IEEE OES Ocean Decade Initiative
The United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 (referred to as ‘the Ocean Decade’) , is a once in a lifetime opportunity for ocean actors across the world to come together to generate knowledge and foster the partnerships needed to support a well-functioning, productive, resilient, sustainable and inspiring ocean. The Ocean is our largest and most important ecosystem for human survival on Earth, and it requires a concerted effort from humanity to change our relationship with the ocean. The Ocean Decade Initiative (ODI) aims to boost OES’s participation in this global movement, and interface its actions and activities with the Decade.
About the Ocean Decade Initiative
Our Vision is that engineering joins science in a partnership that supports the goals of the Ocean Decade.
Our Mission is to make OES a resource for engineering expertise and the place and learn about technological advancements that lead to enhanced capability for “the Science we need for the Ocean we want”.
The Initiative project will boot-strap the participation of OES and our members in the Ocean Decade and promote recognition of members and their activities that align with the goals of the Ocean Decade.
It will increase awareness of the Ocean Decade through highlighting Ocean Decade goals at OES events, creating incentives for members and OES communities to become aware and make others aware of the Ocean Decade, and recognizing activities of OES members that support the Ocean Decade goals.
Our Activities
Our members and communities will be encouraged to take actions that will increase Ocean Decade awareness and support the global ocean science and technology communities in achieving the Ocean Decade and Sustainable Development Goals. These include, but are not limited to:
- Support the Young Professionals of OES to engage with other Early Career Ocean Professional groups working for the Ocean Decade worldwide
- Support engineering in the Ocean Decade in collaboration with scientists
- Increase community awareness in coastal communities and society at large, of the main themes of Ocean Decade through IEEE OES volunteers.
- Facilitate the expansion of ICT into ocean observations, data assimilation, modelling etc. through workshops, and special events.
- Increase pre-university awareness of the themes of the Ocean Decade (such as ocean protection, renewable ocean energy, coral reef protection, and more) through things like high-school competitions relevant to Ocean Decade actions.
- Promote the engagement of developing countries in Ocean Decade activities.
- Take up any other activities pertinent to Ocean Decade initiatives.
Beacon articles on the initiative: 
- Ocean Decade initiative – into the second year, and gathering steam
- A Decade is Not Only a Matter of Time and Space.
- Ocean Decade Initiative at Sections Congress 2023 in Ottawa
- OES Contributions to the UN Ocean Decade Conference
- OCEANS 2024 Singapore Ocean Decade initiative Panel: “Shifting Mindsets, Overcoming Barriers”
Recent Activities
- Ocean Decade Ambassador program: Ambassadors will be expected to propose, and be responsible for, one or more activities within the scope of the Decade. The ODI will fund the activity and support the Ambassador to represent and promote the Ocean Decade in OES activities. See the call for Ocean Decade Ambassadors 2023 below.
- Earthzine/Beacon coverage of Ocean Decade event : Funding will be provided to Student Branch chapters whose members report on Ocean Decade-themed events and activities via Earthzine and Beacon articles. Deadline: 15 November 2024. More details here.
- Ocean Decade Chapter and SBC funding : OES Chapters will be provided funding upto $2000, and student branch chapters upto $1000, for organizing Ocean Decade-themed events. Deadline for the 1st call for proposals for Ocean Decade activity funds 2024 will be 30 June 2024. Later submissions will be considered on a rolling basis, but earlier submission is encouraged in order to allot funds on time. All the activities must be completed by 31 Dec 2024. More details here.
- Design the Future Ocean workshops : Workshops and panel discussions targeting specific themes of the Decade, organized at OES conferences and symposia possibly connected across various events. An example of
Represent OES at Ocean Decade working groups and events worldwide: Including the UN Ocean Conference 2022, Lisbon and UN Ocean Decade conference, Barcelona 2024. OES represented IEEE at these conferences. Read our statement at the conference here. Some sessions at the UN Ocean conference were covered on Earthzine. OES also participates in the Ocean Best practices group, Coastpredict, ECOPs-Asia, and the Technology and Innovation working group.- Young Professional activities: Our YPs have long been involved with activities that contribute to ocean awareness and education including student outreach activities around the world, such as the Singapore AUV Challenge and the European Robotics League. YPs are also working with Ocean Decade ECOPs to bring the voice of the youth to the movement. One such event was the recently held Virtual ECOPs Day on 1st-2nd June. We highlighted our YPs involvement with Earthzine, SAUVC, ERL, and in helping organize workshops and symposia. Watch the video we presented here.
- Early-career ocean professionals program collaboration: OES Tech committees deliver Engineering-themed webinars in coordination with ECOP program: https://www.ecopdecade.org/webinars . We also participated in their outreach program “ECOP conversations” (eg. Hari Vishnu). One of our committee members, Hari Vishnu, is on the advisory board of the ECOP programme.
- Expert plenary talks: will be organized at conferences, workshops and symposia
- Planet Positive 2030 campaign by IEEE. Find out more here.
Call for Ocean Decade Ambassadors 2023 (now closed)
OES seeks to designate enthusiastic volunteers as Ocean Decade Ambassadors to represent and promote the Ocean Decade in OES activities. Ocean Decade Ambassadors can continue to work within one of their existing networks but would add activities that are aligned with the Ocean Decade goals. See the full call for Ocean Decade Ambassadors 2023 here. Application form was available here (now closed). The first call for applications closed on Feb 21, 2023, and ambassadors are undertaking their proposed activities. The list of Ambassadors and their designated activities will be listed here shortly.
Expected outcomes of Ocean Decade initiative
Through this initiative, we expect,
- a majority of our membership to be aware of the Ocean Decade
- a measurable increase of awareness in conference attendees and exhibitors
- a significant number of presentations at our workshops and symposia that specifically address technology challenges posed by the Ocean Decade.
Elements of the initiative will be integrated into the normal operations of various parts of the society, including chapters, technology committees, workshops, symposia and the OCEANS conference.
The current list of committee members are
- Laura Meyer
- Hari Vishnu
- M. A. Atmanand
- Jay Pearlman
- Venugopalan Pallayil
- Christopher Whitt
- Brandy Armstrong
- Malcolm Heron
- Francesco Maurelli
- Fillipo Campagnaro
- Giulia de Masi
- Karl von Ellenrieder
Contact us: oceandecade.oes@gmail.com
Interested to volunteer for the Ocean Decade initiative activities? Sign up at this form. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are interested!
OES Ocean Decade-endorsed Activities:
- OCEANS 2024 Halifax
- OCEANS 2024 Singapore
- Singapore AUV Challenge 2024 (Beacon report)
- OCEANS 2022 Hampton Roads (Beacon report here)
- AUV Symposium 2022, Singapore. A panel discussion on the role of marine robotics in the Ocean Decade was organized (Beacon report).
- OCEANS 2022 Chennai (Beacon report).
More info on UN Decade: www.oceandecade.org
The Ocean Decade was proclaimed by the 72nd Session of UN General Assembly (UNGA) on the 5th of December 2017. The Decade is being coordinated by a small team (referred to as the Decade Coordination Unit – DCU) within the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC-UNESO) in an effort to promote transformational, large-scale change to advance urgent action on moving from the ‘ocean we have’ to the ‘ocean we want’.
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.