Plenary Short Talks

In the dynamic field of environmental technology and remote sensing, Mr. Alexander Weidauer has distinguished himself as a professional of significant impact. His journey in science and technology began at Universität Greifswald, where he earned a Master of Science in Physics, specializing in System Theory. Currently, as the Chief Technical Officer of the prestigious GALG Group, Mr. Weidauer leads the design and supervision of effective methodologies for all projects undertaken by the group’s companies. His extensive experience in remote sensing and environmental science is a driving force behind ongoing innovation and excellence in the field.

With a career spanning over 33 years, Mr. Weidauer has achieved numerous milestones, especially notable in the development of innovative technologies for environmental monitoring. His tenure at IfGDV-IMA was marked by his critical role in the creation of aerial monitoring systems and the development of multi-spectral sensor technology for power line inspections. Additionally, his expertise in project management was prominently displayed during his time at the Institute for Applied Ecology. There, in projects like DAISI, he skillfully managed the design and implementation of sensor platforms and environmental data analysis tools. His contributions to developing comprehensive environmental databases and data assimilation models not only demonstrate his technical expertise but also reflect his dedication to environmental conservation.

Dr. Srinath Srinivasa heads the Web Science lab and is the Dean (R&D) at IIIT Bangalore, India. Srinath holds a Ph.D (magna cum laude) from the Berlin Brandenburg Graduate School for Distributed Information Systems (GkVI) Germany, an M.S. (by Research) from IIT-Madras and B.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from The National Institute of Engineering (NIE) Mysore. He works in the area of Web Science — that models of the impact of the web on humanity. Technology for educational outreach and social empowerment has been a primary motivation driving his research.

Dr. Srinath has participated in several initiatives for technology enhanced education including the VTU Edusat program, The National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) and an educational outreach program in collaboration with Upgrad. He is a member of various technical and organizational committees for international conferences like International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), ACM Hypertext, COMAD/CoDS, ODBASE, etc. He is also a life member of the Computer Society of India (CSI). As part of academic community outreach, Srinath has served on the Board of Studies of Goa University and as a member of the Academic Council of the National Institute of Engineering, Mysore. He has served as a technical reviewer for various journals like the VLDB journal, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, and IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing. He is also the recipient of various national and international grants for his research activities.

Dr. Uttam Kumar is an Assistant Professor at IIIT Bangalore. He is a Senior Member IEEE and Senior Member ACM, and is the Former Infosys Foundation Career Development Chair Professor. Dr. Uttam holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science from Visvesvaraya Technological University Belgaum, Diploma in Advanced Computing from CDAC Pune, Master’s Degree in Geoinformation Science from University of Twente, The Netherlands and Ph.D. in Algorithms for Geospatial Data Analysis from Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He earned professional certifications in Data Science (Computational Data Analytics) and Machine Learning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); in Big Data from Stanford University; in Spatial Computing from University of Minnesota; and in Geospatial Intelligence & Revolution from Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Dr. Uttam has received several awards including Indian National Geospatial Award 2021; Sahyadri Shikshaka Award 2020, CES, IISc Bangalore; The Institute of Engineers India (IEI) Young Engineers Award 2016; NASA Group Achievement Award by NASA, Washington, D.C.; Publons Peer Review Awards 2017; Certified Sentinel of Science Award 2016 in the Earth and Planetary Sciences; Best Paper Award 2015 in International Conference on Machine Learning and Data Analysis, UC Berkley; Best Paper Award 2015 in International Conference on Remote Sensing and Applications, Los Angeles; Best Paper Award 2014 by Boletín Geológico y Minero, Spain; Young GeoSpatial Scientist Award 2011, New Delhi; Best Paper Award 2011 by Indian Society of Remote Sensing, Bhopal; and Best Paper Award 2011 by IIT Kharagpur, India.

Mr. Shubham Sharma is serving as Head of Data at GalaxEye Space, Bengaluru, India. His experience consists of serving as Remote Sensing and Data Scientist at Geospoc-OLA and Hexagon Geosystems and he has worked on utilisation of Python for satellite image processing applications specifically in Radar Remote Sensing and served as a Research Fellow on related projects with renowned space organisations such as ISRO. He has also presented at leading Python conferences such as Pycon India and has mentored at conferences such as SciPy. Further, he has also served as Technical reviewer of books on Python and has taken workshops related to Python programming for Satellite image processing. He enjoys programming and strongly advocates outreach of Open-Source technologies in the Geospatial Sector.