The ISPRS Foundation (TIF)
The officers of The ISPRS Foundation (TIF) will change from 1 January 2023 since the incumbents will complete their terms specified by the TIF Bylaws. The following list includes the current officers, who will serve until 31 December 2022, and the new officers who will commence their terms from 1 January 2023, and also become TIF Trustees.
Chair: Stewart Walker, USA, will be replaced by Mario Hernandez, Switzerland, from 1 January 2023
Operations Officer: John Trinder, Australia, will be replaced by Senthil Kumar, India, from 1 January 2023
Finance Officer: Marguerite Madden, USA, will be replaced by Jeff Yates, USA, from 1 January 2023
ISPRS Council Representatives on the TIF Board of Trustees
According to the TIF Bylaws, ISPRS Council must appoint two members of Council as Council representatives on the Board of Trustees for the period 2022-2026. They are:
- President of ISPRS, Lena Halounová
- Treasurer of ISPRS, Stewart Walker
Other members of the current Board of Trustees are:
- Ron Bisio, USA
- Sandra Maria Fonseca da Costa, Brazil
- Michael Gruber, Austria
- Lawrie Jordan, USA
- Shailesh Nayak, India
- Qihao Weng, Hong Kong
John Trinder
Operations Officer until 31 December 2022
Resumés of new TIF Trustees and Officers
Chair
Mario Hernandez
Mario Hernandez is from Mexico and has a PhD in mathematics. His professional career has been dedicated to satellite image processing (remote sensing), doing applied research on the use of space technologies for the monitoring of the environment and at a later stage for the monitoring, management and presentation of heritage sites.
Mario started working with IBM at the IBM Scientific Center for Latin America located in Mexico City. He then moved to IBM Europe (Paris) to coordinate a research group developing new hardware and software for digital image processing. At that time, research on digital image processing was an extremely innovative field.
Mario then joined the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Later on he was offered a post at the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris in order to manage, coordinate and to launch the European Space Agency (ESA) – UNESCO Open Initiative of the use of Space Technologies to support World Heritage sites. An impressive number of partners joined the ESA-UNESCO initiative, including space agencies, space research institutions and universities. Among these extraordinary partners, was University of Ghent (Belgium) and the Belgium Science Policy Office (BELSPO).
After retirement from the UN, Dr. Hernandez continues to work in partnerships with the space agencies and space research institutions supporting cultural heritage sites. He has a series of honorific titles and has published several papers.
Senthil Kumar
Operations officer
Dr Kumar received his MSc (Eng.) and PhD in image processing in 1985 and 1990 respectively from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He joined the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in 1991, and since then has served in various capacities before superannuating as Director of Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS). He has also served as Director of UN-affiliated Centre for Space Science of Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (CSSTEAP) for five years. During this tenure, he represented ISRO as a member and Chair of the CEOS Working Group on Capacity Development and as a member of the CEOS Working Group on Calibration-Validation. He served as President of ISPRS Technical Commission V on Education and Outreach from 2016 to 2022. He presently serves as chair of the ISPRS Financial Commission for the period 2022-2026. He has served as Associate Editor and as Executive Editor for the Journal of Indian Society of Remote Sensing for five years. He has published more than 115 peer-reviewed technical papers, co-edited two books and co-authored one book. In recognition of his contributions, he has been conferred with life-time achievement awards by the Asian Association of Remote Sensing (2019) and by the Indian Society of Remote Sensing (2018), as well as team awards for Chandrayaan-1 and Cartosat-1 missions by the ISRO. He was elected as a Fellow of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing in the year 2021.
Jeffrey Yates
Finance Officer
Jeffrey Yates has a Bachelor of Science degree in land resources from Montana State University. Upon graduation Jeff worked as surveyor with the U.S. Forest Service in Montana and then with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver on a nation-wide map digitizing project. In 1982 he ventured north to Alaska, where he became a stereoplotter operator and aerial camera operator for AeroMap U.S. In 1985 Jeff received his ASPRS Certified Photogrammetrist credential. In 1989 he was the co-coordinator for the project that enabled the first-ever GPS measurements on the summit of Denali (aka Mt. McKinley), Alaska. Also in 1989, he placed the first GPS receivers on Mt. Fuji, Japan, and in 1995 he participated in an expedition sponsored by National Geographic- to place the first GPS receivers on the summit of Mt. Everest, Nepal. Since 1995 Jeff has been General Manager of DAT/EM Systems International, a developer of digital mapping software, which is used by customers around the world. He is currently a member of the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) Geomatics Advisory Board (GAB) as well as being the Secretary/Treasurer for the Alaska Region of ASPRS.