ORGANIZERS and PRESENTERS
A NOTE FROM THE ORGANIZERS
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.
The process of globalization requires a specific role of teachers to adapt themselves for international opportunities, rearranging their skills, achievements, and previous experiences.
We try our best to create professionally healthy and relaxed atmosphere during the SPLITRS events, where all participants feel comfortable and equally treated regardless of their gender, orientation, religion or race.
Young people are our future and our future starts now.
ORGANIZERS
Dr. Vitezslav Moudry
Czech University of Life Sciences, Czech Republic
Dr. Petra Simova
Czech University of Life Sciences, Czech Republic
Dr. Anita Simic Milas
Bowling Green State University, USA
Dr. Nicolas Younan
Mississippi State University, USA
Dr. Ivan Balenovic
Croatian Forest Research Institute, Croatia
Dr. Konstantinos Ntouros
NubiGroup, Greece
Dr. Neha Hunka
Gisat, Czech Republic
PRESENTERS
Dr. JAN KROPACEK
Dr. JAN KROPACEK (Kropáček) is a remote sensing specialist at the Department of Geoinformatics and Urban planning, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, CULS, Prague. His research focus is on natural hazards and deglaciation in the high mountain environment. He received his PhD from the Charles University in Prague in 2008. During his postdoc period which he spent at the Universities of Tuebingen and Dresden he was involved in a number of research projects on the Tibetan Plateau and in the Ethiopian Highlands dealing with monitoring of cryosphere and natural hazards. Four years he was with the Institute of Environment and Sustainability, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, Ispra Italy. As a member of the radar group of Dr. Frank de Grandi he took part in the assembling and evaluation of continental scale SAR mosaics of Africa and Asia. At the CULS he is also involved in ecology research trying to characterize habitats by means of remote sensing and terrain analysis. He teaches Remote Sensing course to graduate students.
Dr. 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-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”.
Dr. 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.
DR. PETRA SIMOVA
Dr. PETRA SIMOVA is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, the Czech Life Sciences University Prague. She established the Department of Applied Geoinformatics and Spatial Planning in 2008, and the Spatial Science in Ecology and Environment (SSEE) Research Group in 2017. Before her academic career, she worked for the Czech Nature Conservation Authority. Her research covers a wide area of spatial science from GIS and remote sensing to landscape ecology as well as ecology of animals. Her strong background in ecology and remote sensing allows Dr. Simova to easily communicate between ecologists and remote sensing/GIS experts. This interdisciplinary approach that Dr. Simova developed as a PhD student and as an Assistant Professor makes her a strong researcher in several fields.
Dr. JEAN-PHILIPPE GASTELLU-ETCHEGORRY
Dr. JEAN-PHILIPPE GASTELLU-ETCHEGORRY received an Engineer degree (ENSEEIHT) in 1978, in the field of physics and electricity. He obtained an aggregation degree (higher competition degree in education, in France) in the field of physics (Paris VI University) in 1981. He got a PhD degree in solar physics in 1983 at Paul Sabatier University. After being posted a few years in the Remote Sensing Center of Gadjah Mada University (Indonesia) and in Bangkok (Thailand), he obtained a PhD degree in remote sensing and digital image processing, in 1989 (Paul Sabatier University: PSU). Then, in 1990, he became a permanent staff of PSU. He conducted his research in the Centre d’Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements, where he acted as a leader of the Remote Sensing group since 1992. In 1995, he joined the CESBIO (http://www.cesbio.ups-tlse.fr/index_us.htm), where he was the leader of the modeling team for 15 years. In 1997, he became full professor at PSU. Since 2002, he heads a Remote Sensing Society of 3000 members, in collaboration with AUF (Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie:http://www.reseautd.auf.org/). Since 2007, he is deputy director of CESBIO and President of the Scientific Council of IUT (a major faculty of PSU). His research work is focused on radiative transfer modeling with agriculture, forestry and urban applications. Since, 1992, he heads a team that develops the DART model (http://www.cesbio.ups-tlse.fr/dart/) that simulates the radiative budget and also satellite, airborne and in-situ spectroradiometer and LIDAR acquisitions of natural and urban landscapes. DART was patented in 2003. It is now being extended to model fluorescence and polarization.
UAV/UAS/DRONE group
Jan (Honza) Komarek, David Moravec and Katerina Gdulova are lecturers at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences, CULS, in Prague and members of the Spatial Science in Ecology and Environment (SSEE) Research Group. Their expertise and experience is in both GIS and remote sensing, and UAS related research in particular.
Honza Komarek is a certified UAS pilot and a head of the UAS pilots group in the department. He leads Remote sensing with UAS course for master degree students. His research interests are the development of algorithms for UAS data processing and UAS/satellite data quality in environmental modelling. He is currently involved in the project related to mapping 3D physiographic diversity of post-mining sites using LiDAR and UAS borne multispectral data.
Katerina Gdulova is the leading lecturer of the GIS and advanced courses for graduate students with the focus on data management and spatial field mapping. She is the lead of the SSEE research group for field work, and she is an expert for software tools related to GNSS and tablets with on-line/of-line mapping software.
David Moravec is a remote sensing lecturer. He uses satellite remote sensing in various environmental studies from thermal aspects of agriculture to land abandonment in Mediterranean mountains. In his most recent project, he collaborates with the Department of Science on Università Degli Studi Roma Tre where he is involved in the research related to the monitoring of costal dune ecosystems using UAS.
DR. NEHA JOSHI
Dr. NEHA JOSHI holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen and an MSc. From the University of Edinburgh. She has over 4 years of experience as a scientific researcher and a remote sensing expert, specialized in the use of radar-based Earth Observation for land and forest applications. She possesses strong practical expertise in data analysis and geo-statistics, GIS and programming. She has previously worked on projects involving the implementation of deforestation and agricultural monitoring systems, flood hazard and risk assessments, the design of spatial sampling tools for unbiased data collection, statistical accuracy assessment and validation assessments. She has also carried out numerous field campaigns for data collection globally.
DR. VITEZSLAV (VITEK) MOUDRY
Dr. VITEZSLAV MOUDRY is GIS specialist at the Department of Applied Geoinformatics and Spatial planning, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, CULS, Prague. His research interests include various applications of GIS and remote sensing data in ecology and biogeography, including spatial data quality. He received his PhD in Applied and Landscape Ecology from the Czech University of Life Sciences in 2012. He spent one year at the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada as a member of the Marine Geomatics Research Lab of prof. Rodolphe Devillers. He currently works on a project looking at fusion of LiDAR and UAV borne multispectral data to assess physiographic diversity of post-mining sites.