Shyam Madhusudhana, VP for Technical Activities
OES’ Technology Committees (TCs) are at the very foundation of the Society, and feed into many aspects of OES. OES’ constitution states the Society’s Purpose as: The Society shall promote close cooperation and exchange of technical information among its members through publications and meetings. The Society shall foster the technical and professional growth of its members. To this end, TCs are established to further that purpose, with a goal to serve members in relevant and emerging thematic areas. Following the recent disestablishment of a TC due to lack of perceived interest among the membership, we now have a slate of 10 TCs. Plans are afoot to broaden the scope of our TCs to improve their relevance to current trends in the field.
December 2022 was the end of the terms of the previous executives of TCs. It was quite a challenge to seek and identify nominees to serve as the new Chairs and co-Chairs to the TCs. Especially given that the VPTA term was also up at the same time. With assistance from Venugopalan Pallayil, the former VPTA, we had proposed a slate of nominees to the AdCom for approval. The new executives of the TCs were voted in (see table below) during March 2023, and they will serve for a term of 2 years (2023–24).
Following appointments, the TC Chairs and co-Chairs had their first biannual meeting for the year, virtually, on 12 April. The meeting, organized and chaired by our TC Coordinator
M. A. Atmanand, was well attended. With only three unable to attend, all TCs had at least one representative in attendance. The energy and enthusiasm to engage members was notable. Consequently, you will find articles/reports by some of the TCs in this edition of Beacon. The executives were apprised of the plans to restructure our TCs, and it received positive responses, echoing support. Among the other topics discussed at the meeting, a concern was raised about the apparent absence of linkage between the TCs and the session topics at OCEANS conferences. The same has now been discussed with the VP OCEANS and will be followed up with action in the near future.
The first of the Chapter Chairs meetings of the year was held, virtually, on March 14th. Owing to scheduling conflicts, I was unable to attend the same. The meeting, split into two sessions to facilitate wider participation from our global spread of Chapters, was ably organized by the Chapters Coordinator, Gerardo (Gerry) Acosta, and Amy Deeb. Among other things, the attendees were informed/reminded of the available sources of funding (MGA rebate; OES projects and surplus distribution under the condition of at least two technical meetings organized, reported in vTools events and the Beacon during the calendar year; and the UN Ocean Decade Initiative) to support the conducting of activities. Besides the meeting, Amy, with assistance from Gerry, had set up a system to send monthly emails to Chapter Chairs. It has been a successful venture, and their efforts on this front are very much appreciated.
I wish to remind the TC Chairs to identify and propose new DLs under the call for 2024-26, which closes on 31 July, 2023. Please see the relevant “call” article in this edition of Beacon. The involvement of TC Chairs in identifying, endorsing, and proposing new candidates is key to the success of this programme. I request their active participation in this process. The candidates for DLs should be able to deliver talks to a broader audience of our community and hence their lectures should be prepared to be not too technical. Areas of emerging technologies and techniques should be given preference when selecting the topics.
Technology Committee | Chair and co-Chair(s) |
Autonomous Maritime Systems | Bharath Kalyan
William Kirkwood |
Current, Wave, Turbulence Measurement and Applications | Weimin Huang |
Data Analytics, Integration and Modeling | Gopu Potty
Ananya Sen Gupta |
Ocean Observation Systems and Environmental Sustainability | René Garello
R. Venkatesan |
Ocean Remote Sensing | Ferdinando Nunziata
Paolo de Matthaeis |
Ocean Sustainable Energy Systems | William Wilson |
Polar Oceans | Andreas Marouchos
Xiong (Bill) Yu |
Subsea Optics and Vision | Haiyong Zheng
John Watson |
Underwater Acoustics | Suleman Mazhar
Mehdi Rahmati Xuebo Zhang |
Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning | Milica Stojanovic
Mandar Chitre |