Hari Vishnu, Yuen Min Too, Bharath Kalyan with inputs from SAUVC organizing committee
SAUVC continued its successful streak this year with the 9th edition organized during 5-8 April 2024. This year’s event achieved a new milestone in terms of team registration and participation, solidifying its status as the largest SAUVC to date. Endorsed by the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences, this edition underscored the event’s alignment with the overarching goals of this global initiative, particularly addressing five out of its ten challenges. This endorsement also highlights the significant role played by IEEE OES within the framework of the Decade.
Notably, this edition held particular significance as it coincided with and was complemented by other OES events occurring in Singapore, namely the OES Summer School and the OCEANS 2024 Singapore conference, all within a week’s timeframe. This convergence provided an invaluable opportunity for student teams to engage in hands-on learning through the challenge while also benefiting from tutorial-style education at the school, technical sessions, panel discussions at the conference, and interactions with the oceanic engineering community at large. Furthermore, participants could explore potential networking and career opportunities offered by OES programs such as CNET (Career and Networking Tours) at OCEANS.
This plan to synergize the events worked out successfully. Up to 80% of the summer school attendees was comprised of SAUVC team students who stayed back for the school, and there was some cross-participation across the events.
SAUVC in numbers
This year saw:
79 teams registered for the event. These teams had to prequalify for participation by submitting a video of their AUV swimming underwater, with a requirement that the video should show it swimming for at least 15 seconds and demonstrating their AUV’s depth control.
- 72 teams participated by submitting videos of their AUVs as part of pre-qualification requirements.
- 43 teams were selected from the submitted videos to attend the event in Singapore. There was a clear jump in the quality of team videos this year as compared to previous years, and the judging team had a hard time shortlisting the teams, and strict quality criteria were used for filtering.
- 37 of the selected teams made it into the event. Some teams could not make it due to non-receipt of a travel-visa on time, or technical or financial issues. This is a phenomenon observed in most events, as students in the region (especially South Asia) often develop their AUVs on tight budgets and do not necessarily find the funds to travel so far for the event. Nevertheless, despite the travel, visa and funding issues faced in the post-Covid era, it is impressive that so many teams made it and were able to participate.
- 320 student participants made it to the event in total, from
- 12 countries (India, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, Russia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Japan and Bangladesh, in decreasing order of participants). Notably, we had the first ever team from the middle East (Saudi Arabia) participating at the event, and the second-ever team from Bangladesh. Needless to say, both teams were elated to be here!
- 1 High-school team (from Alana Science High school, Turkey) performed very well at the competition, and the fact that they achieved this at an early stage in their education made it even more exciting.
- The representation of teams from across Asia was yet again extensive, and shows the value that SAUVC brings to this region.
The Challenge
SAUVC 2024 introduced two additional challenges this year as compared to previous year:
- An underwater communication task, to encourage teams to think about this important technological problem that is necessary for boosting ocean exploration, and
- A bonus round in the TCOMS Deep Ocean Basin facility in NUS, where teams had to deploy their vehicles in waves and currents generated in the facility, and pass through a
The remaining tasks in this edition mirrored those of the previous one, following a two-tiered structure comprising a qualification round and a final round. To secure qualification, the AUV had to navigate from the designated starting line through the qualification gate without surfacing, contacting the bottom or walls, or the gate itself. The top 21 teams, achieving the swiftest times in the qualification round, progressed to the final round. During this stage, AUVs garnered points by executing a range of challenges designed to assess their abilities in acoustic and visual navigation, positioning, actuation, communication, and robotic manipulation. The ensuing table outlines the various functional capabilities under examination and their corresponding tasks.
A red flare would be placed in front of the gate in the first task, which the teams were required to avoid, and hitting the red flare would incur the team’s run ending immediately. This was to make sure the tasks were more challenging this year, thus progressively upgrading the challenge.
Each task carried a certain number of points, depending on the challenge and the difficulty involved in performing it. There was also a timing bonus, and a bonus associated with weight and dimensions of the AUVs. Apart from this, the tasks were made more challenging through randomization of the position of the buckets, flare and gate and its orientation. A complete description of the tasks, static judging criteria and award of points are covered in the competition rule book available at https://sauvc.github.io/rulebook/.
SAUVC 2024 Award Winners
A notable improvement in this edition was that 21 teams qualified into the finals, which is the highest number to date. Hence, the competition in the finals was stiff. The winner of SAUVC 2024 was a returning champion from a previous edition (2014), Bumblebee Autonomous systems from the National University of Singapore. The top 5 teams in the finals were as follows:
- Bumblebee Autonomous systems, National University of Singapore
- Team Abyss from Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, India
- Mecatron from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Team Hydronautics from Bauman Moscow State Technical University, Russia
- Team Alesta from Alana Science high school, Turkey.
In addition to the top 3 finalists, we also awarded the following:
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Judges (Venu, Hari, Bharath, Rajat and Mandar) interacting with teams during the technical walkabout for judging the Innovation award and Engineering Quality award IEEE OES “innovation” award, which was constituted in 2019. This was judged by a technical panel consisting of 5 members. Innovation was defined as anything that is new/different and intentionally implemented for a specific stated purpose in SAUVC, with practically shown application. Based on the above criteria, the team Hydronautics from Bauman Moscow State Technical University was awarded the OES “most innovative engineering” award.
- IEEE OES “Engineering quality” award, from the Singapore chapter. The award was for the most sound and robust engineering design, and was awarded to Team Pioneer from City University, Hong Kong.
- Fastest team award, for the team that was fastest in the qualifier round. The team Alesta from Alana High School, Turkey, was awarded this prize, and it was also an encouragement for the young team. The award included two vouchers to attend the Breaking the Surface 2024 conference to be held in Croatia, allowing the teams to further their marine robotics training.
The bonus round was a specially celebrated feature of SAUVC 2024. It was conducted in TCOMS in the presence of waves and currents generated in the ocean facility artificially. It gave the top 5 teams in the finals a chance to try their vehicle in more challenging environments involving waves and currents. Though many of the teams prepared their vehicles, and some teams managed to get very close to the gate (but missed it due to technical issues, eg., https://fb.watch/rl1s-IKoFo/ ), only team Bumblebee from National University of Singapore managed to cross the gate in the bonus round with a superb performance from their vehicle (video here: https://fb.watch/rl1nY3-EtR/ ). This was managed in the very last run of the vehicle just before time ran out, providing some nail-biting moments and drama to the round. The competition in TCOMs also provided an opportunity for other student teams to visit the state-of-the-art facility and learn more about ocean-simulation infrastructure, thus adding an educational element to it.
Gala Dinner, Award Ceremony and Panel discussion
The event culminated with a gala dinner on April 8th, where the prize announcements took place. This occasion not only provided teams with an opportunity to celebrate their achievements but also facilitated a relaxed networking atmosphere where they could engage with one another and with organizers from the underwater engineering community, spanning academia, industry, and defense sectors. The ceremony was hosted at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, creating a spirited and dynamic evening that included the distribution of participation certificates and the announcement of winners, sparking moments of joy and celebration. Following this, participants engaged in extensive discussions that stretched late into the night.
Furthermore, the event featured a panel discussion on the Ocean Decade, titled ” Navigating the Blue Frontier: Innovations in Ocean Technologies and Autonomous Systems for addressing Ocean Decade Challenges,” featuring notable figures from the marine robotics and education sectors. This panel discussion will be elaborated upon in a separate article within this edition of the Beacon. Additionally, a video showcasing Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI)’s research vessel Falkor Too and the OES Berths of Opportunity was presented. In addition to students and panelists representing various academic and industry entities such as SUT, Subnero, Fugro, National University of Singapore, and Singapore Polytechnic, notable attendees included the Deputy Director of Singapore Polytechnic and the CEO of TCOMS Singapore.
Event publicity and social outreach
As in previous events, this event has been well covered on social media. The event was also publicized via the UN Ocean Decade’s ECOP programme’s, and IEEE Singapore section’s social media portal (e.g., https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=395089736612811&set=a.123771213744666 and https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=833157275505912&set=pcb.833157315505908). It was put up on the UN Ocean Decade’s page as well. The event will be reported in the ECOP programme’s newsletter as well, and in this sense, we established a good synergy between our event and the ECOP programme.
Our Facebook and Instagram handles showed a reach of 31,500 over the last year, of which 23,500 was over March to April 2024 alone. There were 1,200 content impressions and 1,200 content interactions over the last month. Instagram saw 9,052 accounts reached in the last 3 months alone, and 2,090 accounts who engaged with our profile. The posts reached followers mainly from South Asia (Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India), Indonesia, Turkey, U.S., and Singapore.
Sponsorship
OES has always been a regular supporter of SAUVC in terms of sponsorship. Additionally, SAUVC 2024 was sponsored by Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG), Schmidt Ocean Institute, Sonardyne, Technology Center for Offshore and Marine Singapore (TCOMS), Society for Underwater technology, BlueRobotics and Breaking the Surface 2024. SAUVC is run solely on sponsorship, and we would like to sincerely thank all our sponsors for their support.
Concluding Remarks
SAUVC has been successfully organized in nine consecutive editions over the past decade, establishing itself as possibly the largest and most prominent autonomous underwater vehicle competition for students in Asia and Europe. It has garnered considerable interest within the student robotics community and has had a tangible impact on student learning and ocean education outcomes.
The committee has noted the emergence of at least three marine robotics-based startups that originated from teams participating in SAUVC. These include BeeX in Singapore, which stemmed from the Bumblebee team, BRACU originating from the Bangladesh-based BRACU Duburi team, and another startup based on Team Tiburon from the National Institute of Technology Rourkela, India. The latter team even gained exposure on the reality TV show “Shark Tank India,” where they garnered significant investor interest, attributing their success in part to their participation in SAUVC!
Previous SAUVC winners, such as Bumblebee and BRACU, have gone on to achieve success in other marine robotics competitions held in the USA, including RoboSub, showcasing how the learning experience at SAUVC has fostered the growth of these teams. Several teams in the current edition exhibited noticeable growth in both their AUVs and team structure, exemplified by Team Abyss from India, who were runners-up in this edition after securing the second runner-up position in SAUVC 2022.
SAUVC 2024 has established fruitful synergy with other IEEE OES events, including OCEANS 2024, the inaugural Summer School, CNET, and Breaking the Surface 2024. Various OES initiatives were also highlighted at the SAUVC gala dinner, including Berths of Opportunity and the AUV Symposium.
By not imposing a blanket registration fee for participation, SAUVC continues to attract significant participation each year. This no-registration fee policy aims to encourage novice teams to compete, with IEEE OES membership drives conducted as part of the registration process. The substantial representation in terms of participating countries, number of students, and diversity is deemed encouraging. Additionally, SAUVC prioritizes educational outreach, providing teams not only with a hands-on competition experience but also with valuable interactions with committee members and marine robotics experts who offer mentoring and guidance.
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.