Distinguished Lecturers
The following OES members (Drs. Yuh and Nunziata) have been appointed as the latest Distinguished Lecturers (DLs) for the period 2023-25. The Chapters and Student Branch Chapters are highly encouraged to take advantage of their expertise and get enriched from their experience in related fields. The DLs may work directly with the relevant groups and fix the date and time of their lectures. Keep the VP for Technical Activities informed once a lecture has been finalized. DLs are advised to announce their availability and topics for lectures on OES website. DLs can be advertised through IEEE eNotices, Beacon Newsletter and Earthzine magazine. Please provide details of the talk to VPTA who would help to publicize this through various social media channels.
Request for OES Distinguished Lecturers Nominations
Distinguished Lecture – John Potter- 21 September
James V. Candy
2021-2024
UC-LLNL, Livermore, CA
tsoftware@aol.com
Endorsed by the Signal Processing and Statistical Learning * (SPSL) Technology Committee.
Topics:
Model-based acoutstic signal processing (underwater,ultrasonics, room)
Nonlinear filtering: Particle filters, Kalman filters
Time-reversal signal processing
Radioactive Contraband Detection: a Bayesian Approach
Bayseian Signal Processing, an Overview of Particle Filtering Methods
Maurizio Migliaccio
2021-2024
Universit à di Napoli Parthenope – Italy
migliaccio@uniparthenope.it
Endorsed by the OES Ocean Remote Sensing Technology Committee.
Topics:
Synthetic Aperture Radar for oil spill observation
Wind speed estimation by synthetic aperture radar
Man-made targets at sea, observation by polarimetric SAR
Kenneth Foote
2021-2024
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Massachusetts
kfoote@whoi.edu
Endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics (UA) Technology Committee.
Topics:
Underwater sound scattering
Marine resource quantification
Sonar performance evaluation
Mandar Chitre
2022-2025
Mandar is an Assoc. Professor at National University of Singapore. He is a Senior Member of IEEE (OES) and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Oceanic Engineering (JoE). Mandar has expertise and experience in many areas of underwater acoustics such as underwater communications, signal processing, especially in non-gaussian environments and marine robotics. He has given talks in many international conferences and forums including UN. IEEE OES community will be highly benefited from the sharing of his knowledge and perspectives in the areas of his expertise through DLs. His nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Communications, Navigation and Positioning Committee, of which he is also a Co-Chair.
Nicholas P Chotiros:
2022-2025
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.
Shyam Madhusudhana
2022-2025
Shyam has 16 years of research experience spread across both industry and academia. Data science and machine learning in the field of marine bioacoustics is relatively new and is an emerging area of research. The appointment of Shyam as a DL will help to excite the OES members, especially the student community, and coach them to be proficient in this emerging field of research. Shyam is an IEEE (OES) Senior Member and is a Post-doctoral Research Associate at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, USA. He serves as a reviewer for reputed journals such as Journal of Ocean Engineering, JASA, Applied Acoustics, etc. He has been endorsed by the Data Analytics, Integration and Modeling (DAIMS) Committee. Data Science and Machine Learning as applied to marine bioacoustics, Automation and modeling are some of the areas Shyam has the expertise on and will be offered as part of his DLs.
Eliza Michalopoulou
2022-2025
Eliza has been with the New Jersey Institute of Technology since 1994 and currently a Professor there. She is also the Chair of Department of Math-Science. She is a senior member of IEEE (OES) and a Fellow of ASA. She also has been an Assoc. Editor for Journal of Acoustical Society of America (JASA) and IEEE OES. Her nomination was endorsed by the Underwater Acoustics Committee. Inversion problems, sediment characterisation, multi-path localisation, etc., are some of the areas where Eliza has her expertise and proposes to give her DLs.
Milica Stojanovic
2022-2025
Boston, MA
millitsa@ece.neu.edu
Endorsed by the Underwater Communication, Navigation, & Positioning (UNCP) Technology Committee.
Topics:
Signal processing for acoustic communications
Multi-carrier modulation/detection for acoustic channels
Statistical characterization of underwater acoustic communication channels
Multiple access in underwater acoustic systems
Reliable transmission over acoustic channels
Dr. Ferdinando Nunziata
2023-2025
Ferdinando Nunziata is an Associate Professor at the Department of Engineering, Università degli Studi di Napoli Parthenope Centro Direzionale Isola, Naples, Italy. He had also held positions like Visiting Scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark and Guest Professor at the Shanghai Ocean University, College of Marine Science, Shanghai, China. Ferdinando has widely published his work both in international conferences and journals. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of OES since 2016. He serves as a reviewer for international journals and has been serving as session chair for many international conferences.
Ferdinando can give talks on the following topics:
- Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) for coastal observation and
- Microwave radiometer for coastal applications
Dr. Junku Yuh
2023-2025
Junku Yuh is currently the President of Korea Institute of Robotics and Technology Convergence (KIRO). He is an IEEE Fellow who has held many coveted positions such as Founding Director, Robotics and Media Institute, Korea; Head of Lunar Exploration National Programme, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST); President, Korea Aerospace University etc. During 1996-2004 he also served as Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Hawaii. He has won many international awards, served as keynote and plenary speaker for both national and international conferences.
Topics:
Adaptive Control and Neural-Net Control
Advanced Sensor for Automatic Object Ranging
Adaptive Path Planning
Intelligent Navigation and Guidance
Underwater Robotic Arm Control
Design of Autonomous Underwater Robots
Intelligent Task-Oriented Control Architecture
Virtual Collaborative World Simulator
Macro/Micro Control of Smart Space Structures
Predictive Virtual Environment
Design and Control of Flexible Structures
Let us welcome them into our pool of Distinguished Lecturers and look forward to hearing exciting technical talks.
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.