Accommodation
The IGARSS 2025 organizing committee will propose a
wide range of hotel choices, from top-end 4-star hotel
to more economical accommodations, all within close
range of the conference center. Since Milan has a lot of
hotel rooms available, IGARSS attendees will be able to
choose which type of accommodation best suits their
needs, in terms of proximity to the conference center
and to the main attractions of the city, and the desired
level of service available in their hotel. Hotel types range
from those characterized by a distinctive architecture,
to well-known chain hotels, bed&breakfast, and boutique hotels.
Travel
The descent into any of Milan’s airports is always breathtaking, with the snow-covered Alps welcoming you into Italy.
With two international airports (Malpensa and Linate), plus
another airport within short distance (Orio al Serio), Milan
can be easily reached from any place in the world.
Milan Malpensa is the intercontinental airport of
Milan. With its wide range of destinations throughout the
world, it is the main hub of northern Italy. It is located
around 50 km to the north-west of Milan. From here you
can fly to all over Europe and all over the world. You can
reach Milan city centre from Malpensa either by bus or
train. The shuttle buses take around an hour to reach
Milano Centrale railway station.
Located in the south-eastern suburban belt of the capital
of Lombardy, Milan Linate is characterized by a wide offering
of national and international long- and medium-haul flights.
In addition, it offers various types of parking lots for those
who want to park their car. It is the smallest of Milan’s airports
and the closest one to the city centre, only 7 km away. One
can take a bus to reach the city centre. There are also coaches
leaving every half hour and going to Milano Centrale.
Martti Hallikainen, Werner Wiesbeck, and Mahta Moghaddam
IEEE GRSS Awards Committee Co-Chairs
Grss Publications Awards Presented
at Igarss 2014 Banquet
T
he IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society’s 2014
Publications Awards were presented at the IGARSSCSRS Awards Banquet on July 17 at the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac, Québec City’s landmark hotel, built in the
late 19th century as an ideal stopover for Canadian Pacific
railway travelers. The Banquet at this heritage hotel, situated in the heart of Old Québec, was a memorable and
inspiring evening.
The show of the Painchaud family—three brothers and
a sister—ended the evening featuring amazing and world
exclusive numbers such as the balancing guitarist act, the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2014.2369931
Date of publication: 26 January 2015
80
fired up violin, the acrobatic violin, the fish pole quartet,
the handstand tap-dance and many more.
Banquet attendees were welcomed by IGARSS 2014
General Chair Monique Bernier. The following awards
were presented by GRSS President Melba Crawford, GRSS
Publications Awards Chair Martti Hallikainen, and Special
Awards Chair Mahta Moghaddam during the dinner:
◗◗ Transactions Prize Paper Award
◗◗ Letters Prize Paper Award
◗◗ J-STARS Prize Paper Award
◗◗ Highest Impact Paper Award
◗◗ Symposium Prize Paper Award
◗◗ Symposium Interactive Prize Paper Award
◗◗ Early Career Award
◗◗ Three Student Prize Paper Awards.
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
December 2014
Figure 1. The venue for the Awards Banquet was Fairmont Le Château Frontenac in Québec City.
2013. He served as the Project Scientist of the National Aero1. IEEE GRSS Transactions Prize Paper Award
nautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aquarius mission
The GRSS established the Transactions Prize Paper Award
from January 2012 to September 2013, the Deputy Project
to recognize authors who have published an exceptional
Scientist of NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission from
paper in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote
Jan 2013 to September 2013, the SMAP Project Scientist since
Sensing during the past calendar year. When selecting the
October 2013. He has been the Principal/Co-Investigator
paper, other factors considered are originality and clarity of
of numerous NASA and DOD research projects on remote
the paper. The Award consists of a Certificate and an honosensing of ocean salinity, ocean wind, terrestrial snow and
rarium of $3000, equally divided between the authors.
soil moisture. He has authored four book chapters and pubThe 2014 Transactions Prize Paper Award is presented
lished more than 150 publications and presentations. He
to Simon Yueh, Wenqing Tang, Alexander G. Fore, Gregreceived the 2010 IEEE GRSS Transaction Prize Paper award,
ory Neumann, Akiko Hayashi, Adam Freedman, Julian
2002 IEEE GRSS Transaction Prize Paper award, the 2000
Chaubell, and Gary S. E. Lagerloef, with the citation: For a
Best Paper Award in the IEEE International Geoscience and
very significant contribution to the field of endeavor of the IEEE
Remote Symposium 2000, and the 1995 IEEE GRSS TransacGRS Society in the paper co-authored by Simon Yueh, Wenqing
tion Prize Paper award for a paper on polarimetric radiomTang, Alexander G. Fore, Gregory Neumann, Akiko Hayashi,
etry. He has been actively engaged in the GRSS activities, and
Adam Freedman, Julian Chaubell, and Gary S. E. Lagerloef, enhas been on the Technical Program committee and chairing
titled “L-band Passive and Active Microwave Geophysical Model
sessions for IGARSS. He received the JPL Lew Allen Award in
Functions of Ocean Surface Winds and Application to Aquarius
1998 and Ed Stone Award in 2003. He is an associate editor
Retrieval,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and
of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing and
Remote Sensing, Vol. 51, No. 9, pp. 4619–4632, September 2013.
is the Fellow of IEEE.
Simon H. Yueh received the Ph.D.
Wenqing Tang received the Ph.D.
degree in Electrical Engineering in
degree in physics from the Michigan
January 1991 from the Massachusetts
State University, East Lansing, in July
Institute of Technology. He was a post1987.In October 1989 she joined the
doctoral research associate at the MasClimate, Oceans and Solid Earth secsachusetts Institute of Technology from
tion, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
February to August 1991. In September
California Institute of Technology,
1991, he joined the Radar Science and
Pasadena, California. She has been
Engineering Section at the Jet Propulsion
working on scientific data analysis
Laboratory (JPL). He was the supervisor
and retrieval algorithm development
of radar system engineering and algoof satellite earth remote sensing data.
rithm development group from 2002–
She has been the Co-Investigator of
2007. He was the deputy manager of
many research projects, including the
Climate, Oceans and Solid Earth section
NASA Ocean Vector Wind Science Team
from July 2007 to March 2009, and the Figure 2. IGARSS 2014 General Chair
(OVWST) on SeaWinds scatterometers
section manager from April 2009 to Jan Monique Bernier.
December 2014
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81
NSCAT and QuikSCAT; the NASA Global Precipitation
Measurement (GPM) mission; the NASA Energy and Water
cycle Study (NEWS); and she was the Principal Investigator
of the project producing global ocean surface vector wind
fields and related geophysical parameters from spacebased sensors under NOAA Climate and Global Change
Program Directed at Climate Change Data and Detection
/ Enhanced Data Sets. She joined Aquarius post-launch
instrument calibration and validation team in 2011 and
Figure 3. Transactions Prize Paper Award recipient Simon Yueh
with Society President Melba Crawford.
has been working on Aquarius radar/radiometer geophysical model functions and other research activities including the rain effect on roughness correction to improve sea
surface salinity retrieval.
Alexander G. Fore received the A.B. degree in Physics from Vassar College in 2002, as well as M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University in
2004 and 2008, respectively. His doctoral work was modeling of complex fluids using the Lattice Boltzmann method.
In March 2008 he joined the Radar Science and Engineering section at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). At JPL he has
been working primarily on scatterometry, both forward
modeling of the radar observation as well as retrieval of the
geophysical quantity from the radar observation. He has
also has experience in synthetic aperture radar processing
and calibration algorithms.
Gregory Neumann received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brigham Young University in 1983.
He joined the Radar Science and Engineering Section at
Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1984. He has contributed to
several National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) airborne and spaceborne radar missions. He was
responsible for the deployment of a conical scanning Kuband scatterometer (NUSCAT) on C-130 aircraft for ocean
surface wind campaigns in 1990s. He has worked on the
system engineering of NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT)
flown on the Japanese Advanced Earth Observation Satellite (ADEOS), NASA SeaWinds Scatterometer on the QuikSCAT satellite, Shuttle Imaging Radar Mission (SRTM)
for topographic measurements, and Aquarius mission for
Figure 4. Recipients of the Transactions Prize Paper Award Wenqing Tang, Alexander G. Fore, Gregory Neumann, Akiko Hayashi, Adam
Freedman, Julian Chaubell, and Gary S.E. Lagerloef.
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ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
December 2014
ocean surface salinity measurements. He is currently on
the system engineering team for the integration and test of
the L-band radar and radiometer for the NASA Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) mission.
Akiko Hayashi is a member of the Oceans and Ice Group
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
She received her B.S. in Civil Engineering and her M.S. in
Structural Engineering at Duke University. After graduating,
she came to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to work in the
Structures and Dynamics Technology Group doing structural analysis and finite element modeling on spacecraft.
In 1988, she moved to the Oceanography Group where she
started working on altimetry data from the Navy GEOSAT
satellite. She is currently working on altimetry data from
OSTM/Jason-2 satellite and the ocean salinity data from
Aquarius (SAC-D) instrument.
Adam Freedman received his B.S. in Physics from Yale
University in 1980, and his Ph.D. in Marine Geophysics
from M.I.T. in 1987. He subsequently joined the Technical
Staff at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he engaged in
Earth Rotation Studies until 1996. He then began work in
the Radar Sciences Section, first on the GeoSAR airborne
X- and P-band radar platform, then as Instrument System
Engineer for the Aquarius Project. He is now a System Engineer and the Instrument Operations Team Lead for the
SMAP Mission. He is a member of Sigma Xi the American
Geophysical Union.
Julian Chaubell received a Bachelor of Science degree
from the University of Mar del Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1997. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied and Computational Mathematics from the California Institute of
Technology in 2004. His doctoral work focused on LowCoherence Interferometric Imaging. In April 2004 he
joined Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena as a
Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Tracking Systems
and Applications Section, where he worked on the modeling of EM-wave propagation in fully three-dimensional
atmospheric refractive index distributions. In April 2007,
Dr. Chaubell joined the Radar Science and Engineering
section at JPL as a permanent employee where he has been
working on the forward modeling of radar and radiometer
measurements as well as retrieval of the geophysical quantity from those measurements. He has also been involved
in electromagnetic modeling of electrically large aperture
systems and structures. Currently, Dr. Chaubell is part of
the SMAP Instrument Operations Team and SMAP Radar
L1 Subsystem Team.
Gary S.E. Lagerloef (M’06) received the Ph.D. degree in
physical oceanography from the University of Washington,
Seattle, in 1984. He currently serves as a Principal Investigator of the NASA Aquarius Mission to study the interactions between the earth’s water cycle, ocean circulation,
and climate. He has served on numerous science teams and
working groups over the last 20 years, including the Salinity
Sea Ice Working Group (Chair), Satellite Altimeter Requirements for Climate Research Working Group (Co-chair),
December 2014
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
NRC Committee on Earth Gravity Measurements from
Space, the AMS Committee on Sea Air Interaction and on
NASA Science Working Teams for Topex/Poseidon/Jason
missions, Ocean Vector Winds, and the Tropical Rainfall
Measurement Mission. He has been a Guest Editor for the
Journal of Geophysical Research—Oceans and is a Member
of several professional associations, learned, and technical
societies. He is currently with Earth and Space Research,
Seattle, which he cofounded in 1995. He was with Science
Applications International Corporation and was the NASA
Physical Oceanography Program Manager from 1988 to
1990. He has served in the NOAA Commissioned Officer
Corps and in the U.S. Coast Guard. He is the author of more
than 60 publications and presentations. His research interests include ocean circulation and climate dynamics, with
special emphasis in developing new applications for satellite remote sensing.
2. IEEE GRSS Letters Prize Paper Award
The GRSS established the Letters Prize Paper Award to recognize the author(s) who has published in the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters during the previous
calendar year an exceptional paper in terms of content and
impact on the GRS Society. If a suitable paper cannot be
identified from among those published during the calendar year, papers published in prior years, and subsequently
recognized as being meritorious, may be considered. When
selecting the paper, originality, impact, scientific value and
clarity are factors considered. Prize: Certificate and $1500,
equally divided between the authors.
The 2014 Letters Prize Paper Award is presented to R.
Keith Raney with the citation: “For a very significant contribution to the field of endeavor of the IEEE GRS Society in the paper
authored by R. Keith Raney entitled “Maximizing the Intrinsic
Precision of Radar Altimetric Measurements,” published in the
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp.
1171–1174, September 2013.”
R. Keith Raney (Harvard, BS 1960; Purdue, MSEE
1962; Michigan, PhD 1968) while with the Space Department of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory (1994–2012), had responsibilities for earth
observation systems development, space based radar conceptual design, and radar system analysis. Previously, with
the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (1976–1994), Dr.
Raney was scientific authority for the world’s first digital
processor for the SeaSat synthetic aperture radar (SAR),
and responsible for the conceptual design of the RADARSAT SAR. He contributed to the designs of NASA’s Venus
radars Pioneer and Magellan, the ERS-1 microwave AMI
instrument of the European Space Agency (ESA), and the
Shuttle Imaging Radar SIR-C. ESA’s CryoSat radar altimeter design is based on his original concept, and he was
the design architect for the Mini-RF hybrid-polarimetric
radars on India’s Chandrayaan-1 and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Dr. Raney holds US and international
patents on various aspects of radar, including the chirp
83
Figure 5. Letters Prize Paper Award recipient R. Keith Raney with
Society President Melba Crawford.
scaling SAR processing algorithm, hybrid-polarimetric
SAR architecture, and on-board processing for the delayDoppler altimeter. He has over 400 major presentations
and significant publications, including “Space-Based
Remote Sensing Radars,” Chapter 18 in The Radar Handbook, 3rd Edition, M. Skolnik, Ed.: McGraw-Hill, 2008.
Dr. Raney served on the GRSS AdCom for 8 years (1984–
1992) and was President for two terms (1988, 1989). He is
a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Electromagnetics
Academy, and an Associate Fellow of CASI. Honors include
the IEEE Millennium Medal 2000, and the IEEE 2007 Dennis J. Picard Medal for radar technologies and applications.
3. IEEE GRSS J-STARS Prize Paper Award
The GRSS established the J-STARS Prize Paper Award to recognize the author(s) who published in the IEEE Journal of
Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote
Sensing during the previous calendar year an exceptional
paper in terms of content and impact on the GRS Society.
When selecting the paper, other factors considered are originality, clarity and timeliness of the paper. IEEE membership is preferable. The Award consists of a Certificate and
an honorarium of $1,500. If the paper has more than one
author, the honorarium shall be shared.
The 2014 J-STARS Prize Paper Award is presented to
Angel Ferrán, Sergio Bernabé, Pablo G. Rodriguez, and
Antonio Plaza with the citation: “For a very significant contribution to the field of endeavor of the IEEE GRS Society in the
paper co-authored by Angel Ferrán, Sergio Bernabé, Pablo G.
Rodríguez, and Antonio Plaza entitled “A Web-Based System for
Classification of Remote Sensing Data,” published in the IEEE
Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and
Remote Sensing, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 1934–1948, 2013.”
Angel Ferrán Frías was born in Mérida (Extremadura,
Spain) in 1975. He received the Technical Engineering
84
Figure 6. J-STARS Prize Paper Award recipients Pablo Rodríguez
(left) and Antonio Plaza with Society President Melba Crawford.
Computer degree from the University of Extremadura
(UEX) in 1999 and the Master of Engineering Computer
degree from Polytechnic of Caceres (UEX) in 2012. He
joined “Proactiva Medio Ambiente” Madrid, Spain in
1999, as analyst-programmer in an international project
about computerized accounting. In 2003 he was in charge
of that project. From 2005 to 2009 he worked as Sap Programmer in Extremadura Health Service. Since 2009 he
worked in the development computer projects department of the Government of Extremadura. He is currently
collaborating on researching projects with the groups
“Gim” and “Hypercomp” at the Polytechnic School of
Caceres. His research interests include Earth Observation, Remote Sensing and Web Programming.
Sergio Bernabé received the M. Sc. degree in 2010
from the University of Extremadura, Caceres, Spain, and
a joint Ph.D. degree in computer engineering between the
University of Iceland and the University of Extremadura,
Spain, in 2014. He has been a visiting researcher with
the Institute for Applied Microelectronics, University of
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain and also, with the
Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Figure 7. J-STARS Prize Paper Award recipients Angel Ferrán and
Sergio Bernabé.
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
December 2014
His research interests comprise hyper/multi-spectral
image analysis and efficient implementations of largescale scientific problems on commodity Beowulf clusters
and graphical processing units (GPUS). Dr. Bernabé has
served as a reviewer for the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing,
the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters and for
the IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video
Technology.
Pablo G. Rodríguez was born in Pontevedra (Spain)
in 1969. He received his B.Sc. degree in Physical Science
with specialization in Electronics and Computing in 1992
(University of Santiago de Compostela). He received his
Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 2000 (University of
Extremadura), working in Digital Mammography. He is an
Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science
at the University of Extremadura since 1997. Currently he is
Subdirector of New Technologies and Research in the Polytechnic School Center in the University of Extremadura.
His research area is related to the development of Pattern
Recognition and Image Analysis techniques, and CBIR
(Content-Based Image Retrieval).
Antonio Plaza (M’05–SM’07) is an Associate Professor
(with accreditation for Full Professor) with the Department of Technology of Computers and Communications,
University of Extremadura, where he is the Head of the
Hyperspectral Computing Laboratory (HyperComp). He
was elevated to IEEE Senior Member status in 2007. He
was the Coordinator of the Hyperspectral Imaging Network, a European project with total funding of 2.8 MEuro.
He authored more than 400 publications, including 119
JCR journal papers (71 in IEEE journals and 75 published
since 2011), 20 book chapters, and over 240 peer-reviewed
conference proceeding papers (94 in IEEE conferences).
He has guest edited seven special issues on JCR journals
(three in IEEE journals). He has been a Chair for the IEEE
Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing:
Evolution in Remote Sensing (2011). He is a recipient of the
Prize Paper Award of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in
Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing in 2013.
He is a recipient of the recognition of Best Reviewers of the
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters (in 2009) and
a recipient of the recognition of Best Reviewers of the IEEE
Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (in 2010),
a journal for which he has served as Associate Editor in
2007–2012. He is also an Associate Editor for IEEE Access,
and was a member of the Editorial Board of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter (2011–2012) and
the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine (2013).
He was also a member of the steering committee of the
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (2012). He served as the Director
of Education Activities for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote
Sensing Society (GRSS) in 2011–2012, and is currently serving as President of the Spanish Chapter of IEEE GRSS (since
November 2012). He is currently serving as the Editor-inDecember 2014
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
Figure 8. Takeo Tadeno (left) and Masanobu Shimada received the
Highest Impact Paper Award from Society President Melba Crawford.
Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote
Sensing journal (since January 2013).
4. IEEE GRSS Highest Impact Paper Award
The GRSS established the GRSS Highest Impact Paper
Award to recognize the author(s) who has published during
the past five years in an IEEE GRSS Journal the scientific
paper that has received the highest number of citations and
impact over the past five years as measured by the Thomson
Reuters Web of Science citation index. A previously selected
paper shall not be eligible for this award in the following
years. The Award consists of a Certificate and an honorarium of $3,000. If the paper has more than one author,
the honorarium shall be shared. The Highest Impact Paper
Award was presented in 2012 for the first time.
The 2014 Highest Paper Award is presented to Masanobu
Shimada, Osamu Isoguchi, Takeo Tadono, and Kazuo
Isono with the citation: “For a very significant contribution
to the field of endeavor of the IEEE GRS Society in the paper
co-authored by Masanobu Shimada, Osamu Isoguchi, Takeo
Tadono, and Kazuo Isono entitled “PALSAR Radiometric and
Geometric Calibration,” published in the IEEE Transactions on
Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 47, No. 12, pp. 3915–3932,
December 2009.”
Masanobu Shimada (M’97–SM’04–F’11)  received
the BS and MS degrees in aeronautical engineering from
Kyoto University in 1977 and 1979, and the PhD degree
in electrical engineering from the University of Tokyo in
1999. He joined the National Space Development Agency
of Japan (NASDA, former Japan Aerospace Exploration
Agency (JAXA)) in 1979. He was a one-year visiting scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1990. From 1995,
he has been assigned duties at Earth Observation Research
Center (EORC), where he is in charge of the JERS-1 Science project (Global rainforest and boreal forest mapping
project and SAR interferometry project). In the late 1990s
he initiated the ALOS science project, which has calibration and validation of the ALOS sensors. He initiated the
Kyoto and Carbon Initiative project for monitoring the
85
SAR. From 1999 to 2002, he was engaged in work to development of the ADEOS-II’s GLI and AMSR, and Aqua’s
AMSR-E. From 2003 to 2009, he was engaged in work for
calibrating and validating of the ALOS’s PALSAR. He is
currently a manager with Solution Service Department of
RESEC. His research interests include measurement for
ground subsidence using interferometric SAR data.
Figure 9. Recipients of the Highest Impact Paper Award Osamu
Isoguchi and Kazuo Isono.
forest and wetland using the time series PALSAR mosaics. His main outputs are the global SAR mosaics showing
the annual deforestation change and large-scale land surface deformations. He has been a Principal Researcher of
JAXA and leading the ALOS and ALOS-2 science projects.
His current research interests are high resolution imaging for spaceborne and airborne SARs (PALSAR-2 and
Pi-SAR-L2), calibration and validation, and SAR applications including polarimetric SAR interferometry. He is a
guest professor of Tokai University from 2006.
Osamu Isoguchi graduated from the Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 1994 and received the PhD degree
in geophysics from Tohoku University, in 2003. His thesis
was dedicated to the time-dependent ocean circulation
by using altimetry. He is currently working as a Deputy
Senior Scientist at Remote Sensing Technology Center
of Japan, on the ocean application of the PALSAR/PALSAR-2 and a conceptual study of JAXA’s altimeter mission
named Coastal and Ocean measurement Mission with
Precise and Innovative Radar Altimeter (COMPIRA). His
research interests are the oceanographic applications of
remote sensing data into coastal studies.
Takeo Tadono (M’04–) received a B.E. degree in 1993,
an M.E. degree in 1995, and a Ph.D. degree in 1998 in
civil engineering from Nagaoka University of Technology,
Niigata Pref., Japan. He is an Associate Senior Researcher
at the Earth Observation Research Center (EORC), Japan
Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and is in charge
of calibrating and validating optical instruments on the
Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS). His research
interests are calibration and validation of high-resolution
optical instruments, and development of algorithm for
retrieving geophysical parameters from remote sensing
data, especially soil moisture and snow parameters using
microwave. He is also a Visiting Professor of the Graduate
School of Information Science and Technology (IST), Hokkaido University, Japan since 2008.
Kazuo Isono received the B.E. degree in 1993, the M.E.
degree in 1995 all from the Department of Electro Photo
Optics, Tokai University, Japan. In 1995, he joined the
Remote Sensing Technology Center (RESTEC) of Japan,
Tokyo. From 1995 to 1998, he was engaged in work to
calibrate JERS-1’s SAR, ERS-1&2’s AIM, and RADARSAT’s
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5. IEEE GRSS Symposium Prize Paper Award
The GRSS established the Symposium Prize Paper Award
to recognize the author(s) who presented at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium
(IGARSS) an exceptional paper in terms of content and
impact on the GRSS. In selecting the paper, other factors
considered are originality, clarity and timeliness of the
paper. The published versions of the papers in the Digest
shall also be evaluated. Prize: Certificate and $1250,
equally divided between the authors.
The 2014 Symposium Prize Paper Award is presented
to Dehong Liu and Petros T. Boufounos with the citation:
“For a very significant contribution to the field of endeavor of the
IEEE GRS Society in the paper co-authored by Dehong Liu and
Petros T. Boufounos entitled “Synthetic Aperture Imaging Using a
Randomly Steered Spotlight,” presented at the 2013 International
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, July 2013 in Melbourne, Australia, IGARSS’13 Proceedings.”
Dehong Liu (M’03–SM’08 ) received the B.S., M.S., and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1997, 1999, and 2002, respectively. From 2003 to 2010, he worked at Duke University,
Durham, NC, first as a post-doctoral Research Associate,
then as a Research Scientist and Senior Research Scientist. Since July 2010, he has been with Mitsubishi Electric
Research Laboratories (MERL), Cambridge, MA, where
he is now a Principal Member Research Staff. His current
research interests include compressive sensing, radar imaging, and array signal processing.
Petros T. Boufounos is a Principal Member of Research Staff at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) and a visiting scholar at the Rice University
Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Dr.
Boufounos completed his undergraduate and graduate
studies at MIT. He received the S.B. degree in Economics
in 2000, the S.B. and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) in 2002, and the
Sc.D. degree in EECS in 2006. Between September 2006
and December 2008, he was a postdoctoral associate with
the Digital Signal Processing Group at Rice University. Dr.
Boufounos joined MERL in January 2009. Dr. Boufounos’
immediate research focus includes signal acquisition and
processing, quantization and data representations, frame
theory, and machine learning applied to signal processing. He is also interested into how signal acquisition
interacts with other fields that use sensing extensively,
such as robotics and mechatronics. Dr. Boufounos is a senior area editor at IEEE Signal Processing Letters. He has
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
December 2014
Figure 10. Symposium Prize Paper Award recipients Dehong
Liu (left) and Petros T. Boufounos with Society President
Melba Crawford.
received the Ernst A. Guillemin Master Thesis Award for
his work on DNA sequencing, the Harold E. Hazen Award
for Teaching Excellence, both from the MIT EECS department, and has been an MIT Presidential Fellow. He is also
a senior member of the IEEE and a member of Sigma Xi,
Eta Kappa Nu, and Phi Beta Kappa.
6. IEEE GRSS Interactive
Session Prize Paper Award
The GRSS established the Interactive Session Prize Paper
Award to recognize the author(s) who posted at the GRSS
Symposium (IGARSS) an exceptional paper in terms of
content and impact on the GRSS. When selecting the paper,
other factors considered are originality, clarity and timeliness of the paper. The published versions of the papers in
the Digest shall also be evaluated. Prize: Certificate and
$1250, equally divided between the authors.
The 2014 Interactive Session Prize Paper Award is presented to Roberto Sabia, Mattia Marconcini, Thomas Katagis, Diego Fernández Prieto, and Marcos Portabella with
the citation: “For an exceptional paper posted in the Interactive Session of the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, IGARSS’13 entitled “On the Assessment of
SMOS Salinity Retrieval by Using Support Vector Regression
(SVR),” co-authored by Roberto Sabia, Mattia Marconcini,
Thomas Katagis, Diego Fernández Prieto, and Marcos Portabella, and presented at the 2013 International Geoscience and
Remote Sensing Symposium, July 2013 in Melbourne, Australia,
IGARSS’13 Proceedings.”
Roberto Sabia received the M.Sc. degree (cum laude)
in Environmental Sciences, curriculum in Oceanography,
from the Università degli Studi di Napoli “Parthenope”,
Naples, Italy, in 2002 and the Ph.D. degree (cum laude)
from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Barcelona, Spain, in 2008, with a Thesis on the salinity retrieval
within the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission. From 2003 to 2008, he has been with the Remote
Sensing Laboratory, UPC, Barcelona, Spain. In 2006, he
December 2014
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
Figure 11. Interactive Session Prize Paper Award recipient Mattia
Marconcini with Society President Melba Crawford.
was a Visiting Ph.D. Student with the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK. From 2008 to 2010, he
was with the SMOS Barcelona Expert Centre (SMOS-BEC),
Institute of Marine Sciences, Barcelona, Spain. From 2010
to 2013, he was a post-doc Research Fellow at the European Space Agency (ESA-ESRIN), Frascati, Italy, acting
also as Technical Officer and Coordinator of the ESA STSE
“Changing Earth Science Network”. Since 2013 he is contractor for Telespazio-Vega UK Ltd. at the European Space
Agency (ESA-ESTEC), Noordwijk, the Netherlands, where
he is acting as data analysis engineer. In 2010, he has led
a European COST Action proposal titled “SMOS Mission
Oceanographic Data Exploitation (SMOS-MODE)”, successfully selected for implementation and funded for the
period 2011–2015. He was the recipient ex-aequo of the
best Ph.D. Award in remote sensing of the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE GRS-S and the best European Ph.D. Award
(5 awardees) in remote sensing of the IEEE GRS-S, both in
2008. He was an invited lecturer on SMOS ocean salinity at
the “ESA EO Summer School on Earth System Monitoring
and Modelling”, Frascati, Italy, 2012, and at the COSPAR
Capacity Building course on “Remote Sensing of the Global
Water Circulation to Climate Change”, Beijing, China,
2012. He has been co-Editor of the SpringerBriefs series
book “Remote Sensing Advances for Earth System Science–
The ESA Changing Earth Science Network: Projects 2009–
2011”, and Topic Editor for the EGU OS/BG inter-journal
special issue on “Earth Observation for Ocean-Atmosphere
Interactions Science”. He served as reviewer for TGRS, JGR
and GRSL journals, among others.
Mattia Marconcini received the “Laurea” (B.S.) and the
“Laurea Specialistica” (M.S.) degrees in telecommunication
engineering (summa cum laude) and the Ph.D. in Communication and Information Technologies from the University
of Trento, Italy, in 2002, 2004 and 2008, respectively. From
2004 to 2008 he worked in the Remote Sensing Laboratory, Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento. From 2008 to 2012 he
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Figure 12. Interactive Session Prize Paper Award recipients
Roberto Sabia, Thomas Katagis, Diego Fernández Prieto and
Marcos Portabella.
worked at the European Space Agency (Frascati, Rome) in
the Department of Earth Observation Science, Applications and Future Technologies. Presently, he is working at
the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). His research activities are in
the area of machine learning, pattern recognition, remote
sensing and Earth observation. In particular, his interests
are related to transfer learning and domain adaptation classification, targeted change detection, targeted classification,
image segmentation problems and urban remote sensing.
He conducts research on these topics within the frameworks of several national and international projects. Mattia
Marconcini was a recipient of the Recognition for the Best
Graduate Student at the University of Trento in 2004 and a
finalist of the Student Prize Paper Competition of the 2007
IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (Barcelona, July 2007). He is currently a Reviewer of
the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing,
the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, the IEEE
Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations
and Remote Sensing, and Pattern Recognition Letters. He
is author of seven book chapters and editor of the special
issue “Earth-Observation for Land-Atmosphere Interaction
Science” of the EGU Biosciences journal.
Thomas Katagis has an MSc degree in Forest Management and Remote Sensing received from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has been a member of the Laboratory of Forest Management and Remote Sensing since
2006 and has been involved as Associate Researcher in
several European and national funded projects. From 2012
until mid-2013 he was employed at ESA/ESRIN under the
STSE (Support to Science Element) component of the Earth
Observation Envelope Programme (EOEP). He has a long
time experience in analysis of time series of satellite data for
LU/LC studies and fire-related research.
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Diego Fernàndez Prieto received the B.S Degree in
Physics from the University of Santiago de Compostela,
Spain, in 1994. In 1994 and 1996, he was with the “Istituto per la Matematica Applicata” (I.M.A) of the National
Research Council (C.N.R), Genoa, Italy. In 1997, he received
the Master Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from
the University of Deusto, Spain and the University of Kent,
United Kingdom. In 2001 he received the Ph.D. in Electronic
Engineering and Computer Science by the Department of
Biophysical and Electronic Engineering of the University
of Genoa, Italy. Since 2001, he is with the Earth Observation (EO) Science, Applications and Future Technologies
Department of the European Space Agency (ESA). At present
he is program manager of the Support To Science Element
(STSE), a scientific programme aimed at providing scientific
support to both the formulation of novel mission concepts
and the innovative exploitation of on-going ESA missions.
He is also project manager of the CEOS TIGER initiative
for water in Africa. His research activity is documented in
more than 100 scientific publications. He is a reviewer for
the journals IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote
Sensing, Pattern Recognition Letters, Hydrogeology, Earth
Science Informatics, Journal of Environmental Management and Remote Sensing of the Environment. He is also
guest editor of several special issues in international peer
review journals.
Marcos Portabella was born on October 14, 1970 in
Spain. He received the B.Sc. degree in Physics in 1994 from
the University of Barcelona, Spain; the M.Sc. in Remote
Sensing in 1995 from the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia, Spain; and the Ph.D. degree in Physics in 2002, from
the University of Barcelona, Spain. He is currently with
the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM – CSIC), Barcelona,
Spain, working on satellite remote sensing. In particular, he
is involved in scatterometry and L-band radiometry.
7. IEEE GRSS Early Career Award
The GRSS Early Career Award is to promote, recognize and
support young scientists and engineers within the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society that have demonstrated
outstanding ability and promise for significant contributions in the future. Selection factors include quality, significance and impact of contributions, papers published
in archival journals - papers presented at conferences
and symposia, patents, demonstration of leadership, and
advancement of profession. Previous award winners are
ineligible. The Award consists of a Certificate and an honorarium of US$1,500.
The 2014 Early Career Award was presented to Feng Xu
with the citation: “In recognition of his outstanding ability and
promise for significant contributions in the future.”
Feng Xu was born in Zhejiang, China in 1982. He
received the B.E. degree in Information Engineering from
Southeast University, Nanjing, China and the Ph.D. degree
in Electronic Engineering from Fudan University, Shanghai,
China, in 2003 and 2008, respectively. His doctoral thesis is
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
December 2014
on the direct and inverse theory for synthetic aperture radar
remote sensing. He is the 2007 recipient of the SUMMA
graduate fellowship in the advanced electromagnetics area.
From February 2008 to March 2010, he was a postdoctoral
fellow with the NOAA Center for Satellite Application and
Research (STAR), Camp Springs, MD, where he mainly
worked on developing the Bayesian quality control algorithm and the near real-time data processing system iQuam
for in situ sea surface temperature (SST) measurements.
(http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/sst/iquam/) He was a
member of the SST group of STAR where his work has contributed to the GEOS-R and JPSS programs. The iQuam data
is now widely used in the SST community including NASA/
JPL, University of Miami, NOAA/NCEP, etc. From March
2010 to March 2012, he was a research scientist at Intelligent Automation Inc. Rockville MD, while partly working
for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD as a
visiting scientist. From March 2012 to June 2013, he was a
senior research scientist at Intelligent Automation Inc. During his time with Intelligent Automation Inc., he took part
in numerous projects funded by NASA/DoD/DHS, some of
which he has served as PI or Co-I. He is mainly responsible
for system design and algorithm development for novel synthetic aperture radar systems. He served as PI or Co-I for four
projects. His research interests include novel mechanism for
radar and imaging system development, novel algorithm
for radar signal processing, electromagnetic modeling for
complex electrical-large target in natural environment. In
June 2013, he returned to Fudan University as a research
professor. He serves as the vice director of the key laboratory
for information science of electromagnetic waves, Ministry
of Education. He is selected into China’s Global Experts
Recruitment Program, the ‘Young 1000 Talent’. His current
research interests include fast electromagnetic modeling for
complicated target and environments, target reconstruction from multi-dimensional high-resolution SAR images,
inverse scattering tomography and SAR remote sensing
applications in earth observation. He is current advising
one doctoral student and one master student. He has firstauthored 11 papers in peer-reviewed journals, co-authored 2 books, and 2 patents,
among many conference papers. Among
other honors, he is awarded the secondclass National Nature Science Award of
China in 2011. He served as reviewers
for IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and
Remote Sensing, Antenna and Propagation, Image Processing, as well as Remote
Sensing of Environment and International
Journal of Remote Sensing.
8. Student Prize Paper Awards
A total of three awards are presented including two GRSS Student Prize Paper Awards
(third and second prize) and the IEEE Mikio
Takagi Student Prize (first prize).
December 2014
Figure 13. Early Career Award recipient Feng Xu with GRSS
Special Awards Chair Mahta Moghaddam (left) and GRSS President
Melba Crawford.
8.1. GRSS Student Prize Paper Awards
The GRSS Student Prize Paper Award was established to
recognize the best student papers presented at the IEEE
International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS). It is believed that early recognition of an
outstanding paper will encourage the student to strive for
greater and continued contributions to the Geoscience
and Remote Sensing profession. The award shall be considered annually.
Ten high-quality papers were preselected by the Student Prize Paper Awards Committee in cooperation with
the Technical Program Committee. At IGARSS 2014 in
Quebec City, the students presented their papers in a special session and a jury, nominated by the GRSS Awards
Co-Chair, evaluated and ranked them for the awards.
The Third Prize is presented to Wei He with the citation: “For the paper “A Noise-Adjusted Iterative Randomized Singular Value Decomposition Method for Hyperspectral
Image Denoising.”
His advisor is Liangpei Zhang from Wuhan University.
Figure 14. IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize recipient Jiangfeng Wu (right) and GRSS
Student Prize Paper Award recipients Xudong Kang and Wei He with Society President
Melba Crawford and GRSS Publications Award Chair Martti Hallikainen (left).
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
89
Wave Estimation of Sub-Surface Hydraulic Fractures at MF Band.”
His advisor is Kamal Sarabandi from the
University of Michigan.
Jiangfeng Wu (S’12) was born in Beijing,
China. He received the B.S. degree in Engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing,
China, in 2010. He joined the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2010 and received his
M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2012.
He is currently working toward the Ph.D.
degree at the Radiation Laboratory, University
Figure 15. IGARSS 2015 organizers Sebastiano Serpico (second from left) and Vito
of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research interPascazio received the best wishes and some supplies for a successful symposium from
ests include dual-polarized antenna design,
IGARSS 2014 organizers Monique Bernier (left) and Josée Lévesque (right).
electrically small antenna design, especially
antenna miniaturization techniques with
artificial electromagnetic materials. His
recent research focus is the development of underground
Wei He is a Ph.D. student in the State Key Laboratory
sub-surface detection method at MF Band.
of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and
Remote Sensing; his advisors are Professor Liangpei Zhang
9. Congratulations to All
and Professor Hongyan Zhang. His research interests
2014 Award Recipients
include image quality improvement, remote sensing image
The GRSS Awards Committee would like to thank the evalprocessing and low rank representation.
uators of IGARSS’14 technical sessions and the Editorial
The Second Student Prize Paper Award is presented to
Boards of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote
Xudong Kang with the citation: “For the paper “Extended
Sensing, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters,
Random Walkers for Hyperspectral Image Classification.”
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth ObserHis advisor is Shutao Li from Hunan University.
vations and Remote Sensing, and the GRSS Student Prize
Xudong Kang (S’13) received the B.Sc degree from
Paper Awards Committee for their valuable inputs to the
Northeast University, Shenyang, China, in 2007. He is
awards process. We would also like to encourage all GRSS
pursuing the Ph.D degree in electrical engineering of
members to actively participate in nominating distinHunan University, Chansha, China. In 2012–2013, he
guished colleagues for the GRSS Major Awards including
was working as a visiting Ph.D. student in electrical engithe Distinguished Achievement Award, the Outstanding
neering at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Service Award and the Education Award. GRSS members
He is engaged in image fusion, image super-resolution,
can nominate papers also for the publication awards.
pansharpening, and hyper-spectral image classification.
Please see the instructions on the GRSS Home Page.
Mr. Kang was the recipient of the Scholarship Award for
Excellent Doctoral Student, the National Graduate Schol10. Best Wishes for a Successful IGARSS 2015
arship granted by Chinese Ministry of Education, the
The General Chair of IGARSS 2014 Monique Bernier and
Presidential Scholarship granted by Hunan University.
TPC Co-Chair Josée Lévesque turned over the responsibility for the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sens8.2. IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize
ing Symposium to IGARSS 2015 General Co-Chairs SebasThe IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize was established to
tiano Serpico and Vito Pascazio, with their best wishes for a
recognize a student who has presented an exceptional
successful symposium in Milan, Italy, July 26–31, 2015. The
paper at the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symsymposium theme is “Remote Sensing: Understanding the
posium (IGARSS).
Earth for a Safer World”. Please visit http://www.igarss2015.
The 2014 IEEE Mikio Takagi Student Prize is preorg for further information.
sented to Jiangfeng Wu with the citation: “For the paper
We hope to see you in Milan at IGARSS 2015!
“Super-Miniaturized Borehole Antenna Design and Radio-
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ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine
December 2014