Distinguished Lecturers

Biography of Paul C. Hines

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.

He joined the Defence Research Establishment Atlantic (now Defence R&D Canada – Atlantic), Dartmouth, Canada where he researched towed array self-noise. From 1985-1988, he attended the University of Bath, UK where he received his PhD in Physics. His research on acoustic scattering from ocean boundaries earned him the Chesterman Medal from the University for “Outstanding Research in Physics”. Upon returning to DRDC Atlantic in 1989, he joined the Acoustic Countermeasures group to work on acoustic scattering and time spreading. From 1996 until 2003 he led several research groups that focused on experimentation and modeling to support sonar research. Since 2003 he has managed projects in Rapid Environmental Acoustics and Aural Classification for underwater acoustics and is currently Principal Scientist in the Underwater Sensing section at DRDC.

Dr. Hines is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, a member of IEEE, and an Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University’s Dept. of Graduate Studies. He is a seasoned experimentalist and has been chief scientist for several collaborative international research trials. His present research interests include acoustic scattering, sound speed dispersion in the seabed, vector sensor processing, and the application of aural perception in humans, to target classification in sonar.

Lecture topics:

1. The application of aural perception in humans to active and passive sonar classification.

Humans have a remarkable ability to aurally classify transient acoustic signals – from a dog’s bark to the slamming of a car door. Sonar experts have always relied to some extent on this ability to aurally classify sounds to assist in identification – this includes active sonars, in which an acoustic wave is transmitted and one listens to the received echo from a target, such as a submarine, and passive sonars in which one simply listens for signals of interest, such as a marine mammal call. This begs the questions, “How do humans discriminate between these sounds and can we develop a computer algorithm to do it?” In this presentation, we examine those questions, and present some rather pleasing results from an automatic aural classifier that was applied to active sonar target classification and to passive classification of marine mammal vocalizations.

2. Vector sensors: Over 40 and Still Hot (a Hot Topics lecture given at the 151st Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America)
Acoustic vector sensors and gradient arrays have been in use in underwater acoustics for more than 4 decades so one may wonder why they might be considered a “Hot Topic”. The reason lies in the recent resurgence in their use. This in turn, is due primarily to major advances in engineering and signal processing that have been applied to these devices. Historically, theoretical gains have been difficult to achieve with these sensors due to their susceptibility to uncorrelated noise. That is to say, the very process of making a localized measurement of the vector acoustic field lowers the signal-to-noise ratio, relative to a simple pressure measurement. However, with today’s advances in design, manufacturing, and digital signal processing, high-quality performance can be achieved in a very small package size. Moreover, the current interest in these devices isn’t limited to underwater acoustic applications; rather it extends across a number of technical areas within the acoustics community. This presentation will begin with a gentle introduction to the theoretical foundation and history of these devices. Then some current applications in both underwater and airborne acoustics will be highlighted.

Biography of Stefan Williams

Stefan Williams graduated BASc from The University of Waterloo (1998) in Systems Design Engineering and Ph.D (2002) in Field Robotics from The University of Sydney. His research interests are in the areas of autonomous navigation, high-resolution multispectral stereo photographic imaging and swath mapping to capture 3-D images of the sea floor, AUV planning and machine learning and classification of marine imagery. He works in collaboration with organizations including the Australian Institute for Marine Sciences, CSIRO, the University of Tasmania, TAFI, SARDI and others undertaking AUV surveys of marine habitats around Australia and was appointed head of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Facility. Collaborates extensively with colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, MIT, the University of Tokyo, the University of Southampton, the University of Rhode Island, the University of Michigan, St. Andrews University and the University of Hawaii exploring the use of AUV systems in support of studies in marine ecology, archaeology and geoscience.

Biography of Albert J. Williams 3rd

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.

Biography of Milica Stojanovic

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.

As a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society, Milica is happy to give lectures at varying levels of technical detail in the general area of underwater acoustic communications and networking. The lectures can be tailored to diverse audiences, ranging from general outreach to high-level graduate students and research practitioners with background in digital communications, signal processing or ocean acoustics. Specific lecture topics include the following:

1) Signal processing for acoustic communications (overview of existing systems; methods for synchronization, channel equalization, and diversity combining; experimental results that demonstrate some of the highest bit-rates achieved to-date)

2) Multi-carrier modulation/detection for acoustic channels (overview of the basic concepts of multi-carrier signaling; dealing with the Doppler distortion through dedicated signal processing methods; experimental demonstrations)

3) Statistical characterization of underwater acoustic communication channels (a discussion of general properties of acoustic communication channels and fundamental differences from terrestrial radio channels, followed by the description of recently developed statistical models and their experimental verification; implications for signal processing)

4) Multiple access in underwater acoustic systems (accommodating multiple users transmitting at the same time and in the same frequency band; cellular architectures for acoustic systems)

5) Reliable transmission over acoustic channels (coding for improved link reliability; using the feedback link for efficient power and rate control; automatic repeat request methods for achieving full reliability; multicast and broadcast systems)

Biography of Rick Spinrad

Rick Spinrad received a BA in Earth & Planetary Sciences from The Johns Hopkins University (1975), and M.S (1978) and Ph.D (1982) in Oceanography from Oregn State University. He is an accomplished researcher in marine environmental studies; demonstrated leadership in design of sophisticated environmental instrumentation; innovator of National Ocean Sciences Bowl, a program for high school students; Successful program manager with significant annual growth in programs of responsibility at both Navy and NOAA; Globally sought public speaker with over 100 speeches and media appearances (print and broadcast including The New York Times, MSNBC, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, USA Today, Discovery Channel, The Weather Channel, BBC); prepared and delivered testimony to Congress and state legislature to increase budgets and improve programs in research and education; established record of program and policy development in economic development (including engagement with venture capital and angel investors)

Biography of Hanu Singh

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.

Biography of Marcia Isakson

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.
Currently, Dr. Isakson is the principal investigator on two Office of Naval Research Projects at the Applied Research Laboratories. The first investigates acoustic interactions with ocean sediments. This involves both experimental measurements, in the laboratory and in situ, and modeling of scattering, reflection and transmission at the ocean bottom using finite elements. Dr. Isakson has led the ARL effort on three sea tests, one domestic and two international in support of this project. She is also leading a project to classify ocean sediments from autonomous underwater vehicles using existing sonar systems. Dr. Isakson’s other research interests are finite element modeling of shallow water propagation, acoustic propagation through poro-elastic materials and inversion of reflection coefficient measurements for sediment properties.

Selected Publications
M. Isakson and N. Chotiros. Finite element modeling of reverberation and transmission loss in shallow water waveguides with rough boundaries. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 129(3):1273–1279, 2011.
M. Isakson and N. Chotiros. Quantifying the effects of roughness scattering on reflection coefficient measurements. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, In Review.
M. Isakson, N. Chotiros, H. Camin, and J. Piper. Reflection coefficient measurements in a complex environment at the Sedimant Acoustics experiment 2004, (SAX04). Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, In Review.
M. Isakson and T. Neilsen. The viability of reflection loss measurement inversion to predict broadband acoustic behavior. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120:135–144, 2006.
H. Camin and M. Isakson. A comparison of spherical wave sediment reflection coefficient measurements to elastic and poro-elastic models. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120:2437–2449, 2005.
M. Isakson and N. Chotiros. A finite element model of propagation on the southern and western Australian continental shelf. In Proceedings of OCEANS ’10, IEEE Sydney, May 2010.
M. Isakson and N. Chotiros. A finite element model for acoustic propagation and reverberation. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Theoretical and Computational Acoustics, Dresden, Germany, September 2009.
M. Isakson, R. Yarbrough, and N. Chotiros. A finite element model for seafloor roughness scattering. In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Underwater Reverberation and Clutter, September 2008.
M. Isakson, N. Chotiros, J. Piper, and M. Zampolli. Measurements of the bottom loss magnitude and phase from 5 to 50 khz and 10 to 77 degrees grazing at the experimental validation of acoustic modeling techniques (EVA) sea test. In Proceedings of the OCEANS 2007 MTS/IEEE VANCOUVER Conference and Exhibition, 2007.

Biography of Mal Heron

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.

Biography of René Garello

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.

René Garello was born in 1953. He received the Ph.D. degree in Signal Processing at the Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG) in 1981. From 1982 to 1984 he worked as a Research Associate at Aeronomy Lab, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at Boulder, Colorado (USA). He joined the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne (ENST Bretagne), Brest, France in 1985. In 1988 he became Professor in this engineering school in the field of signal processing and image processing and in 1995, Prof. Garello obtained his Habilitation (HDR; Habilitation to Supervise Research).

Prof. Garello was an elected OES AdCom member from 1999 to 2001, from 2003 to 2005 and in 2005 for a new three year term. In the beginning of 2001, he headed the Committee on Conference Policies (CoCoPo) which was in charge of defining a new set of Conference Policies and Procedures in order to insure continuity between the successive OCEANS conferences. This committee jointly held with MTS members defined several new approaches and came up with the concept of two Oceans-a-year (every year in Northern America, every other odd year in Europe and every other even year in Asia-Pacific). In order to implement this plan a new committee was formed: the Joint Oceans Advisory Board or JOAB, of which Prof. Garello is the co-chair.

Prof. Garello was the General Chairman of the first OCEANS of the new Two-Oceans-a-year concept: OCEANS’05 held in Brest, France in June 2005. In 2005, he was elected Vice-President Conference Operations and then re-elected in 2006 and 2008. He was elevated to the grade of Fellow of the IEEE, class of 2006, “for contributions to signal processing applied to remote sensing of the ocean”. He received the OES Service Awards in 2006 for developing and implementing the two OCEANS conference policy.

Prof. Garello has authored or co-authored more than 40 papers, a hundred and thirty conference communications and three books.

Prof. Garello is also an active member of the IEEE/GRS (Geoscience and Remote Sensing) Society. His main research interests lie in Remote Sensing, 2D signal processing, statistical and spectral analysis applied to ocean surface features detection and characterization. Prof. Garello has been active in GEO and participated in the 2005 Plenary, organized a GEOSS workshop in Corte in 2006 in addition to his participation with the IEEE Committee on Earth Observation.

Biography of Kenneth Foote

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.

Relatively recent publications have been on the subjects of range compensation for backscattering measurements in the difference-frequency nearfield of a parametric sonar; discriminating between the nearfield and the farfield of acoustic transducers; standard-target calibration of active sonars used to measure scattering. Some other recent, collaborative publications have concerned acousto-optic effect compensation for optical determination of the normal velocity distribution associated with acoustic transducer radiation, and performance prediction of a dual-baseline radar or sonar interferometer based on a Vernier critical value concept.

Biography of James V. Candy

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.

James V. Candy

Kenneth Foote

René Garello

Mal Heron

Paul C. Hines

Marcia Isakson

Hanumat (Hanu) Singh

Richard (Rick) Spinrad

Milica Stojanovic

Albert J. Williams 3rd

Stefan Williams

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