GRSS President 2011-2012
Jón Atli Benediktsson (S’84–M’90–SM’99–F’04) received the Cand.Sci. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1984, and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 1987 and 1990, respectively.
He is currently Pro Rector for academic affairs and a Professor of electrical and computer engineering with the University of Iceland. He has held visiting positions with the Department of Information and Communication Technology, University of Trento, Trento, Italy, since 2002; the School of Computing and Information Systems, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, U.K., during 1999 to 2004; the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, Ispra, Italy, in 1998; the Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark, in 1998; and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, in 1995. In August 1997, he was a Fellow with the Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia. From 1999 to 2004, he was the Chairman of the energy company Metan Ltd. He was also the Chairman of the University of Iceland’s Science and Research Committee from 1999 to 2005. Since 2006, he has been the Chairman of the University of Iceland’s Quality Assurance Committee. He co-edited (with Prof. D. A. Landgrebe) a Special Issue on Data Fusion of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING (TGRS) (May 1999) and (with P. Gamba and G. G. Wilkinson) a Special Issue on Urban Remote Sensing from Satellite (October 2003). His research interests include remote sensing, pattern recognition, machine learning, image processing, biomedical engineering, and signal processing, and he has published extensively in those fields.
Dr. Benediktsson is a member of Societas Scinetiarum Islandica and Tau Beta Pi. He was the Past Editor and is currently Associate Editor for TGRS and Associate Editor for the IEEE GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING LETTERS. From 1999 to 2002, prior to being Editor, he was Associate Editor for TGRS. From 1996 to 1999, he was the Chairman of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Technical Committee on Data Fusion and was elected to the Administrative Committee of the GRSS for the terms 2000 to 2002 and 2008 to 2010. He became 2010 the Executive Vice President and 2011 the President of the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society. In 2002, he was appointed as Vice President of Technical Activities of GRSS, and in 2008, he was appointed as Vice President of Professional Activities of GRSS. He was the founding Chairman of the IEEE Iceland Section and served as its Chairman from 2000 to 2003. He was a member of a NATO Advisory Panel of the Physical and Engineering Science and Technology Subprogram (2002–2003). He was a member of Iceland’s Science and Technology Council (2003–2006) and a member of the Nordic Research Policy Council (2004). He received the Stevan J. Kristof Award from Purdue University, in 1991, as an outstanding graduate student in remote sensing. In 1997, he was the recipient of the Icelandic Research Council’s Outstanding Young Researcher Award. In 2000, he was granted the IEEE Third Millennium Medal. In 2004, he was a co-recipient of the University of Iceland’s Technology Innovation Award. In 2006, he received the yearly research award from the Engineering Research Institute, University of Iceland. In 2007, he received the Outstanding Service Award from the IEEE GRSS. (Date: Dec. 2010)
