ORGANIZERS & PRESENTERS
A NOTE FROM THE ORGANIZERS
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The educational needs and interest of society in technological fields are rapidly changing. Basic higher education is commonly not sufficient to meet educational needs in the field of remote sensing. The SPatial LITeracy Remote Sensing (SPLITRS) Summer School is an international and interactive event between universities, research institutions and private firms that considers state-of-the-art remote sensing technology, sophisticated and comprehensive modeling approaches, data analysis, and sophisticated software capabilities – all of which is incorporated in the framework of building a well-designed strategy to protect natural resources and public well-being.
ORGANIZERS
Dr. Claudia Notarnicola, Italy
Ms. Paola Winkler, Italy
Dr. Anita Simic Milas, USA
Dr. Nicolas Younan, USA
Dr. Konstantinos Ntouros, Greece
Dr. Ivan Balenovic, Croatia
Dr. Mateo Gasparovic, Croatia
Mr. Luka Jurjevic, Croatia
PRESENTERS & ORGANIZERS
CLAUDIA NOTARNICOLA
Dr. Claudia Notarnicola received the Degree in Physics, summa cum laude, and the PhD in Physics from the University of Bari (Italy) in 1995 and 2002 respectively. She is presently the vice-head of the Eurac Research-Institute of Applied Remote Sensing (Bolzano, Italy). Within the same institute she is leader of a group dealing with remote sensing applications in SAR and optical domain for soil and vegetation monitoring as well as integration of remotely sensed observations with models and ground measurements. Her main research interest includes biophysical parameters (soil moisture, vegetation, snow) retrieval by using optical images and SAR images, optical and SAR data processing, data fusion and electromagnetic models. She conducts research on these topics within the frameworks of several national and international projects. Among the others, she is involved in the Cassini-Huygens Project for the application of inversion procedure to the estimation of Titan surface parameters. She is a referee for IEEE and other international journals and since 2006, she serves as Conference Chairs for SPIE International Conference on “SAR Image Analysis, Modeling and Techniques”.
ALEXANDER JACOB
Alexander Jacob coordinates the research group Advanced Computing for Earth Observation, within the Institute for Earth Observation. He holds a licentiate degree in geoinformatics and is an experienced researcher and software developer in the field of Earth Observation. He is an active project manager for e.g. Eurac Research’s contribution for the H2020 openEO project and the ESA SEOM SInCohMap (Sentinel-1 Interferometric Coherence for Land Cover and Vegetation Mapping) project as well as several internal development projects such as the Sentinel Alpine Observatory (SAO). At the Institute for Earth Observation, he is responsible for Big Data Science and Data Management and Processing for Earth Observation. He has developed and implemented various processing chains, covering mainly Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and MODIS derived products. He has gathered extensive experience in teaching courses at the Royal Institute of Technology and the Karlstad University in Sweden on Photogrammetry, Advanced Remote Sensing and Real Estate Information Technology, Spatial Databases, GIS Architecture and Algorithms.
RUTH SONNENSCHEIN
Dr. Ruth Sonnenschein acquired her PhD in Land Change Science and Remote Sensing at the Geography Institute of the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany focusing on the analysis of Landsat-based time series to assess vegetation and fire patterns in Mediterranean rangelands. She was at the Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing in Ecology, Oregon, USA and the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy for research stays and acquired further work experiences at the Technical University in Berlin, Germany, in the field of habitat mapping based on high-resolution satellite imagery.
She joined the EURAC-Institute for Earth Observation (Bolzano, Italy) in 2012 and her research focus on the mapping and monitoring of alpine ecosystems since then. On the one hand, this encompass methodological studies on how to adapt existing methods within the field of optical Earth Observation to mountainous areas. On the other hand, she analyses ecosystem changes in the alpine space to understand drivers and impacts but also evaluates how biodiversity research can profit from Earth Observation.
CARLO MARIN
Carlo Marin received the M.Sc. in telecommunication engineering and the Ph.D. degree in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) from the University of Trento, Italy in 2011 and 2015, respectively. He is currently a senior researcher at the institute for Earth observation of eurac research, Italy where is working in the framework of several national and international projects. His research interests are related to the monitoring and understanding of the Alpine cryosphere exploiting multi-temporal and multi-source remote sensing data.
ABRAHAM MEJIA-AGUILAR
Abraham Mejia-Aguilar received his BSc degree in electronic engineering from National Polytechnic Institute (ESIME-IPN), Mexico in January 2000; he received his MSc degree in electrical engineering from National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in August 2004, collaborating at the same time as researcher at Mexican Petroleum Institute (IMP) developing and prototyping geophysical instrumentation. He received the MSc and PhD in electronic instrumentation applied on water quality methods from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya in 2007 and 2010, respectively. Afterwards he worked in Aerospace industry (FACC-AG) for testing new materials and components. Currently, he collaborates as researcher in European Academy of Bolzano (EURAC) for the development of multi-scale monitoring approaches and non-destructive methods for environmental parameters. His current research interests are sensors and methods integration for in-situ, proximal and remote sensing scales.
MONICA PEPE
Dr. Pepe received the Master degree in geology and the Ph.D. degree in physical geography from the University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy. She has around 25 years experience in remote sensing research and applications development, working for the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment-National Research Council (IREA-CNR), Milano, Italy, since 1994. Her research activities range from the calibration of radiometric data to pattern recognition tasks. Her focus regards the use of optical remote sensing for environmental studies. She has worked on automatic classification methods of hyperspectral, multispectral, and multisource data for thematic mapping, on a wide range of applications (land use/land cover, water quality, snow and ice, and geolithology) and making use mainly of approximate reasoning and domain knowledge representation
MARTIN ISENBURG
Dr. Martin Isenburg received his MSc in 1999 from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and his PhD in 2004 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA – both in Computer Science. Currently, he is an independent scientist, lecturer, and research consultant. Dr. Isenburg has created a popular suite of LiDAR processing software modules called LAStools that is the flagship product of rapidlasso GmbH, the company he founded in 2012. The LAStools software suite has deep market penetration and is heavily used in industry, government agencies, research labs, and educational institutions. These highly efficient LiDAR processing tools are known for their high productivity. They combine robust algorithms with efficient I/O and clever memory management to achieve high throughput for data sets containing billions of points. See http://rapidlasso.com for more information.
RIBANA ROSCHER
Dr. Ribana Roscher received her Diploma and PhD in Geodesy from the University of Bonn, Germany in 2008 and 2012, respectively. During 2012 and 2015 she was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Julius Kühn-Insitut (Institute for Grapevine Breeding) in Siebeldingen, Humboldt Innovation in Berlin and Freie Universität Berlin. In 2015 she was a Visiting Researcher at The Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences, Toronto, Canada. Since 2015 she is a Junior Professor for Remote Sensing at the University of Bonn. In her research, she aims at the development of pattern recognition methods, which are particularly designed for the analysis of large scale remote sensing data. She specifically focusses on efficient classification methods, techniques for sophisticated feature learning and the integration of prior knowledge such as spatial and temporal information. A central idea in her research is to develop methods which ensure a high discrimination power and at the same time model the underlying structure of the data, since such methods are a prerequisite for the automatic analysis of Earth observation data.
MATTIA CALLEGARI
Dr. Mattia Callegari received both the bachelor and master degrees in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Trento, in 2010 and 2012 respectively. His Master thesis regarded snow-pack parameters retrieval in Alpine areas from Synthetic Aperture Radar and remote sensed optical data. In 2015 he received the Ph.D. degree on Alpine cryosphere dynamics monitoring using remote sensing techniques and ground-based data at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Pavia. Since 2016, he is a researcher at EURAC-Institute for Earth Observation (Bolzano, Italy). His main fields of expertise are: alpine cryosphere monitoring with satellite data; image processing and classification; machine learning; SAR data processing including SAR polarimetry and interferometry. As a researcher at EURAC-Institute for Earth Observation he collaborated in many national and international projects.
GIOVANNI CUOZZO
Giovanni Cuozzo received his M.Sc. in telecommunication engineering (summa cum laude) from the University Federico II in Naples, Italy and his Ph.D. degree in Electric Engineering and Information Technology from the University of Cassino, Italy. From 2006 to 2010 he was a researcher at the Mediterranean Agency for Remote Sensing and Environmental Control (MARSec) in Benevento. Since 2010 he is senior researcher at EURAC Institute for Earth Observation in Bolzano. His main research interests include SAR and optical data processing and analysis with applications to SAR interferometry and retrieval of biophysical parameters like soil moisture and snow. He is also principal operator of the Eurac Ground Segment.
CHRISTIAN KOFLER
Christian Kofler is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the Free University of Bozen, hosted by Eurac’s Institute for Earth Observation. His research interests are mainly related to mass movements, and within his PhD on mass movements in periglacial terrain. He graduated with the highest mark in Environmental and Forestry Science at the Universities of Innsbruck (Austria) and Bozen (Italy) with a MSc thesis on rockslide dam outburst flood scenarios. Before starting his PhD, he was already involved in the Natural Hazards working group of Eurac Research, where he gained experience in the field of landslide monitoring.
STEFAN STEGER
Dr. Stefan Steger is a senior researcher at the Institute for Earth Observation (Eurac) since 2017. He has a 6-years’ experience in the field of natural hazards, with a particular focus on modelling landslide phenomena. His current research mainly focuses on mass movements and deals with geomorphological mapping, detection and monitoring using ground-based and remote sensing observations as well as landslide susceptibility modelling using statistical and machine learning techniques. He graduated with the highest mark at the Institute of Geography and Regional Research at the University of Vienna (Austria) in 2012 with a thesis about the spatial analysis of landslide phenomena using statistical methods. In 2017, he obtained his PhD (graduate with distinction) in Geography from the University of Vienna (Austria). His dissertation addressed potential pitfalls in the data-driven spatial prediction of landslide prone terrain at regional scale.
LOREDANA POMPILIO
Loredana Pompilio received the Master degree in earth sciences from the University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, in 2001 and the Ph.D. degree in earth sciences from the University of Parma, Parma, Italy.
From 2005 to 2008, she studied the principles and applications of optic and infrared spectroscopy as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Parma, Parma, Italy. In 2009, she worked as a Project Manager in building innovative business based on spectroscopic applications, with a grant received from theSPINNER Consortium, Bologna, Italy. In 2010, she worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in geological and environmental remote sensing research at the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment-National Research Council (IREA-CNR), Milano, Italy. Since 2011, she has a research position with the D’Annunzio University, Chieti, Italy. Her research interests include optical and infrared spectroscopy, remote sensing applications, and analytical software development.