IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2023 - 150

DELWYN MOLLER , CATHERINE QUALTROUGH, SCOTT GLEASON , SCOTT HENSLEY ,
MAHTA MOGHADDAM , ANDREW O'BRIEN, BRIAN POLLARD, WOLFGANG RACK ,
CHRIS RUF , AND MICHELANGELO VILLANO
The Instrumentation and Future Technology Technical
Committee's Second " Summer School " :
Auckland, New Zealand
T
he Instrumentation and Future Technologies Technical
Committee's (IFT-TC) second summer school took
place in Auckland, New Zealand, from 30 January to 3
February 2023. The IFT Remote Sensing Summer Schools
(IFT-R3S) aim to promote future research in remote sensing;
connect Master students, junior Ph.D. students, recent
graduates, and young professionals with research groups
linked to the IFT-TC; and highlight the educational activities
of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society
(GRSS). The IFT-R3S focuses on remote sensing
instrumentation with aspirations to develop and foster
expertise and capacity in this sector. As the first technical
activity after the recent formation of a New Zealand
GRSS Chapter, a primary objective was to foster connections
within New Zealand and the Oceania Region and
to heighten New Zealand's visibility and ambitions in the
Earth-observing sector.
The first IFT-R3S Summer School was held in
Barcelona in July 2019. This was intended to initiate a series
of ongoing summer schools (annual or biannual) moving
to different towns/continents and hosted by other IFT-TC
groups. Accordingly, this summer school, hosted in New
Zealand, was first approved and planned for 2020 but was
delayed until 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Like
the inaugural IFT-R3S, foremost experts were enlisted to
teach the curriculum, which focused on radar remote sensing.
The topic list included sensor and mission design and
theory and the state of the art in radar, including sounding,
altimetry, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), bistatic radar,
and signals of opportunity (SoOp). Through a concentrated
emphasis on radar remote sensing, we were able to
cover topics in deep detail, avoiding keeping the lectures
at a superficial overview level. For context, at the opening
event, the GRSS and the IFT-TC were introduced to provide
a broader overview of the GRSS and the IFT-TC. The
in-depth topics for this edition were principles of radar,
sounders and altimeters, SAR, SAR interferometry, and
reflectometry with GNSS and SoOP. In future IFT-R3S editions,
the in-depth topics might vary, allowing the school
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2023.3316129
Date of current version: 11 December 2023
150
to progressively cover the full range of IFT-TC working
group topics in detail.
The school was open to any interested people, with a specific
emphasis on engaging master's students, junior Ph.D.
students, and young professionals with an engineering or
similar background. Ideally, this would motivate the consideration
of careers in remote sensing in general and instrument
and future technologies in particular. We anticipated a
majority of students from IEEE Region 10, particularly from
New Zealand and Australia.
Hosted by the University of Auckland's (UoA) Faculty
of Engineering, the school was cofunded by the GRSS, the
New Zealand Space Agency (NZSA), and the UoA. The UoA
provided the venue, logistic support staff, onsite organization
(including coffee breaks), and funds to house students.
University housing at walking distance from the faculty was
available since we scheduled the event during the academic
summer break. Students not residing in the Auckland area
were provided university housing as a part of their registration.
IEEE and NZSA funds were used to support speaker
travel, accommodation, and domestic and international
scholarships for students.
The application to register for the IFT-R3S was open
from 29 September 2022 to 23 2022 December. A total of
42 applicants were affiliated with universities, institutions,
or companies from 22 different countries. Formal invitation
letters were sent to 33 applicants.
An unexpected finding was that the vast majority
of non-New Zealand local applicants were citizens of
countries ineligible for the visa waiver/electronic travel
authority (ETA). For those countries, and at that time
with New Zealand recently reopening its borders, visa
processing times were lengthy and unpredictable. Only
two of the invited students from non-ETA-eligible countries
were successful in attaining visas despite projected
visa processing times suggesting otherwise. Several applicants
who were offered travel scholarships declined
their invitations with concerns that the visa process was
too onerous and uncertain. The final number of participants
in the summer school was 11. Of these students,
eight were living in New Zealand, one was from Thailand,
one was from the Philippines, and another was
IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2023
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4207-1539 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8387-5093 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8846-2175 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5304-2616 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2447-377X https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5937-4483 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1769-6927
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2023
