IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2014 - 56

women in grs
Gail Skofronick JackSon,
GRSS Liaison to IEEE Women in Engineering

Mini-Interview at IGARSS
of Prof. Lori Mann Bruce

s an opening note, we hope you were able to join
us at this summer's IGARSS for our third annual
Women in Geoscience and Remote Sensing luncheon
on Tuesday July 15, 2014. The Women in GRS event is
expected be an annual offering each IGARSS.
Because some of us attended the recent IGARSS in
Quebec City, I conducted mini-interviews with several
of the women attendees. For this month's magazine
article I want to focus on Prof. Lori Mann Bruce from
Mississippi State University.
When asked about her educational background,
Lori Mann Bruce described receiving her Bachelors,
Masters, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer
engineering from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and the Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta,
GA in 1991, 1992, and 1996, respectively. Dr. Bruce is
currently a Giles Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering and the Associate Vice
President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Graduate School at Mississippi State University. As Dean, she
is responsible for providing leadership and academic
oversight for the approximately 3800 graduate students enrolled in more than 200 graduate programs.
Prof. Bruce's research endeavors have been focused
on advanced digital signal processing methodologies
for exploitation of high-dimensional datasets, with
particular emphasis on hyperspectral remote sensing. Dr. Bruce described one of her key contributions
in her development of automated land cover classification systems using hyperspectral imagery when
the amount of ground truth is very limited, including wavelet-based multi-resolution analysis methods,
spectral band grouping, and multi-classifier-decisionfusion systems. Her work has certainly been interdisciplinary in nature and primarily focused on precision
agriculture, especially vegetative species identification
and vegetative stress characterization.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MGRS.2014.2350432
Date of publication: 17 October 2014

Not only is Dr. Bruce known for her scientific and
engineering achievements, but also she describes
always having a passion for promoting graduate education and encouraging underrepresented groups in the
field of engineering, especially in the area of remote
sensing. She currently leads a large scale educational
program, called INSPIRE, where doctoral students are
paired with middle-school and/or high-school teachers
to infuse aspects of their remote sensing research into
the K12 educational system (insert URL). The primary
goals are to improve the graduate students' ability to
communicate to non-scientists/engineers and to inspire
the next generation of remote sensing professionals. To
date, the project has fully funded 50 doctoral fellowships and has impacted more than 1500 K-12 students.
When asked about what she enjoys best about
IGARSS or the GRSS community, Prof. Bruce enthusiastically mentioned the collaborative relationships
developed around her research. She said:
"What I enjoy the most about the GRSS community is the interdisciplinary nature of the work
and the collaborative nature of the researchers
and educators. From my very first attendance at
an IGARSS, people in the GRSS community have
been amazingly generous with their time, expertise, professional networks, and most of all their
encouragement. IGARSS is one of those rare venues where people truly work well together, provide moral support, and advocate for each other's
success. I think this stems from the inherent need
of collaborators when working in an intrinsically
multidisciplinary field, particularly if the science
and technology are going to make advances and
address real-world needs. But regardless of the
reason why, I certainly enjoy being a part of this
professional community!"
I hope you continue to enjoy our Women in Geoscience and Remote Sensing column in the magazine. Please feel free to provide suggestions to Gail
Skofronick-Jackson at gailsjackson@ieee.org.
GRS
ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

september 2014

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