Team members
A group of industry and academic leading professors collaborating to bring this program to life
The team was assembled to ensure that the required expertise is available to achieve the objectives of the program. The team consists of 3 universities (UC, UBC, and RMC) and 5 major engineering and science disciplines (Civil, Geomatics, Electrical, Mechanical, Computer science). The team structure consists of world leaders in each of the three MSS research focus areas: Technology (El-Sheimy, Petovello, Nelsen), Analytics (Noureldin, Kattan, Sousa, O’Keefe) and Applications (Liang, Hu, Klukas, Ramirez-Serano). All team members are NSERC funded and actively engaged in research in one or more of the research streams. CREATE-MSS team have collectively trained over 400 HQPs, published 9 books, 30 book chapters, 40 patents, 800 journals, and about 1000 conference papers. The team members are internationally recognized in their respective fields with a proven track record of training, research excellence, technology transfer and product commercialization. They have received several national and international awards in recognition of their innovative world class-contributions. Their graduates are contributing to the rapidly growing MSS industry in Canada. With 11 co-applicants and numerous collaborators, it is highly expected the program will be in high demand.
Dr. Naser El-Sheimy
Professor and CRC Tier I, is a leading authority in Geomatics multi-sensor systems. His research acumen is typified by the NSERC DAS Award (2 times), the ASTech award in Science and Technology and over 30 research awards from national and international bodies. He is founder and scientific director of TECTERRA CECR NCE and the founder of three spin-off companies. He has published 2 books, 450 papers, 4 software packages and holds 9 patents. He has received many awards and has supervised 65 graduate students/PDFs that have obtained positions in industry, academia, and government or are continuing to receive training in the field. Dr. El-Sheimy has held many leadership positions (Form 100), and led large-scale grants.
Dr. Yang Gao
Professor in the Department of Geomatics Engineering at the University of Calgary, with over 25 years of experience in development of precise positioning and navigation systems using GNSS and INS technologies and commercialization of research results into products. Dr. Gao has published over 300 papers in academic journals and conference proceedings, in which he and his students have received over 20 national and international paper awards. He has supervised and graduated over 45 MSc and PhD students.
Dr. Kyle O’Keefe
Professor of Geomatics Engineering at UC. His research includes simulation and assessment of emerging GNSS, multi-constellation GNSS signals acquisition, reliability and carrier phase positioning, integration of GNSS with UWB ranging radio, vehicle relative navigation using these technologies and space applications of GNSS. He received the Michael Richey medal for best paper in the Journal of Navigation in 2011. He has supervised 25 graduate students, received numerous teaching awards, and served as Associate Head of the Department of Geomatics Engineering from 2009 to 2015.
Dr. Lina Kattan
Associate Professor of Civil Engineering and Urban Alliance Professor in Transportation Systems Optimization. Lina has been awarded an AMA Chair in Smart Multimodal Transportation Systems in 2014. She is also the Director of the AMA Active Traffic and Demand Management Laboratory that was funded with a major CFI grant. Her research and teaching focuses on advanced traffic management and information systems, and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The success of her research has won her the 2014 Killam Emerging Research Leader Award. She has published 41 papers, 2 book chapter, and 70 conferences, and has supervised/co-supervised 25 graduate students/PDF.
Dr. Richard Klukas
Associate Professor in the School of Engineering at UBC. Prior to UBC, he held faculty positions at UC and Okanagan University College. Dr. Klukas was a founding faculty member of the new School of Engineering on UBC’s Okanagan campus. He also has industrial experience with Nortel and Cell-Loc Inc., a high-tech company that commercialized his PhD work. He has published 60 papers, 1 book chapter, holds 4 patents, and has supervised/co-supervised 18 graduate students.
Dr. Aboelmagd Noureldin
Professor and Director of the Navigation and Instrumentation (NavINST) lab at RMC. He has expertise in mobile multi-sensor positioning, estimation, spectral analysis and signal processing. His research in these areas has resulted in several patents and in three technologies licensed to the positioning and navigation industry in Canada over the last 5 years. The NavINST laboratory provides access to GPS, embedded navigation systems, design platforms and calibration and testing equipment
Dr. Steve Liang
A world-recognized leader in geospatial Internet of Things (IoT) and sensor web standards, systems, and research. Steve is the editor of the Open Geospatial Consortium SensorThings API specification, the rapporteur of United Nation’s on the IoT test specification and an expert member of the ISO WG-10 on IoT. Steve’s work has been widely used around the world by organizations such as Microsoft Research, NASA, Natural Resources Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
Dr. Yaoping Hu
Professor, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a leading expert in Human-Computer Interaction within Virtual Environments. Her scientific acumen and leadership are exemplified by over $1.5 million secured grants/contracts including 2 NSERC-SPG and 1 CFI-LOF grants awarded as Lead Investigator, 19 transaction/journal publications by prestigious publishers such as IEEE Press and MIT Press, 2 best paper/poster awards at IEEE international conferences, and a filed software patent.
Dr. John Nielsen
Has a mix of industrial and academic experience. His industrial experience with Lockheed Martin, Bell Northern Research (Nortel) and RIM focused on wireless communications with highlights in CDMA that resulted in a number of patents. Since joining UC in 2003 he has focused on indoor location, GNSS positioning and anti-spoofing techniques and the underlying signal processing. He has published extensively in these areas with 14 patents assigned.
Dr. Alejandro Ramirez-Serrano
Professor at UC and the director of the Autonomous Reconfigurable Robotic Systems Lab. He received the 2014 ASTEC Outstanding Achievement in Applied Technology & Innovation award (Alberta's highest Science &Technology honor), for his work in UAV technology. He is also the founder of 4Front Robotics, a robotics company developing custom field robotic solutions
Dr. Mario Costa Sousa
Associate professor of Computer Science at UC. He leads the illustrates research group, a multi-disciplinary team of computer scientists, mathematicians, geoscientists, and petroleum engineers working on fundamental and applied research of interactive modeling, visualization and analytics of multi-sensor data. His research interests include sketch-based interfaces and modeling, non-photorealistic rendering, scientific & engineering visualization, illustrative visualization, visual analytics, and multi-surface interaction design. He holds a NSERC/AITF/Foundation CMG Industry Research Chair in Scalable Reservoir Visualization.
We acknowledge the support of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
Nous remercions le Conseil de recherches en sciences naturelles et en génie du Canada (CRSNG) de son soutien.
MMSS Group