IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2014 - 88

FIGuRE 12. Interactive Session Prize Paper Award recipients
Roberto Sabia, Thomas Katagis, Diego Fernández Prieto and
Marcos Portabella.

and Future Technologies. Presently, he is working at the
German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). His research activities are in
the area of machine learning, pattern recognition, remote
sensing and Earth observation. In particular, his interests
are related to transfer learning and domain adaptation classification, targeted change detection, targeted classification,
image segmentation problems and urban remote sensing.
He conducts research on these topics within the frameworks of several national and international projects. Mattia
Marconcini was a recipient of the Recognition for the Best
Graduate Student at the University of Trento in 2004 and a
finalist of the Student Prize Paper Competition of the 2007
IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (Barcelona, July 2007). He is currently a Reviewer of
the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing,
the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, the IEEE
Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations
and Remote Sensing, and Pattern Recognition Letters. He
is author of seven book chapters and editor of the special
issue "Earth-Observation for Land-Atmosphere Interaction
Science" of the EGU Biosciences journal.
Thomas Katagis has an MSc degree in Forest Management and Remote Sensing received from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has been a member of the Laboratory of Forest Management and Remote Sensing since
2006 and has been involved as Associate Researcher in several European and nationally funded projects. From 2012
until mid-2013 he was employed at ESA/ESRIN under the
STSE (Support to Science Element) component of the Earth
Observation Envelope Programme (EOEP). He has a long
time experience in analysis of time series of satellite data for
LU/LC studies and fire-related research.
Diego Fernàndez Prieto received the B.S Degree in
Physics from the University of Santiago de Compostela,
88

Spain, in 1994. In 1994 and 1996, he was with the "Istituto per la Matematica Applicata" (I.M.A) of the National
Research Council (C.N.R), Genoa, Italy. In 1997, he received
the Master Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from
the University of Deusto, Spain and the University of Kent,
United Kingdom. In 2001 he received the Ph.D. in Electronic
Engineering and Computer Science by the Department of
Biophysical and Electronic Engineering of the University
of Genoa, Italy. Since 2001, he is with the Earth Observation (EO) Science, Applications and Future Technologies
Department of the European Space Agency (ESA). At present
he is program manager of the Support To Science Element
(STSE), a scientific programme aimed at providing scientific
support to both the formulation of novel mission concepts
and the innovative exploitation of on-going ESA missions.
He is also project manager of the CEOS TIGER initiative
for water in Africa. His research activity is documented in
more than 100 scientific publications. He is a reviewer for
the journals IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote
Sensing, Pattern Recognition Letters, Hydrogeology, Earth
Science Informatics, Journal of Environmental Management and Remote Sensing of the Environment. He is also
guest editor of several special issues in international peer
review journals.
Marcos Portabella was born on October 14, 1970 in
Spain. He received the B.Sc. degree in Physics in 1994 from
the University of Barcelona, Spain; the M.Sc. in Remote
Sensing in 1995 from the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia, Spain; and the Ph.D. degree in Physics in 2002, from
the University of Barcelona, Spain. He is currently with
the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM - CSIC), Barcelona,
Spain, working on satellite remote sensing. In particular, he
is involved in scatterometry and L-band radiometry.
7. IEEE GRSS EaRly CaREER awaRd
The GRSS Early Career Award is to promote, recognize and
support young scientists and engineers within the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society that have demonstrated
outstanding ability and promise for significant contributions in the future. Selection factors include quality, significance and impact of contributions, papers published
in archival journals - papers presented at conferences
and symposia, patents, demonstration of leadership, and
advancement of profession. Previous award winners are
ineligible. The Award consists of a certificate and an honorarium of $1,500.
The 2014 Early Career Award is presented to Feng Xu
with the citation: "In recognition of his outstanding ability and
promise for significant contributions in the future."
Feng Xu was born in Zhejiang, China in 1982. He received
the B.E. degree in Information Engineering from Southeast
University, Nanjing, China and the Ph.D. degree in Electronic
Engineering from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 2003
and 2008, respectively. His doctoral thesis is on the direct and
inverse theory for synthetic aperture radar remote sensing. He
is the 2007 recipient of the SUMMA graduate fellowship in
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

December 2014

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2014