John Kerekes of chester Institute of Technology

Remote sensing of the earth from space and airborne platforms has reached a “Golden Age.” Technology has come a long way since the first aerial photographs taken from hot-air balloons circa 1860 and the first images collected by a satellite in 1960. Today, there are around 700 earth observing satellites in orbit and countless airborne systems operated by governments, commercial companies, universities, and even hobbyists. We take for granted the ease of access we have to imagery of our earth. Most systems are designed to serve many applications and much remote sensing research is aimed at new ways to process the data. But we are now in an era of low-cost platforms such as cubesats and drones which enable the proliferation of sensors designed for more specific applications. At RIT’s Digital Imaging and Remote Sensing Laboratory we study how best to design and operate remote sensing systems for a variety of applications. This presentation will cover some of our current work on this topic with example research on spectral imaging system band selection for target detection and temporal sampling interval requirements for vegetation phenology. In addition, the talk will briefly touch on the speaker’s current role as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State.

Biography:

Dr. John P. Kerekes is a Professor of Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology and is currently serving as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the U.S. Department of State. He earned his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. Prior to joining RIT in 2004, he spent 15 years as a member of the Technical Staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory. With funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the U.S. Air Force, as well as many other government agencies and industrial organizations, Dr. Kerekes has developed modeling tools and performed analyses to explore the capabilities of new airborne and satellite remote sensing instruments to acquire data for various applications. His work has involved systems for object detection, vegetation monitoring, ice sheet elevation measurement, land cover classification, and atmospheric sounding. This research has resulted in over 175 publications. Dr. Kerekes has been an active volunteer with the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, including two terms on the GRSS Administrative Committee (AdCom), and is currently the GRSS Chief Financial Officer. In 2017, he received the GRSS Outstanding Service Award. On sabbatical leave from RIT in 2019-2020, he is currently serving as a science advisor at the U.S. Department of State where he is supporting their Greening Diplomacy Initiative.

Address:Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), , United States