Hari Vishnu, Amy Deeb, Laura Meyer, M. A. Atmanand, with inputs from Ocean Decade initiative committee
As the UN Decade of Ocean sciences for sustainable development 2021-2030 (http://oceandecade.org/ – Ocean Decade, or “Decade” for short) enters into its third year, it is generating increasing enthusiasm in the ocean science and engineering communities. To bridge the society with this movement, and to spread the message wider, IEEE OES has formed the Ocean Decade Initiative Committee (ODIC). The initiative aims to spread awareness on the Ocean Decade goals to IEEE members, and to encourage members to contribute to these goals. If you want to get involved in any of the activities being undertaken by the committee or propose a new idea, the ODIC is always open to new volunteers please email us at oceandecade.oes@gmail.com.
There are abundant opportunities for raising awareness of the Decade in our OES communities through our various arms – the chapters, student branch chapters, technology committees, conferences, workshops and symposia, and through individual members themselves. The Decade is also an opportunity to connect with other IEEE Societies and bodies that have a common interest in the goals of the Decade, and our communities can engage in the goals by partnering with science events and organizations to share IEEE members’ expertise.
The initiative made some good progress in 2022. Firstly, let us point you to the initiative website that was launched at https://ieeeoes.org/oceandecade/. It contains updated information on our aims, mission, past activities, and upcoming ones. Check it out to keep abreast of the initiative activities, and to explore opportunities that you can tap into to participate in the Decade via OES.
You may know that several OES events in 2022 were already endorsed by the Ocean Decade – this includes OCEANS Chennai 2022, OCEANS Hampton Roads, AUV Symposium 2022 and the Singapore AUV Challenge (SAUVC). This is another good way to participate in the Decade, and use the momentum provided by this worldwide movement to improve the visibility of our exciting efforts.
Another important step we undertook in 2022 was attending the UN Ocean Conference. Three of our volunteers had the honor of representing IEEE, the largest association of technical professionals in the world, at this conference. This was an important event to bridge with other like-minded societies and to form connections that would be important in achieving our goals. You can read more about it in another article in this Beacon issue. One of the recent outcomes of this visit was that a contact we established at the conference, Ocean Visions, got involved in OCEANS Hampton Roads. They organized a special session on Carbon Dioxide removal in an outreach effort to the engineering sector, which was very engaging and lively. More such exciting technical sessions are envisaged as part of the ODIC’s “Design the Future Ocean” objective. We also had significant engagement with the community looking into marine data interoperability, and we believe this is a key area we can get involved in, along with ocean observation, best practices and standards (see https://earthzine.org/bringing-different-stakeholders-together-for-the-mammoth-problem-opportunity-of-marine-data-interoperability-panel-at-un-ocean-conference-lisbon/). Bringing in expertise and inputs from IEEE Standards on this would be a great opportunity for OES to play an important part in the problem of how to effectively handle data generated during the Decade.
The Ocean-based Carbon-dioxide removal panel at OCEANS Hampton Roads
Further, in 2022 we launched the chapter activity initiative, and the Earthzine funding initiative. Chapters and Student Branch Chapters (SBCs) are the main vehicles of OES’s activities at the regional level, and it is important for them to lead as one of the implementers of OES’s Decade plans and bridge it with regional Decade-oriented efforts. These are also avenues to recruit volunteers. Over the duration of the initiative, Chapters/SBCs are encouraged to organize local events that relate to any of the themes of the Decade. OES is especially interested in activities that bring together ocean scientists with engineers, technologists and industry. These could be linked to any of the Decade Outcomes and Challenges, or existing Decade programmes. In the latter half of 2022, the initiative funded 6 chapters/SBCs for organizing Ocean Decade related events/activities – these included the Escuela Tecnológica Instituto Técnico Central student branch, Colombia, the Chapter and student chapter in Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, Canadian Atlantic Section OES Chapter, Japan Chapter and Singapore chapter. You should see some, if not all, these activities reported in Beacon in this issue or coming issues.
The chapter activity funding initiative has been announced for 2023 as well. The details of the call are available on the ODIC website (ieeeoes.org/oceandecade). We encourage all chapters and student branch chapters to use this funding opportunity to develop exciting programmes and conduct events relevant to the Decade. Proposals must be submitted by April 1.
Science communication is an important direction for achieving the ocean awareness desired as one of the Decade outcomes. The OES Sci-comm magazine Earthzine, as well as Beacon, are important vehicles for this. An Earthzine theme for this was started in 2021, and invites articles on this theme to be published. As part of the Ocean Decade initiative, a funding initiative was announced in late-2022 for student reporters to write up articles covering Decade themed events and initiatives, or OES activities geared towards the Decade. For every article contributed by a student, the Ocean Decade Initiative funded the respective chapter. At OCEANS Hampton roads, student reporters signed up to cover many such events, and one of these articles has already been published (see https://earthzine.org/offshore-wind-in-the-us-the-take-at-oceans-2022-hampton-roads/ ). More are expected to follow. The Earthzine funding initiative for Chapters/SBC student reporters continues into 2023, so if any of you out there would like to cover Ocean Decade events for Earthzine, and want to know details of how to contribute, please get in touch with the Earthzine Chief editor Hari Vishnu at earthzineeditor@ieee.org .
Another important activity we are introducing this year is the Ocean Decade Ambassador Program. As the name implies, an Ambassador is responsible for representing and supporting an organization’s goals (in this case the Decade’s goals) in another organization. We envision this program as a way to support volunteers who wish to be such an Ambassador either from the Ocean Decade to communities within OES and IEEE, or from within OES and IEEE to the Decade. This year, we are starting with identifying people who are already embedded in OES networks (e.g., chapter chairs, members, conference or workshop organizing committee volunteers, etc.), who are familiar with and interested in the Decade, and want to actively support and represent the Decade’s goal in their (OES) network. Ambassadors will define a program of activities for the year that will best align with this purpose, and OES will provide mentorship, funding, and a supportive community to accelerate their work. The 2023 call for IEEE OES Ocean Decade Ambassadors closed on February 21 and the selected Ambassadors will soon be announced. Please visit the Ocean Decade website for more information.
Apart from this, ODIC is involved in Planet Positive 2030, an initiative supported by the IEEE Standards Association that brings together a global, open community of experts to chart a path for all people to achieve a flourishing future for 2030 and beyond. Planet positive is compiling a book towards this end, divided into several chapters contributed by different groups. We are contributing to a chapter on Ocean & Coasts. With a committee of several high-level experts, the most important topics regarding climate change related issues in the Ocean are being touched upon.
For the first time, the OES ODIC had its own booth at the OCEANS Conference in Hampton Roads in September 2022. This was a great opportunity to network and make the initiative more visible, as well as spread awareness on the Decade. We were very delighted to be featured by the IOC (Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission), UNESCO, in their social media.
For 2023, one of our aims is to get more visibility and to broaden our network. Therefore, our committee members will try to attend conferences focusing on different groups, such as policy-making, industry, law, and basic sciences, to bring the importance of engineering to the Decade. Volunteers are planning on going to the World Ocean Summit in Lisbon, OTC in Houston, and OCEANS in Limerick and Gulf Coast.
As always, we are open to volunteers to help achieve our aims. Our Young Professionals have been involved with existing OES activities that already contribute to ocean awareness and education by participating in various student outreach activities around the world, such as SAUVC and the European Robotics League. We have been further synchronizing our efforts with the Decade endorsed Early Career Ocean Professional (ECOP) programme (ecopdecade.org/), and OES is one of its official partners. We hope to support the ECOP programme by bringing our expertise in oceanic engineering to the table – for example, technical webinars in topic areas of our interest (e.g. acoustics, robotics etc.), and interested OES YPs are welcome to come forward to deliver these. The ECOP program also gave good visibility to some of our Decade endorsed programmes such as SAUVC, AUV Symposium and our OCEANS Hampton Roads booth via their portal, and also featured interviews with some of our members. They are continuing their visibility campaign for ECOPs who are interested, and OES ECOPs who would like to contribute are welcome to join.
Call for Chapter/SBC funding initiative
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.