10/18/2004 - A group of CGI members attended the GeoINT 2004 Symposium held in New Orleans from Oct 12-14. Those participating were Dr. Curt Davis, CGI Director, Dr. James Keller, Dr. Shi-Ren Shyu, and Mr. Matt Klaric. The GeoINT Symposium had over 1,800 participants and featured an outstanding list of keynote speakers including former CIA director George Tenet and Rep. Peter Hoesktra, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. In addition, the CGI also hosted an exhibit booth (pictures below) where past and current CGI research activities were highlighted. Notably, the CGI was the ONLY academic institution among the 88 GeoINT exhibitors, which were largely comprised of industry sponsors. CGI members had an outstanding time and the CGI received numerous inquiries related to partnership opportunities with key industry participants. Because of the great success, the CGI has already committed to participating in the GeoINT 2005 Symposium next year. We hope to see you there!

6/14/2004 - Today it was announced that Dr. Chi-Ren Shyu, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, was awarded a grant from the NGA University Research Initiative (NURI) program entitled "Content-Based Information Mining and Visualization for Exploitation of Multi-Modal Databases". Co-Investigators of the award include Dr. Curt Davis, CGI Director, and Dr. K. Palaniappan, Associate Professor of Computer Science. The proposed research will adapt a medical database information retrieval architecture to the domain of geospatial information and intelligence.

Commenting on this award, Dr. Davis said the new project "demonstrates the benefit of an interdisciplinary center focused on geospatial intelligence" because "Dr. Shyu's highly successful information retrieval architecture was developed for medical information applications and would never have been applied to the geospatial intelligence domain without the center's efforts."

The multi-year interdisciplinary research project will:

(1) Develop, test, and integrate efficient and relevant image feature extraction algorithms appropriate for multi-modal (optical, radar, etc.) medium and high-resolution earth images.
(2) Build a hybrid query system for image-based and text-based information retrieval appropriate for the geospatial intelligence domain.

(3) Build a semantic and knowledge sharing information mining hub for geospatial analysts and analysts from other tradecrafts.

(4) Develop a distributed visualization system for displaying and hierarchically browsing multi-modal database retrieval results and incorporate relevance feedback for query focus.

3/12/2004 - Dr. Curt Davis, CGI Director, was awarded the College of Engineering’s (CoE) Senior Faculty Research Award for 2004 at the annual CoE Awards Banquet held in the Reynold’s Alumni Center. Dr. Davis was recognized for his outstanding contributions in the field of satellite remote sensing for earth observation and monitoring. Below: Dean James Thompson presents Dr. Davis his research award.

3/8/2004 - National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) executives visited the UMC campus today to participate in a day-long site visit. Those in attendance included: Robert Zitz (Technical Executive), Rick Akers (Executive Officer for TX), Dr. Scott Loomer (Science Advisor & Academic Program Mananger), Dr. Richard Johnson (NGA Consultant), Pat Biggar (TX for Planning, Production, and Systems), and Jim Reznicek (Chief, Recruitment Staff NGA St. Louis). Also attending was Dr. Duong Nguyen, University R&D Director, Raytheon/IIS Space Systems, Aurora, CO.

The day began with a meeting between Mr. Zitz and the UMC Administration including Dr. James Thompson, CoE Dean, Dr. Suzanne Ortega, Dean of the Graduate School, and Dr. James Coleman, UMC Vice Provost for Research. The meeting discussed the issues and needs of NGA in R&D, education, and training and the role UMC and the CGI could play in meeting those needs.

The technical program was led off with a presentation by NGA’s Dr. Scott Loomer which described the NGA Academic Research Program. This was followed by a series of detailed technical presentations by CGI members describing their ongoing R&D efforts related to NGA issues and needs:

A final wrap up meeting between NGA executives and UMC administrators was held in the late afternoon. At that meeting, the NGA executives expressed their strong support for the CGI and interest in developing a long-term relationship between UMC and NGA. At one point, Mr. Robert Zitz said that the CGI presentations “were the most relevant set of presentations that I have ever seen from a university or vendor that linked their research to the mission of NGA.”

Site Visit Photos

Dr. Scott Loomer presents overview of NGA Academic Research Program

Dr. James Keller describes his research on Automatic Target Recognition

Site Visit Luncheon

Dr. James Coleman (Vice Provost for Research) and

Mr. Robert Zitz (NGA Technical Executive)

Dr. Scott Loomer (NGA), Dr. Jim Keller (UMC), and Dr. Richard Johnson (NGA)

2/1/2004 - Based on the feedback and response from NGA, Dr. Davis submitted a request to establish the Center for Geospatial Intelligence (CGI) in the College of Engineering (CoE). The request was reviewed by Dr. James Thompson, CoE Dean, and Dr. James Coleman, UMC Vice Provost for Research. Dr. Davis announced today that the CGI was granted formal center status. The CGI is now one of only two formal centers in the CoE. Normally faculty research teams cannot receive formal center status until they have more than $1M/yr of ongoing research support. Dr. Davis said the CGI request was approved because of the strong R&D track record of the center members, the multi-department and multi-college interdisciplinary nature of the effort, and because of the strong support expressed by NGA executives. The CGI was also given a development fund from the CoE with money for travel, website development, secretarial support, and other expenses. The formal center status is provisional and good for one year. At that time, center progress will be reviewed based on the level of R&D extramural support.

1/13/2004 - After organizing an interdisciplinary team of faculty and researchers in the Fall of 2003, Dr. Curt Davis prepared a briefing describing the concept for the development of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence (CGI) at UMC. Dr. Davis presented this briefing several times in the Fall of 2003 to National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) executives and technical managers. A final briefing was given today to senior executives and technical managers at the NGA headquarters in Bethesda, MD. Those in attendance included: Robert Zitz (Technical Executive), Rick Akers (Executive Officer for TX), Dr. Scott Loomer (Science Advisor), Steve Long (Innovision TX), Mr. Eric Benn (Production TX), Jim Kwolek ( Technical Services TX), and others. Dr. Davis described the overall goals of the CGI and presented an overview of existing R&D areas at UMC relevant to geospatial intelligence. The response and feedback from all in attendance was overwhelmingly positive. NGA executives thought the center concept was well developed and that existing R&D at UMC was very relevant to the current and future needs of NGA in a variety of technical areas. At the conclusion of the briefing, Mr. Zitz offered to visit UMC in March to: 1) discuss the proposed center with the UMC administration; 2) work to establish a broader collaboration between UMC and NGA in R&D, education, and training; and 3) receive more detailed technical presentations on pertinent UMC R&D efforts.