of the available virtual platforms that would be suitable to run OCEANS. There was a whole suite of virtual platforms ranging from simple webinar meetings to highly complex 3D Avatar featured versions. The PCO had recommended two platforms for our consideration, and the committee selected Cloud Conventions as our choice of virtual platform. Though MCI-USA had no prior experience working with this platform, they did a good job of hosting the technical programs, social programs, and exhibition in the short time available. The only downside was that the committee could not see the operational virtual platform until 2 days before the actual conference starting date.
Technical Programme
The technical programme had all the main components of an in-person OCEANS conference. This included the following:
- Plenaries or Keynote speeches
- Town Hall presentations
- Panel discussions
- Technical presentations
- Tutorials
- Student Poster Competitions
There were over 500 technical papers presented during this conference. The delegates were required to pre-record their presentations and upload the video on to the virtual platform. The technical presentations were available on demand throughout the conference dates. The attendees could post their queries in a chat box, and the respective presenters could visit and post their answers as needed. The delegates were also required to provide a PDF of their full paper for publication on the IEEE Xplore database.
There were many plenary and panel sessions, covering various aspects of ocean science and technologies, delivered by experts who are renowned in their respective fields. The plenaries and panel session presentations were almost all pre-recorded, but all question and answer sessions were streamed live immediately after the presentations were over. There were also Townhall presentations specific to local themes, some of which were streamed live.
The student poster competitions (SPC) were held in two tracks; the Singapore track and Gulf Coast track. Each track had its own 3-podium prize winners. 24 students from 15 different countries participated and presented their works during the SPC event. A joint prize presentation ceremony was showcased where the winners were announced, and where the supporting organisations were also acknowledged for their contributions to the conduction of the SPC. Thanks to Office of Naval Research Global, Schmidt Ocean Institute, NOAA and University of Southern Mississippi for supporting the SPC event. More details of the SPC can be found in a separate report published elsewhere in this Newsletter.
There were four tutorials and one workshop, which were offered free for registered participants. The objective of this was to boost and supplement attendee participation.
Details of the various technical programmes are still listed on the Global OCEANS conference website: https://global20.oceansconference.org. The registered delegates can download the proceedings from this link: https://globaloceans2020.org/proceedings/
The main technical live sessions were planned until 14 October after which all presentations were made available on demand until 31 October.
Exhibition
As it was the first time a virtual OCEANS exhibition was being organized, neither the organizing committee nor the PCO had a pre-planned marketing strategy. Strategies were developed on the go, and over extended discussions at GOC meetings. MCI-USA rose up to the challenges of marketing, and came out with exhibitor packages which were finalized after discussion at the GOC meetings. It was satisfying that the conference was able to meet 90% of its targeted exhibition sales goal.
A virtual exhibit hall was setup using the Cloud Convention’s conference platform in which the exhibitors were allocated booths. Specific exhibit hours were included for attendees to visit the booths. Depending on the subscribed exhibition package, exhibitors were given options to organize meetings with the visitors in private virtual rooms. Participating exhibitors are shown below.
Social Programmes
To keep the ‘taste and flavor’ of OCEANS intact, the virtual conference also hosted events like Women in Engineering and Young Professionals meetings. These events were not only very professionally organized, but also well attended. All of the talks were pre-recorded and streamed during allocated time slots. The videos were available on-demand. Other social programmes included IEEE OES and MTS award functions. The OES award function will be reported separately in this Newsletter.
Conclusion
The OCEANS global organizing committee, society leadership, and our PCOs have all put in a relentless effort over many months to deliver a successful virtual OCEANS conference. Our inexperience in the area of virtual conferences presented many challenges. For example, it was a challenge to sync our operations across the globe. It was also a challenge to find suitable event timings to reach out to our global audience. Nevertheless, we believe that we have done a great job in the short time available to us. We had over 1000 attendees who had registered for the conference, and considering this was our first attempt at a virtual conference, the numbers are quite satisfying. We would like to hear from you on the positives of the conference, and we also welcome comments on areas that need improvement.
We would like to place on record our sincere gratitude to our honorary chairs, plenary, panel and townhall speakers, tutorial and workshop presenters, student poster competition judges and also to the technical paper presenting authors and the many attendees. We would also like to thank our reviewers, patrons, exhibitors, supporting organisations and host institutions for their kind support, which made this conference technically and financially possible.
The support extended by IEEE HQ was also commendable. The GOC and Societies worked with their Event Emergency Response Team (EERT) to have our conferences cancelled or rescheduled in conversation with the venues, contractors, and PCOs. The EERT, along with Veraprise, helped transfer the electronic Copyright Forms (eCF) from Singapore OCEANS into the Gulf Coast OCEANS, to make a single Global OCEANS technical programme. Relevant budget approvals were also fast-tracked so that the committee could make the necessary progress in our activities without any delay, and still meet financial requirements.
We hope all of you have enjoyed our ‘virtual technical feast’ on oceans science and technology over 25 days. We look forward to your continued support for future virtual or hybrid OCEANS conferences. Though we all have missed the in-person conferences both in Singapore and the Gulf Coast, we still have an opportunity to meet in 2024 and 2023, respectively.
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.