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As you can see from the events and articles in this issue of the LARS newsletter, we have had a busy Spring! We have seen graduate students complete their degrees, others in the final stages (should have another listing this summer) and several important visitors to our campus. I am personally involved more in the research program with the retirement of Dr. Marion Baumgardner. The excitement of working with students, development of specific research projects and preparing for course materials has made me feel like a Full Professor again. I am treasuring the moments as these are exciting times in Remote Sensing! - CJJ
Dr. Marwan Muasher (EE, Ph.D., 1981) accepted an invitation of the Purdue Organization of Arab Students to visit Purdue University on April 1-3. He provided a public lecture on "Peace and the Jordan Model" where he described his country's efforts to seek and maintain peace in the Middle East. He was directly in the midst of the Middle East peace talks (1991-94), serving as spokesperson for the Jordanian delegation and also the Jordan Ambassador to Israel (1995-96). His engineering training was evident during question and answer sessions as he thoughtfully provided detailed answers to many difficult and challenging questions as he met with students as well as administrators while on campus. His sessions with students revealed a charming and modest personality but also a very knowledgeable person trained at Purdue and able to achieve his current status through good training, proper preparation through different key positions and a strong commitment to his country. His greatest joy was to meet with Dr. and Mrs. David Landgrebe since Prof. Landgrebe served as his major professor while at Purdue.
Prof. Pol Coppin, Director, Laboratory for Forest, Nature and Landscape Research, University of Leuven, Belgium visited with LARS faculty members on April 27-May 1 to seek the development of a joint program for degrees in Earth Observations with Purdue University. We are in the process of preparing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to prepare for joint teaching and research programs between Leuven and Purdue. Prof. Coppin was a faculty member in our Forestry and Natural Resources Department before accepting his current position at the University of Leuven.
Pi-Fuei Hsieh, Ph.D., May 1998, Thesis title: "Classification of High Dimensional Data". Dr. Hsieh returned a few months ago to her home and family in Taiwan and employment there. Major Professor: David A. Landgrebe. Thesis can be downloaded at: http://dynamo.ecn.purdue.edu/~landgreb/publications.html
Saldju Tadjudin, Ph.D., May 1998, Thesis title: "Classification Of High with Limited Training Samples". Dr. Tadjudin, currently on a visit to her native Indonesia, will return to our Purdue ECE Multispectral Image Processing Laboratory shortly. Later this summer she will join a new start-up company in California. Major Professor: David A. Landgrebe. Thesis can be downloaded at: http://dynamo.ecn.purdue.edu/~landgreb/publications.html
Marie Minner, MS, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, May, 1998. Thesis Title: Long-term hydrologic impact assessment: sensitivity analyses and advanced applications. Employment: Geophysicist. Major Professor: Jon Harbor.
A Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing will be dedicated to the subject of data fusion, a topic that is becoming increasingly important in remote sensing. The special issue will concentrate on the newest methodology and the applications of remote sensing data fusion. The guest editor is Dr. Jon A. Benediktsson (benedikt@hi.is) (EE, Ph.D., 19__). Jon is completing a 4-month sabbatical leave with the Space Applications Institute, Ispra, Italy while working on the special issue.
We are pleased to see that 2 of our LARS associated faculty received promotions to Full Professor. They are Okan K. Ersoy, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Richard H. Grant, Agronomy. Congratulations to both on achieving this well deserved status!
Dr. Chris J. Johannsen, LARS Director was appointed to the Space Studies Board, National Research Council (1998-2001).
Dr. Marion F. Baumgardner, Professor Emertius of Agronomy was appointed to a 2 year appointment on the Advisory Committee of the National Satellite Land Remote Sensing Data Archive. Dr. Baumgardner retired from Purdue on January 1, 1998 but is still a steady participant in our programs. He recently established an office in International Programs providing direction to the Hungary-Purdue Program. A retirement event for Drs. Baumgardner, Wyman Nyquist and Joseph Yahner is scheduled on July 25 as part of the Purdue Agronomy Picnic. Persons wanting to extend greetings to Dr. Baumgardner should send letters addressed to him but sent to Dr. Chris J. Johannsen, AGRY, LILY Hall, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN 47907-1150 who is preparing a scrapbook of letters.
The First International Conference on Geospatial Technologies in Agriculture and Forestry on June 1-3 at Lake Buena Vista, FL drew a "who's who" of participants. Someone made the comment that "if a meteorite would have hit during the conference that remote sensing activities would set back for a decade." The attendance was 694 for the 3-day event, which was preceded by Workshops. LARS faculty and students taught a workshop on "Exploring Precision Farming" and we had 24 participants. The vendor participation was excellent. The next conference will likely be in January/February, 2000 with the location to be selected. Congratulations to Bob Rogers and the ERIM staff for a "job well done".
(* = new listing)
Please note that we are not repeating conferences/ workshops mentioned in previous newsletters except those of Professional Societies/organizations that appear to be of special interest to our faculty/students.
--Chris J. Johannsen, Director Laboratory for Applications of Remote Sensing (LARS) 1202 Potter Hall, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN 47907-1202, USA (765) 494-6305, Fax: (765) 496-3216 johan@purdue.edu