IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2016 - 77

FIGURE 1. The GRSS Turkey Chapter Summer School 2016 group picture in the garden of the Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Disas-

ter Management, ITU.

THE PROGRAM
The objective of the summer school was to provide the
attendees with a comprehensive overview on multidimensional remote sensing imaging, beginning with
image- processing fundamentals, continuing with the
mathematical formulation of the imaging systems, and
concluding with advance radar and hyperspectral Earthobservation applications.
The summer school program was developed as a four-day
program together with ITU. The first day covered the basic
multichannel image-processing techniques, which are common for both radar and hyperspectral imaging. Radar imaging was discussed on the second day. The third day began
with the implementation of the mathematical morphology
to be applied to remote sensing applications and continued
with machine learning for remote sensing data analysis. The
last day concluded with applications covering the theory
mentioned in the first three days.
SUMMER SCHOOL ATTENDEES
The summer school had an exceptional response, with
more than 150 applications in various disciplines. Unfortunately, the executive committee had to select only 30
attendees due to funding constraints. The attendees were
selected based on their resumes and motivation letters
and the diversity of the institutions. Of the 30 attendees,
19 were Ph.D. or M.S. students from all over the country,
five were from commercial industry, four were from research institutions, and two were early-career scientists at
two different universities (Figure 1).
LECTURERS: COLLABORATION AMONG CHAPTERS
The summer school was supported by experts in the
field, including eight lecturers from Turkey and three
from abroad. Prof. Dr. Ali Fuat Aydın, vice rector of ITU,
formally opened the school. Dr. Ufuk Sakarya, of the
TÜBI˙ TAK Space Technologies Research Institute, provided
september 2016

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

FIGURE 2. Othmar Frey, Switzerland Chapter chair, giving the lecture
"Multibaseline Interferometry and Tomography."

a comprehensive review of space missions and developments in Turkey. The technical sessions were held Monday
through Thursday.
ITU housed the summer school, led by the GRSS Turkey Chapter, and hosted the local lecturers. In addition,
attendees had the opportunity to listen to lectures from
Dr. Othmar Frey (ETH Zürich, Switzerland), Dr. Mauro
Dalla Mura (Grenoble University, France), and Dr. Devis
Tuia (University of Zürich, Switzerland), provided by the
IEEE GRSS fund. They spoke about multibaseline synthetic
aperture radar interferometry and tomography, mathematical morphology, and machine learning in remote sensing,
respectively (Figures 2-4).
Moreover, the summer school brought together the
chairs from three GRSS Chapters from Region 8: Switzerland, France, and Turkey. This gathering led to an opportunity to accelerate the Chapters' engagement in Region 8 and to
discuss and share experiences about how to increase GRSS
memberships. Over the coming years, these Chapters hope
to collaborate on other educational activities and projects.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The summer school attendees were asked to submit comments and complete a questionnaire about their experience,
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - September 2016