Obituary on D. Richard “Dick” Blidberg
January 1, 1945 – September 1 2019 It is with sadness that we have recently lost another valuable member of our technical community with the…
Sonar performance quantification: report on two DLs
Kenneth G. Foote, IEEE Fellow, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543 USA Introduction The author gave two seminars under the aegis of…
Member Highlights (March 2020)
Contact the editors if you have items of interest for the society Doraemon Museum with a new OES member’s family in Japan Harumi Sugimatsu,…
OES Society Awards (2019)
Photos by Stan Chamberlain The OES Society Awards Ceremony was held during the Wednesday Plenary at OCEANS 2019 Seattle. We are honored to introduce the…
Who’s who in the OES (December 2019)
Jenhwa Guo, National Taiwan University (NTU) Jenhwa Guo was born in Taipei in 1958. He is a professor at the Department of Engineering Science and…
Awards for OES members
Contact the editors with your submissions. Team KUROSHIO place 2nd in the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE Reported by the OES Japan Chapter members of the…
Member Highlights (September 2019)
Contact the editors if you have items of interest for the society Title: Visiting U-Tokyo story Author: Hsin-Hung Chen and Yu-Cheng Chou Professors, Institute…
A Blast from the Past! . . . In Honor of JP
Bob Wernli – Beacon Co-Editor-in-Chief, photos by Stan Chamberlain Jean-Pierre Hermand has been remembered in the December 2018 issue and in a special memorial session…
Welcome New and Reinstated Members (September 2019)
Australia Irina R Rabeja Biba Tominc Canada Ali Jebelli China Yong Chen Yu Hao Jiasheng Li Mingwei Lin Guoyuan Tang Defa Wu Croatia Kristijan Krcmar…
Technology Committee Reports (September 2019)
Submit TC reports to VPTA and Technology committee coordinator with cc to Beacon Co-Editors The BEACON newsletter introduces the hot topics of the Technology Committee…
The OES Festival of Distinguished Lectures
Philippe Courmontagne, French Chapter Chair Just following the OCEANS conference in Marseille, the first edition of the OES Festival of Distinguished Lectures has taken place…
From your Chapter Coordinator (September 2019)
Gerardo Acosta, OES Chapter Coordinator Still with the joy of sharing four wonderful days at the OCEANS Conference in Marseille, France, exchanging top level knowledge…
Jean-Pierre Hermand MEMORIAL Session – OCEANS 2019 Marseille, France
James Candy, OES AdCom member The special session entitled the “Jean-Pierre Hermand Memorial” was held at OCEANS 2019 Marseille and was co-chaired by his…
Beacon Archives Now On Line
OES has totally updated the society website (ieeeoes.org) to make it more useful for our members. The latest additions, under the “Publications” tab, are an…
Recon Report (September 2019)
Brian Horsburgh, OES RECON Committee Co-Chair Recon committee meeting in Marseille Welcome to my first report as RECON Co-Chair for OES. Its been a…
AdCom Election Results (2019)
The election results are in for the 2020-2022 Administrative Committee members. This year we had a great list of 12 candidates from around the world…
Member Benefits—Did You Know?
Group Insurance Plans IEEE’s member group insurance plans offer exceptional benefits, value and service. Active IEEE members in specified geographic areas may participate in insurance…
Chapter News (September 2019)
Submit Chapter news to Beacon Co-Editors and OES Chapter Coordinator Singapore Chapter Reported by Venugopalan Pallayil The Chapter has been active in organising technical talks…
From the OES BEACON Editors
Harumi Sugimatsu and Robert Wernli Welcome to the September 2019 issue of the Beacon as we prepare for the next OCEANS conference in Seattle. The…
Member Highlights (June 2019)
Contact the Editors if You Have Items of Interest for the Society Control & Robotics in OCEANS Meet in Beijing, China By Dr. Ferial El-Hawary,…
Chapter News (June 2019)
Submit Chapter News to Beacon Co-Editors and OES Chapter Coordinator On May 2, 2019, members of the IEEE Providence Section and the OE22 Chapter gathered…
Who’s who in the OES – Brandy Armstrong
Brandy Armstrong, Administrative Committee, Student Activities Chair, and Social Media Initiative I think the most interesting part of my story is how a small-town girl…
OES Members in Print
Contact the Editors if You Have New Items Model-Based Processing: An Applied Subspace Identification Approach James V. Candy Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory University of California…
IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society Election for Members to the Administrative Committee Nominees for the Term 1 January 2020–31 December 2022
René Garello, OES Junior Past President The OES Administrative Committee election closes on 25 June. When you review the below candidates, I think you will…
From Your Chapter Coordinator (June 2019)
Gerardo Acosta, OES Chapter Coordinator Once again I have the pleasure to communicate with all of you. I would like to invite chapter chairs or…
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.
Dr. Marcia Isakson received a B.S. with a double major in engineering physics and mathematics from the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1992. Upon graduation, she was awarded the Hertz Foundation Fellowship for the study of atomic and molecular physics. She earned her M.A. in atomic and molecular physics from The University of Texas at Austin in 1994. From 1994 to 1997, Isakson served as an officer in the United States Army at Fort Hood, Texas. In 1997, CPT Isakson was honorably discharged. In 2002, she earned a Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin. In the summer of 2001, she began work on acoustics at Applied Research Laboratories at the University of Texas at Austin.
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. Albert J. Williams 3rd (Sandy) received his AB in Physics from Swarthmore College in 1962 and his Ph.D. in physics from Johns Hopkins University in 1969. He spent his entire career at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, becoming Scientist Emeritus in 2002. A Fellow of IEEE, he received the Distinguished Technical Achievement Award of the IEEE/Oceanic Engineering Society in 2000 and is presently VP Technical Activities for OES. His research interests are microstructure and mixing, flow measurements, oceanographic instrumentation and measurements, sediment transport, and turbulent boundary layers. He designs and manufactures acoustic travel-time current meters for measurement of current, waves, and turbulence.
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.