KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

 

Dr. Veysel Okan ATAK, Engineer Colonel, Photogrammetry Department - General Directorate of Mapping, Ankara/Turkey


Dr. Veysel Okan ATAK is Chief of Photogrammetry Department in the General Directorate of Mapping and Secretary of the Turkish National Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. He completed his MSc and PhD degrees in İstanbul Technical University, Turkey on the topics of "Determination of Liquefaction with the Compilation Method of Aerial Photographs" and "Geometric Accuracy and Feature Compilation Assessment of High Resolution Satellite Imagery".


During his career, he had worked as survey engineer in General Directorate of Mapping (formerly known as General Command of Mapping), as instructor in Surveying, Image Processing and Geographic Information Systems at Turkish Armed Forces Intelligence School and as geospatial data expert and Chief of Geospatial Data Branch in Turkish Air Force.


In the recent years; he had represented Turkish Air Force in NATO Joint Geospatial Standards Working Group (JGSWG) and in NATO Geospatial Board and he had carried on the Custodianship of STANAG 7123 (Digital Geographic Information on Optical Media), he had focused especially on the projects for Smart Munitions, Göktürk-1 / Göktürk-2 Satellites and Image Analysis and Automatic Target Detection, he had taken part in Göktürk-1 and Göktürk-2 Satellites Test and Acceptance processes and he had also worked in image processing and dissemination of geospatial data to the Turkish Armed Forces via Web Map Services.


Title of the talk: Recent Advances in National Mapping Activities.

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Dr. Sinem Ince, Department of Geodesy, German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ-Potsdam)/Germany


E. Sinem Ince is a research scientist in the Department of Geodesy, German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ-Potsdam) and the director of the International Association of Geodesy’s ICGEM (International Centre for Global Earth Models) Service. She completed her PhD degree in 2016 with distinction in the Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering, at York University, Canada on the topic of GOCE gradiometer measurements. She holds a BSc. degree in Geomatics Engineering from the Istanbul Technical University, Turkey and a MSc. Degree from the Department of Geomatics Engineering, University of Calgary. She is a past recipient of the Research Affiliate Program Bursary of Natural Resources Canada. Her research interests are physical and space geodesy, global and regional gravity field modeling, and spectral analyses.

Title of the talk: Global gravity field models and their applications in geodesy and geophysics

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Prof. Dr. Jadu Dash, Faculty Director of Enterprise,Director of Research, Geography and Environment University of Southampton/UK

   

Prof. Jadu Dash, has a strong international reputation in mapping, monitoring and understanding terrestrial ecosystem processes using Earth observation data. In recognition of these contributions, the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) and the Russian Academy of Science awarded him the highly prestigious Zeldovich Medal.  He works closely with the European Space Agency’s Sentinel satellite programme and developed one of the operational satellite land product to estimate chlorophyll content of vegetation. This product is being used across range of projects to monitor productivity and health of terrestrial vegetation including cropland.  He has  pioneered satellite time series analysis to derive automatic information on crop phenological information, which would be crucial for large scale monitoring of crop growth and development and in turn predicting yield. His research group have developed unique tools to combine multi source satellite data along with field observation and machine learning techniques to map crop type, crop areas and develop predictive models for crop yield. He sits on various international scientific committees, including co-chair of the CEOS LPV phenology sub group and vice chair of COSPAR commission A3.1.

Talk title: Use of multi-source Earth observation data to estimate agriculture production from local to national scale

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Assoc. Prof. Dr. Burcu Ozsoy,  Istanbul Technical University (ITU) - Polar Reseach Center (PolReC)/Turkey

Assoc. Prof.  Dr. Burcu Özsoy was born in Gaziantep. After completing her high school education, she received her BA and MA degrees at the Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetry Engineering at Yıldız Technical University. In 2001, she started to teach at the Maritime Faculty in İstanbul Technical University. She started her doctoral study in 2005 at the University of Texas in San Antonio. Within the framework of her doctoral study, she participated her first Antarctic Science Expedition in 2006 with American and Swedish scientists, during which she collected terrestrial/in-situ data on sea ice observations. She then worked on the verification of satellite images with in-situ data and also on sea ice interaction with climate change in Antarctica. Her Horizon 2020 project, joint venture with European countries, covering Arctic and Antarctic regions, was accepted in 2015, and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Burcu Özsoy serve as the coordinator of the project in Turkey.

She is the founding director of Polar Research Center (PolReC) established at Istanbul Technical University in January 2015. PolRec, Turkey’s first and only qualified polar research center, with its administrative staff and national and international scientific collaborations, undertakes the task of a national roof. The center also coordinates the Antarctic Scientific Expeditions under the auspices of the Presidency, as well as conducts the polar scientific program strategy. Assoc. Prof.  Dr. Burcu Özsoy was the expedition leader of the National Turkish Antarctic Expedition - I (TAE-I) and the National Turkish Antarctic Expedition - II (TAE- II), carried out in 2017 and 2018 within the framework of PolRec-coordinated project “Antarktika’da Türk Bilim Üssü (Turkish Scientific Base in Antarctica),” which is again run under the auspices of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey and the responsibility of the Ministry of Industry and Technology.

Talk title: Satellite Remote Sensing from Arctic to Antarctica

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