A fun-filled week at IGARSS 2022

The International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 2022 (IGARSS 2022), themed Preserving Our Heritage, Enabling Our Future Through Remote Sensing, included a variety of activities that allowed participants to share knowledge and experience on recent developments and advancements in geoscience and remote sensing technologies.

Among the activities held were the IGARSS exhibition, featuring leading agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Malaysia Space Agency (MYSA), technical programmes and tutorials, the TIE (Technology, Industry, and Education) Programme, technical visits, and a fun run at KLCC park.

 

Participants were welcomed with brilliant performances during the welcome reception

The exhibition booths at IGARSS 2022

The event saw various exhibition booths set up for the participants. Among the exhibitors were NASA, Taylor & Francis Group, Norsk Elektro Optikk, iRadar Sdn Bhd, Planet, MYSA, PIESAT Information Technology Co., Ltd., Aonic, SI Imaging Services, Synspective, Jaxa Earth Observation Research Center, Journal of Remote Sensing and ViTrox.

The fun run at KLCC park

A summer school programme was also held from 14 to 16 July 2022 at UTAR Kampar Campus, dedicated to introducing drone-based remote sensing to the participants. The summer school programme included data collection campaigns, technical lessons, demos by drone service providers and hands-on exercises.

Another highlight of the event was the IGARSS 2022 Awards Banquet held at Grand Hyatt, Kuala Lumpur. During the banquet night, guests and participants were served hearty meals with cultural traditional music and dances from various regions of Malaysia.

Tan Sri Chuah welcoming the guests and participants

IGARSS 2022 General Chair Ir Academician Emeritus Prof Tan Sri Dato’ Dr Chuah Hean Teik welcomed the guests and participants to the banquet and said, “This is the night to let your hair down and enjoy your dinner.” He said, “I was requested by the Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) YB Dato’ Sri Dr Adham bin Baba to send his apology for not being able to attend the dinner session and he would also like to thank all participants for coming to IGARSS 2022.”

Tan Sri Chuah added, “I believe, most of you were occupied by the various programmes held over the past few days. However, I would like to encourage you to join the tour group to travel and explore Malaysia, if you have some time to spare later on.” He also hoped to see the participants enjoy the cultural dance and music performances prepared for them. 

The most anticipated moments of the night were the performances by the National Academy of Arts, Culture & Heritage (ASWARA) and Black Muffins. ASWARA performed a few cultural dance performances, including Bharatanatyam, Chinese Fan Dance, Zapin Dance, and Joget Cinta Sayang. They also performed a medley of songs such as Raag Khamaj and Surangani Raag Khamaj, Tian Mi Mi （甜蜜蜜）and The Moon Represents My Heart （月亮代表我的心). UTAR alumni Nurul Izwazi Mohd Nor, Goh Cher Hou, See Siau Hoong and Emilia Yeor Lee Lan sang “Lullaby (Goodbye My Angel)”, “Walinong Sari” and “Mentera Semerah Padi”.

Bharatanatyam, Chinese Fan Dance, Zapin Dance and Joget Cinta Sayang were some of the performances performed at the banquet

An award ceremony was also held that night to announce the winners of the competitions. IEEE GRSS Special Awards, IEEE GRSS Publication Awards, IEEE GRSS Best Reviewer Recognition, IEEE GRSS Symposium Awards, IEEE GRSS Student Prize Paper Awards, Three-Minute ThesisTM (3MT) Competition, IEEE Data Fusion Contest, and Map Design Competition were among the honours bestowed.

The list of the awardees is as follows:

IEEE GRSS Special Awards
IEEE GRSS Early Career Award	Prof Danfeng Hong from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
IEEE GRSS David Landgrebe Award	Dr Mihai Datcu from German Aerospace Center (DLR) Germany
IEEE GRSS Regional Leader Award	Prof Lizhe Wang from China University of Geosciences, China

IEEE GRSS Publication Awards
2021 GRSS Transactions Prize Paper Award (TPPA)	H. Yu, N. Cao, Y. Lan and M. Xing, "Multisystem Interferometric Data Fusion Framework: A Three-Step Sensing Approach," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 59, no. 10, pp. 8501-8509, Oct. 2021.
2021 GRSS J-STARS Prize Paper Award (JPPA)	S. H. Yueh, R. Shah, X. Xu, B. Stiles and X. Bosch-Lluis, "A Satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar Concept Using P-Band Signals of Opportunity," in IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, vol. 14, pp. 2796-2816, 2021.
2021 GRSS High Impact Paper Award (HIPA)	G.-S. Xia, J. Hu, F. Hu, B. Shi, X. Bai, Y. Zhong, L. Zhang, X. Lu, "AID: A Benchmark Data Set for Performance Evaluation of Aerial Scene Classification," in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 55, no. 7, pp. 3965-3981, July 2017.
2021 GRSS Letters Prize Paper Award (LPPA)	A. Albright and C. Glennie, "Nearshore Bathymetry From Fusion of Sentinel-2 and ICESat-2 Observations," in IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 900-904, May 2021

IEEE GRSS Best Reviewer Recognition
GRSL Best Reviewers	Dr Xian Sun, Dr Puhong Duan, Dr Xu Tang, Dr Licheng Jiao and Dr Haixia Bi
JSTARS Best Reviewers	Dr Jie Feng, Dr Xin Wu, Dr Jiangtao Peng, Dr Danfeng Hong and Dr Alim Saqmat
TGRS Best Reviewers	Dr Danfeng Hong, Dr Yansheng Li, Dr Shaohui Mei, Dr Jiangtao Peng, Dr Yongtao Yu and Dr Lefei Zhang

IEEE GRSS Symposium Awards
2021 IEEE GRSS Symposium Interactive Session Prize Paper Award (The winners received a certificate and an honorarium of US$1,250)	Pierre-Yves Declercq, Atefe Choopani, Alain Dassargues and Xavier Devleeschouwer For their work on: “Areas Prone to Land Subsidence and their Evolutions in Belgium During the Last 30 Years”
2021 IEEE GRSS Symposium Prize Paper Award (The winners received a certificate and an honorarium of US$1,250)	Emanuele Dal Sasso, Inès Meraoumia, Loïc Denis and Florence Tupin For their work on: “Exploiting multi-temporal information for improved speckle reduction of Sentinel-1 SAR images by deep learning”

IEEE GRSS Student Prize Paper Awards
2022 IEEE GRSS Student Prize Paper Award	Second place - Elisa Sbalchiero from the University of Trento, Italy She was awarded a certificate and an honorarium of US$750 for her work titled “A Method for Focusing Raw Simulated Radar Sounder Data”. Third place - Jakob DeLong from Ohio State University, USA. He was awarded a certificate and an honorarium of US$500 for his work titled “Simulation Study of a Probabilistic Measurement Terminator for Cloud Radar Systems using CloudSat Data”.
2022 IEEE GRSS Mikio Takagi Student Prize Paper Award	First place - Narayana Rao Bhogapurapu from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India He was awarded a certificate and an honorarium of US$1,000 for his work titled “Soil Permittivity Estimation over Croplands Using PolSAR Data”.

Three-Minute ThesisTM (3MT) Competition
First place	Gunjan Joshi from The University of Tokyo, Japan. She was awarded a certificate and an honorarium of US$500 for her 3MT presentation titled “Multi-Sensor Data Fusion using Explainable Neural Networks”.
Second place	Ismail Abiola Olaniyi from Purdue University, USA. He was awarded a certificate and an honorarium of US$300 for his 3MT presentation titled “Developing a UAS Data Hub for the Wheat-Coordinated Agricultural Project”.
Third place	Rajat Shinde from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India He was awarded a certificate and an honorarium of US$200 for his 3MT presentation titled “Why Scan More!”
Special mention	Koushikey Chhapariya from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India She received a special mention for her work titled “Identifying Objects from Space!”

IEEE Data Fusion Contest
First place	Xiaoqiang Lu, Guojin Cao, Tong Gou Affiliation: Xidian University, Ministry of Education, Xi’an University of Technology They are awarded 10,000USD Azure Credits
Second place	Zhuohong Li, Jiaqi Zou, Fangxiao Lu, Hongyan Zhang Affiliation: Wuhan University They are awarded 6,000USD Azure Credits
Third place	Qi Zang Affiliation: Xidian University She is awarded 3,000USD Azure Credits
Fourth place	Yi Gao , Xinyu Ding, Guangyi Yang Affiliation : Wuhan University They are awarded 1,000USD Azure Credits

2022 IEEE GRSS Map Design Competition
Secondary School Category (Special Prize)	Muhammad A'ish Amsyar Mohammad Khalil
College and University Category	First Prize - Siti Sarah Farhana Ahmad Second Prize - Maisarah Zulkifli Third Prize - Nuraqeela Arifin

(Left with black coat) Dr David B. Kunkee, the president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (IEEE-GRSS) with some of the awardees

A glittering closing ceremony drew curtains on the 42nd annual International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, which took place on 22 July 2022. The ceremony saw Tan Sri Chuah expressing his heartfelt gratitude to the four esteemed keynote speakers, namely Dr Maurice Borgeaud, head of Science, Applications, and Climate Activities in the Earth Observation (EO) Directorate of the European Space Agency (ESA); Dr Karen M. St. Germain, director of the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); Dr Zhao Jian (video presentation), director of Earth Observation System and Data Center of China National Space Administration (CNSA) and Ms Rebecca Moore, director of Engineering, Google Earth, Earth Engine & Earth Outreach of Google.

Tan Sri Chuah delivering his closing speech

He emphasised, “Over 2,500 participants from 71 economies attended this 42nd annual International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium. This event saw the physical participation of more than 600 participants, while the participants who joined the event online were about 2,000. This is a huge success in itself.”

Tan Sri Chuah concluded, “I am also grateful to the hosts, IEEE GRSS and UTAR, as well as all the supporting partners, such as MYSA, the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Malaysia (MOTAC), Malaysia Convention and Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB), ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology (AAET), Curtin University Malaysia, Institution of Geospatial and Remote Sensing Malaysia, Multimedia University of Malaysia, The Institution of Engineers Malaysia, Department of Science and Technology (DOST) Advanced Science and Technology Institute, Science and Technology Research Institute for Defence (STRIDE), Taipei Tech, Telkom University, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Universiti Teknologi Mara, Vietnam National Space Center (VNSC) and The Academy of Sciences Malaysia for supporting and helping us make IGARSS 2022 a grand success. It would have been impossible to organise this symposium without their support.”

Next, Dr Sidharth Misra, the general chair of IGARSS 2023 gave his speech.  Thanking Tan Sri Chuah and the team for their efforts and contributions, Dr Sidharth said, “Thank you IGARSS 2022 for bringing this back together. Next year, IGARSS 2023 will be held in Pasadena, California. We hope to bring everyone back together. It’s all about reconnecting. IGARSS 2023 will completely be a physical conference, and we hope you will come to network with each other. We also hope you will get the opportunity to learn new things.”  He then showed an introduction video to IGARSS 2023, which will be held in Pasadena, California.

Dr Sidharth thanking Tan Sri Chuah and the team for their efforts and contributions

Tan Sri Chuah (right) receiving a souvenir from Dr Sidharth

Performances during the closing ceremony

Participants joining the dance during the closing ceremony