UCL - GPR 2014
 

































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































Scientific Review Panel

Frédéric André received the M.Sc. and Ph.D.degrees in agricultural and environmental engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, in 1999 and 2007, respectively. He was with the Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany, as a Post-doctoral Scientist, from 2008 to 2011. Since 2011, he has been a FNRS Researcher at UCL. His current research interests include forest sciences and ground-penetrating radar and electromagnetic induction data processing for digital soil mapping. Dr. André is co-organizing the 15th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (2014).
 
Steve Arcone obtained his undergraduate degree from Cornell, his graduate degrees from Cornell (MEE) and Dartmouth, (PhD, 1977), and has been at the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) for over 40 years.  Steve uses field, laboratory and numerical methods to research the scattering and dispersion of surface and subsurface radio waves in rough terrain, the development of polar and subpolar snow, glacial and periglacial stratigraphy, and the dielectric properties of sediments.  His field research has been mainly in Alaska, Antarctica, and New Hampshire, and his support has been from NSF, NASA, SERDP and the Army 6.1 program.  Steve is on the adjunct faculty at the Universities of Maine and Connecticut, collaborates with national and international universities, sponsors students, and serves on thesis committees.
 
Andrea Benedetto is associate professor of Roads, Railways and Airports at the Department of Engineering of Roma Tre University. He is Editor in Chief of Advances in Transportation Studies, Associate Editor of Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems and served as Guest Editor for the Journal of Applied Geophysics and Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation. Moreover he is member of the editorial boards and he is referee for several other prominent international journals. He is convener and co-convener of the Session on Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar since 2011. From 2013 he is Editorial Coordinator of the TUD COST Action TU1208 Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar. Andrea Benedetto is author of more than 120 papers, he played the role of Chairman and member of the Scientific Committee at GPR international conferences and at the international workshops on GPR.
 
Norbert Blindow (Germany) received a M.S. (Diplom) degree in physics at the University of Münster (UM) in 1977. Then he changed to the field of applied geophysics as a researcher at UM and at the Free University of Berlin. In 1987 he obtained a doctoral degree (Dr. rer. nat.) at UM with a thesis on GPR measurements of ice shelves and temperate glaciers. He has developed and applied novel geophysical methods and instruments for the exploration of groundwater in arid regions (Eastern Sahara, Atacama), archaeological research in the Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey), and for the detection of ice thickness and internal structures in glaciers and ice sheets (Alps, Andes, Antarctica, Greenland). His latest GPR developments include an airborne system capable of sounding deep temperate ice. Other successful applications have been related to mining exploration in northern Chile and groundwater surveys in northern Germany. Airborne platforms include the use of helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, and air ship. He received several grants from the German Research Foundation and other institutions and has published journal articles and book chapters on topics of near surface geophysics, GPR, and glaciology. In the period 1987-2009 Norbert was senior scientist and lecturer at the Institute for Geophysics, University of Münster. In the years 2010-2013 he was senior scientist at the GPR group of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover, Germany. Now he has retired from BGR and is a consultant for airborne GPR and geophysics on glaciers.
 
John Bradford received BS degrees in both Physics and Engineering Physics from the University of Kansas in 1994, and a PhD in geophysics from Rice University in 1999.   From 1995 to 1999 he was a Research Scientist at the Houston Advanced Research Center and worked on topics ranging from spectral decomposition for seismic exploration to utility detection with GPR.  In 2001 he joined the Center for Geophysical Investigation of the Shallow Subsurface at Boise State University where he served as Director from 2006-2009.  He currently holds the rank of Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Boise State.  He has worked extensively on methodology development for near-surface seismic and GPR applications with emphasis on imaging, attenuation, and offset dependent reflectivity.  He has published on a diverse array of topics that include hydrocarbon detection, hydrogeophysics, glaciology, and polar ecology.  He served as Associate Editor for Geophysics from 2005-2008, Associate Editor for Near Surface Geophysics from 2009-2012 and co-edited the SEG book Advances in Near-Surface Seismology and Ground-Penetrating Radar.
Amelia Rubio Bretones received the Ph.D. degree in physics (cum laude) from the University of Granada, Spain in 1988. Since 1985 she has been employed in the Department of Electromagnetism at the University of Granada, first as an Assistant Professor, and then in 1989 as an Associate Professor, and finally, since the year 2000 as a Full Professor.  On several occasions, she was a Visiting Scientist at the Delft and Eindhoven Universities of Technologies (both in The Netherlands) and at the Pennsylvania State University. She was the recipient of a Summa Foundation fellowship in 1997 and also of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award in 1993 and 1995. Her research expertise lies mainly in the field of numerical techniques for applied electromagnetics with an emphasis on time domain techniques such as finite difference time domain, the method of moments in the time domain with application in antenna and scattering problems, and GPR. She was co-chair of the 5th International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar, IWAGPR2009, held in Granada (Spain).
 
Charlie Bristow is a Professor of Sedimentology at Birkbeck, University of London. He has 20 years experience using GPR in field investigations of shallow subsurface stratigraphy with over 75 publications in peer reviewed journals.
 
Ilaria Catapano (Research Scientist at CNR, level III) received PhD degree in Electric and Information Engineering from the University of Cassino, Italy, in 2006. In 2003, in the framework of her PhD project, she started her research activity at the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment, National Research Council of Italy (IREA-CNR), where she is currently a full-time Researcher. She has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute Fresnel of Marseille, France, from October 2006 to March 2007. She was adjunct Professor of Electromagnetic Diagnostic at the Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria, Italy, in 2010 and she was invited lecturer during the 15th Summer School in Geophysics at São Paulo University, Brazil, in 2013. Her research activities deal with non-invasive electromagnetic diagnostics and are mainly focused on models and strategies for electromagnetic forward and inverse scattering problems, development and performance assessment of microwave imaging approaches for shape reconstruction and electromagnetic characterization of targets hidden in complex environments, as well as on the processing of experimental data gathered by means of radar systems for sub-surface surveys. Ilaria Catapano has co-authored more than 70 papers, mainly on scientific journals or proceedings of international conferences and she is a reviewer for several international journals and conference. Ilaria Catapano received the G. Barzilai Award by the Italian Electromagnetic Society (SIEM) in 2004, she was one of the Young Scientist Awardees at the XXIX URSI General Assembly in 2008.
 
Chi-Chih Chen received his MS and Ph.D. degrees from the Ohio State University Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in 1993 and 1997, respectively. He has been with The Ohio State University ElectroScience Laboratory since 1993 as a Postdoctoral Researcher (1997~1999), Senior Research Associate (1999-2003) and Research Scientist in (2004~2011). He became a Research Associate Professor at The Ohio State University Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in 2011. Dr. Chen’s research interest focuses on developing novel antenna and radar technologies. On the antenna side, he has developed several novel ground penetrating antennas, ultra wideband antennas, dielectric antennas, electrically small antennas, GPS and GNSS antennas, wearable antennas, phase array antennas, low-profile antennas, and UWB permittivity probes. On the radar side, he has developed novel detection and discrimination methods for detecting and discriminating buried objects such as ordnances, landmines, pipes, and tunnels based on fully polarimetric and UWB signatures; X-band vehicle obstacle detection radars; 77 GHz pedestrian radar model and detection methodology. In addition, his most recent research activities include developing efficient RF energy harvest and passive RFID and RFID sensors. Dr. Chen has published 53 peered reviewed journal papers, 5 book chapters, 1 co-authored book, and more than 80 technical reports.  He has also given short courses on small antennas, UWB antennas, UWB array, and ground penetrating radars. Dr. Chen received OSU College of Engineering Lumley Research Award in 2004 and 2010. He is an Edmund S. Gillespie Fellow of Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA). He is a senior member of IEEE; member of Exploration Geophysicists Society and Institute of Navigation. He served as Treasurer, Vice Chairman and Chairman of IEEE Joint AP/MTT Columbus from 2001 to 2003. He was technical Chair of 11th International Ground Penetrating Radar Conference in 2006. He has been serving as a member of the International Advisory and Science Committee of International Ground Penetrating Radar Conference since 2006. He served on the Technical Program Committee of 2011 IEEE APS/URSI Symposium.  He is serving on the Technical Program Committee of 2013 IEEE Phase Array Symposium. Dr. Chen has been serving on the AMTA Board of Directors as Technical Coordinator since 2012 and was recently elected to be the President of 2014. He is also a member of Sigma Xi aind Phi-Kappa-Phi.
 
Christophe Craeye (M’98–SM’11) was born in Belgium in 1971. He received the Electrical Engineer and Bachelier in Philosophy degrees and Ph.D. degree in applied sciences from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, in 1994 and 1998, respectively. From 1994 to 1999, he was a Teaching Assistant with UCL and carried out research on the radar signature of the sea surface perturbed by rain, in collaboration with NASA and ESA. From 1999 to 2001, he was a Post-Doc Researcher with the Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. His research there was related to wideband phased arrays devoted to the Square Kilometer Array radio telescope. In this framework, he also was with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,MA, USA, in the Fall of 1999, and worked with the Netherlands Institute for Research in Astronomy, Dwingeloo, The Netherlands, in 2001. In 2002, he started an antenna research activity at the Université catholique de Louvain, where he is now a Professor. He was with the Astrophysics and Detectors Group, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K., from January to August 2011. His research interests are finite antenna arrays, wideband antennas, small antennas, metamaterials, and numerical methods for fields in periodic media, with applications to communication and sensing systems. His research is funded by Région Wallonne, European Commission, FNRS, and UCL. Prof. Craeye served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation from 2004 to 2010. He is now an Associate Editor for the IEEE Antennas And Wireless Propagation Letters. In 2009, he received the 2005–2008 Georges Vanderlinden Prize from the Belgian Royal Academy of Sciences.
Lorenzo Crocco is a Research Scientist at the Institute for the Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment, National Research Council of Italy (IREA-CNR), Naples, since 2001. In 2009–2011, he was an Adjunct Professor at the Mediterranea University of Reggio Calabria (Italy), where he currently is a member of the Board of Ph.D. advisors. His scientific interests include noninvasive diagnostics, ground-penetrating radar, imaging methods, through the wall radar, inverse problems, electromagnetic scattering problems, electromagnetic modelling, antennas and novel electromagnetic devices, microwave biomedical imaging and therapeutic uses of electromagnetic fields. With respect to these topics, he has published more than 60 papers on peer reviewed international journals, given keynote talks at international conferences and lead or actively contributed to many research projects. Dr. Crocco has served as Guest Editor for several international journals and is currently member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Antennas and Propagation (IJAP). He has co-chaired the IWAGPR2007 workshop (International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar) and the XIII International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR2010). He is a Fellow of The Electromagnetics Academy (TEA) and a Senior Member of the IEEE.  He was the recipient of the “Barzilai” Award for Young Scientists from the Italian Electromagnetic Society (2004) and Young Scientist Awardee at the XXVIII URSI General Assembly (2005). In 2009, he was awarded as one of the top 100 under 40 scientists of CNR.
 
David  Daniels  is a Fellow of the IEEE and the IET and  an internationally recognised expert on ground penetrating  radar. He has published a number of award winning books as well as over 100 technical papers, primarily on ground penetrating radar, but also on sensing techniques for concealed objects. He has contributed to a number of seminal reference books in the field, including a contribution to Skolnik’s Radar Handbook 3rd Edition. He also recently authored “EM detection of concealed targets”, which was published by Wiley in 2009 and describes detection techniques ranging from NQR through to sub millimetre wave radar. David was appointed a CBE is the 2012 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
 
Xavier Dérobert received either an Engineer's degrees and a M.Sc.(Eng.) degrees in Civil engineering in 1987, received a PhD in electromagnetism in 1995 at Lille university and got his habilitation to supervise PhD theses in 2003 at Nantes university. He joined the Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussees (LCPC transformed in Ifsttar in 2011) in Nantes, France, in 1987 as a research scientist. He has organized two national workshops on Ground Penetrating Radar in 2001 and 2003, co-organized the NDT-CE international congress in 2009 in Nantes and the IWAGPR workshop in 2013 in Nantes. He is currently the head of the "Assessment and imaging" laboratory, working in the development of methodologies using radar techniques on civil infrastructures and subsurface geophysics, and in the EM characterization of civil engineering materials. He has published over 60 journal papers and international communications on these subjects.
 
Nectaria Diamanti received both her B.Sc. in Geology and her M.Sc. in Geophysics, from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. In 2008, she obtained her Ph.D. in Engineering & Electronics from The University of Edinburgh, U.K. From 2009 to 2013 she was a research scientist at the Department of Geophysics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. In September of 2013, she moved to Canada and has been working since then with Sensors & Software Inc. in the area of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) R&D and applications. Her main research activity involves application of geophysical techniques and especially GPR to geophysical/engineering problems ranging from environmental monitoring to non-destructive testing and archaeological prospection. Her areas of research include: numerical modelling using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) technique, application of numerical modelling to GPR.
 
Antonis Giannopoulos is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering, Institute for Infrastructure and Environment, at The University of Edinburgh, UK. His research interests include the numerical modelling of ground penetrating radar, computational electromagnetics - especially finite-difference time-domain based approaches - and the development and application of geophysical techniques for non-destructive testing and condition assessment of structures. He is the author of GprMax (www.gprmax.org) a freely available FDTD GPR simulator. He is a member of SEG and EAGE.
Susan Hubbard is the Director of the Earth Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), which conducts basic and applied research focused on hydrogeological, geochemical, geophysical, and biological processes that are important for climate change, carbon cycling, environmental stewardship, and energy resources sustainability. Susan received her PhD from Berkeley in Civil and Environmental Engineering, her MS in geophysics, and her BS in geology.  She became a scientist at LBNL in 1998, after working as a geologist at the USGS and an exploration geophysicist in the petroleum industry. Dr. Hubbard’s research focuses on advancing subsurface characterization and monitoring, with a particular emphasis on development of methods that integrate geophysical and other datasets for quantifying subsurface processes relevant to contaminant remediation, carbon cycling, water resources, and enhanced hydrocarbon recovery. She has published approximately 100 papers on these topics and co-edited the first textbook on Hydrogeophysics. Dr. Hubbard serves on several scientific advisory boards, including the Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research Advisory Committee. She is the Associate Director for the Berkeley Water Center, is a co-editor for the Vadose Zone Journal, and is an Associate Editor for JGR-Biogeosciences. She was the 2009 recipient of the Frank Frischknecht Award for leadership and innovation in near-surface geophysics, was a Geological Society of America (GSA) Birdsall Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer in 2010, and became a GSA Fellow in 2011.
 
Khan Zaib Jadoon received his Ph.D. degree in Agricultural and Environmental Engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium), in 2010. He received his Master's degree in Geophysics from Quaid-I-Azam University, Pakistan. He was with the Agrosphere, Institute of Bio- and Geosciences at Research Centre Jülich, Germany from 2007 to 2011, as a research assistant and postdoctoral researcher.  During his PhD studies, he spent three months as a guest scientist at Earth Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Since January 2012, he is working as a postdoctoral researcher with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia. His current research concentrates on hydrogeophysics, GPR-full waveform inversion techniques, and integrated hydrogeophysical inversion of time-lapse GPR data for the characterization of the vadose zone.
Harry Jol earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. from Simon Fraser University (Canada) and Ph.D. from the University of Calgary (Canada, 1996). He then was awarded to 2 post-doctoral fellowships (Killam & NSERC) before accepting a position at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire where he is presently a Professor and a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. During his Master's degree he worked on the Fraser River Delta conducting a high resolution shallow seismic program in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Canada. During in his Ph.D. research through to the present he has utilized ground penetrating radar (GPR) at more than 1000+ sites in North America, Europe, Israel, New Zealand, Australia, and Antarctica. Harry has a broad background in the earth sciences, particularly geomorphology, stratigraphy, and geoarchaeology. His research has resulted in numerous publications, and conference presentations including 3 co-edited GPR volumes (Ground Penetrating Radar in Sediments, Stratigraphic Analysis using GPR, and Ground Penetrating Radar: Theory and Applications). Harry looks forward to further synergistic field based research and teaching opportunities throughout the world.
 
François Jonard received an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. degree in Bioengineering from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium), in 2002 and 2012, respectively. From 2003 to 2004, he worked at the Earth and Life Institute (UCL) as a research assistant on forest hydrology modeling. In 2005, he received a Master's degree in business administration at the Louvain School of Management (UCL). From 2006 to 2009, he was a Consultant with the European Commission in the fields of geographic information systems and remote sensing applied to environmental issues. In 2009, François Jonard obtained a three-year Ph.D. grant from the Research Centre Jülich (Germany) funded by the German Research Foundation. The topic of his Ph.D. thesis was “soil water content estimation using ground-based active and passive microwave remote sensing”. Since March 2012, he is working as a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Agrosphere, Institute of Bio- and Geosciences, Research Centre Jülich. His current field of research is hydrogeophysics and soil/vegetation characterization from microwave remote sensing.
 
Anja Klotzsche received a Master's degree in Applied Geophysics in 2009 in a Joint Master Program of the TU Delft (Netherlands), ETH Zurich(Switzerland) and RWTH Aachen (Germany). In 2013 she obtained a PhD in Hydrogeophysics from the RWTH Aachen (Germany) and was working as a research assistant in the Agrosphere, Institute of Bio- and Geosciences at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany from 2009 to 2013. Since February 2013, she is working at the same institute as a Postdoctoral Researcher. In 2011 and 2012 she spent three months as a guest scientist at the Boise State University (Idaho, USA). Her work was twice awarded with the Young scientist Best Paper Award 2010 at the XIII International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar, and 2012 at the 14th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar. Her main research activity is focused on Hydrogeophysics and GPR Full-waveform inversion for borehole and surface data.
Steven Koppenjan has conducted research with subsurface radar since joining the Special Technologies Laboratory, Santa Barbara, CA in 1986.  Mr Koppenjan received his MSEE and BSEE in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UCSB.  He has been the principal investigator in the design and development of several ground penetrating radars and been involved with extensive field tests that also includes other geophysical methods. Mr. Koppenjan was the General Chair of the 9th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR 2002) and is a member of the International GPR Advisory Board.  He is a co-author on the book Ground Penetrating Radar:  Theory and Applications (Elsevier 2009). 
 
Sébastien Lambot received the M.Sc. (magna cum laude) and Ph.D. (summa cum laude) degrees in Agricultural and Environmental Engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 1999 and 2003, respectively. He was with the Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, from 2004 to 2005, as a European Marie-Curie Post-doctoral Scientist. From 2006 to 2012, he was with Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany, as a Research Group Leader. Since 2006, he has been a Professor and FNRS research group leader at UCL. His research interests include electromagnetic modeling for ground-penetrating radar and electromagnetic induction, inversion for non-destructive characterization of soils and materials, hydrogeophysics and remote sensing of the environment. Dr. Lambot was the General Chair of the 3rd International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar in 2005 and is organizing the 15th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar in 2014. He is an Associate Editor for the Vadose Zone Journal.
 
Lanbo Liu received BS and MS in Geophysics from Peking University, and MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering, PhD in Geophysics from Stanford University. He was the Carnegie Fellow at Carnegie Institution of Washington before joining the faculty of Geology and Geophysics of the University of Connecticut. He was the Summer Faculty Fellow at Schlumberger-Doll Research, and at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He is also serving as an Expert for US Army Corps of Engineers. He received the US Army R&D Achievement Award for his work on radio wave propagation in complex terrains. He was a Fulbright Scholar to Norway in 2009-2010. He is currently a Professor at the University of Connecticut. He has more than 100 publications in peer-referred journals, conference proceedings, and technical reports. He served for Geophysics and is serving for Journal of Environmental and Engineering Geophysics as the Associate Editor. His current research concentrates on numerical modeling and imaging with electromagnetic, acoustic, and seismic waves for exploration, military, geotechnical, environmental, and biomedical engineering applications.
 
François Lavoué received the B.Sc. in Geosciences from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (France) in 2008 and the M.Sc. degree in Geophysics from the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (Université Paris 7, France) in 2010. He is now a Ph.D. student at the University of Grenoble (France). His research activity takes place at the Institute for Earth Sciences (ISTerre) and concerns multi-parameter full waveform inversion of ground-penetrating radar (GPR) data. This work was awarded by the Best Student Paper Award at the 7th International Workshop on Advanced GPR (IWAGPR 2013).
 
Guido Manacorda graduated in Electronics Engineering in 1992 from Pisa University. After a few months spent at the Engineering Faculty studying a spectral evaluation method for ultrasound biomedical systems, he joined IDS in January 1993. He contributed to the development of the first innovative array-based GPR’s as part of a project joint project between IDS and Telecom Italia: these prototypes were the basis for the growth of the IDS GPR product line which now features multi-channel and multi-frequency arrays. He has a very wide experience in GPR applications for Non Destructive Testing for the presence of subsoil utilities, buildings, archaeology etc. He is author of many papers in scientific journals and conference publications on GPR design and applications and has been the Chief Engineer of the IDS Georadar division since 1999. He played a key role as IDS project leader in the GIGA EU project within Framework 5 and IDS Project Manager in the Orfeus collaborative researches (6th and 7th Framework) as well as in the Nettun project (7th Framework).
 
Xavier Neyt received a master in engineering (summa cum laude) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in 1994, a postgraduate degree in Signal Processing (summa cum laude) from the Université de Liège (ULg) in 2004 and a PhD in Applied Science from the Royal Military Academy (RMA) and the Université de Liège in 2008. In 1995 he received the Frerichs Award from the ULB and the special IBM grant from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (NFWO). He also serves on the Radar Systems Panel of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society. Since then he has been working as research engineer for the Royal Military Academy, Belgium. In 1996-1997 he was visiting scientist at the French aerospace center (ONERA) and in 1999 at the German aerospace centre (DLR). In 1997-1999 he was responsible for the design of the image compression module of the European MSG satellite and in 2000-2007, responsible for the redesign of the ground processing of the scatterometer of the European ERS satellite following its gyroscope anomaly. Since 2008, he is leading the Scatterometer Engineering Support Laboratory for the European Space Agency at the Royal Military Academy. He is now associate professor at the Communication, Information, Systems and Sensors department of the Royal Military Academy. His research interests are signal processing, radar remote sensing, array processing, bistatic radars and SAR image processing.

Frédéric Nguyen obtained his PhD degree at the Université de Liège in 2005 dedicated to the development and application of geophysical methods to detect and image active faults in slowly deforming regions. During his PhD research, his main interests were to develop methodologies based on image and signal processing to objectively interpret electrical resistivity data and seismic data (active and passive) for shallow surveys. From a seismic hazard point of view, his research allowed unveiling surface ruptures associated with the strongest earthquake recorded in France (Provence) in the twentieth century. He then worked from 2005 to 2008 as a post-doctoral researcher at the Forschungszentrum Jülich within the framework of the European project ALERT on the sustainable management of water resources by automated real-time monitoring in coastal aquifers. His research interest then shifted towards environmental geophysics and inverse problems. He contributed to the development of the code CRTOMO for the inversion of complex electrical resistivity data together with Professor Andreas Kemna. Of particular research interest were the development of image appraisal quantities and time-lapse inversion schemes. Since 2007, he is a Professor in Applied Geophysics at the University of Liège where he leads a research team, and was appointed in 2010 as a part-time Professor at KULeuven. To date, F. Nguyen succesfully supervised three PhDs and two post-doctoral researcher. Currently, he supervises five PhD students. The research focus of his group lies on one hand in solving geophysical inverse problems and associated topics (e.g. uncertainty analysis) and on another hand in the integration of geophysical data in highly multidisciplinary fields of research (geothermy, bioremediation, concrete in civil engineering).

Lara Pajewski received the Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering cum laude from “Roma Tre” University of Rome, Italy, and the Ph.D. in Applied Electromagnetics and Electrophysics Sciences from "La Sapienza" University of Rome, in 2000 and 2004, respectively. From 2004 to 2008 she worked at “Roma Tre” University as a Technician and since 2008 she is a Researcher in Electromagnetics. She is the Chair of COST Action TU1208 “Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar”, launched in April 2013 and involving more than a hundred experts from 20 European Countries (www.GPRadar.eu). Her main research interests are in Ground Penetrating Radar and its applications, solution of electromagnetic forward- and inverse-scattering problems, antennas design and characterization, synthesis of photonic and electromagnetic band-gap metamaterials, electromagnetic pollution and radiation protection. She is the author/co-author of more than 150 scientific works on international books, journals and conference proceedings. She is Western-Europe Editor for the Taylor&Francis Journal “Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation”, since 2011 convenes the Session “Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar” at the annual European Geosciences Union General Assembly (EGU-GA), and since 2013 is a member of the Scientific Committee of the biennial International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar (IWAGPR). At “Roma Tre” University, she holds the "Laboratory of Microwaves and Antennas" course for the Laurea in Electronic Engineering (Bachelor's Degree) and the “Electromagnetic Instrumentation" course for the Laurea Magistralis in “Communication and Information Technology Engineering”, in “Electronic Engineering” and in “Bioengineering” (Master’s Degrees). Dr. Pajewski is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), IEEE Antennas and Propagation - Microwave Theory and Techniques - Geoscience and Remote Sensing – Women in Engineering Societies, European Geosciences Union, Italian Interuniversity Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT), and Italian Society of Electromagnetics (SIEM).
 
Raffaele Persico achieved his degree summa cum laude in Electronic Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II in 1996 and his Ph.D. from the Second University of Naples in 1999. He has been Research Scientist at the Consortium for Advanced Research on Remote Sensing Systems CO.RI.S.T.A. and then at the Institute for Electromagnetic Sensing of the Environment IREA-CNR. In 2007, he joined the Institute for Archaeological and Monumental Heritage IBAM-CNR. His main interests are noninvasive prospecting applied to cultural heritage, inversion approaches applied to GPR data and reconfigurable stepped frequency systems. He is Associated Editor of Near Surface Geophysics and member of the European GPR Association. He chaired the 13th International GPR Conference in 2010
 
Elena Pettinelli received a degree (cum laude) in Geophysics at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Applied Geophysics at the University of Trieste in 1993. In 1993 and 1994 she was a visiting scientist at the University of Waterloo, Canada where she worked on antenna radiation pattern measurements and GPR response from buried targets. Her specific research interests in GPR includes antenna calibration, target identification, geological, environmental and archaeological applications. Since 2000 she has been actively involved in Mars subsurface exploration being part of the Science Team of the A.C.QU.A. (Ares soil Characterization by Quadrupole Analysis) Project, supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI). She is Co Investigator of the SHARAD experiment and cooperate with the MARSIS Science Team for the electromagnetics laboratory instigations on Martian soil simulants and for radar data inversion. She is Co Investigator and responsible of the Italian team for the WISDOM radar onboard of the ESA mission EXOMARS.  She is also Co Investigator of RIME, the orbiting radar sounder for icy satellites exploration which is part of the payload of the next mission JUICE to the Jupiter Galilean satellites. Presently she is assistant professor at the Mathematics and Physics Department of Roma Tre University where she is responsible of the laboratory of “Applied Physics to Earth and Planets”.
 
Cristina Ponti received the First Level Laurea (cum laude) and the Laurea Magistralis (cum laude) in Electronic Engineering, from “Sapienza” University of Rome, in February 2004 and February 2006, respectively. In 2010 she received the PhD degree from the Doctoral School in Engineering of “Roma Tre” University. In the same year she joined the Applied Electronics Department, now Engineering Department, of “Roma Tre” University as an Assistant Researcher. Since 2010 to 2012 she was an Assistant Professor in Electromagnetic Fields, and since 2013 she is an Assistant Researcher. Her research interests include electromagnetic theory, numerical methods, scattering by buried objects, Ground Penetrating Radar, antennas for microwave and millimeter applications, electromagnetic analysis and synthesis of periodic structures, and nuclear fusion. In 2012 she received the Best Paper Award at International Symposium on Antenna and Propagation, in Nagoya, Japan. She participates in the COST Action TU1208 “Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar,” and she is leader of the Action’s Project “Development of new methods for forward electromagnetic scattering by buried objects”. Cristina Ponti is a member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), IEEE Antennas and Propagation (AP) Society and Women in Egineering (WiE) Society, a member of the Italian Society of Electromagnetics (SIEm), and of National Interuniversity Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT).
 
Fayçal Rejiba received a Ph.D (2002) from the University  Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI) and is associate professor of geophysics at the same university. His main research interest is environmental geophysics: modeling, design, prospection and interpretation.
 
Albane Saintenoy received a Ph.D in geophysics in 1998 from the University Paris Diderot. From 1998 to 2000, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Wave Phenomena, Colorado School of Mines, Golden (CO) working on the waveform inversion of borehole vertical profiling radar data. Since September 2000, she joined the Earth Science department of University Paris Sud, France, where she is an Associate Professor. In 2008, she spent a sabbatical year in Jan Hopmans'lab at the University of California in Davis. Her current research interests are GPR survey applications to arctic glacier investigation, archaeological targets, civil engineering testing experiments, and soil hydraulic parameter determination from on-ground GPR measurements.
Motoyuki Sato received the B.E., M.E degrees, and Dr. Eng. degree in information engineering from the Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 1980, 1982 and 1985, respectively.  Since 1997 he is a professor at Tohoku University and a distinguished professor of Tohoku University since 2007, and he was the Director of Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University during 2009-2013.  From 1988 to 1989, he was a visiting researcher at the Federal German Institute for Geoscience and Natural Resources (BGR) in Hannover, Germany. His current interests include transient electromagnetics and antennas, radar polarimetry, ground penetrating radar (GPR), borehole radar, electromagnetic induction sensing, interferometric and polarimetric SAR.  He has conducted the development of GPR sensors for humanitarian demining, and his sensor ALIS which is a hand-held dual sensor, has detected more than 80 mines in mine fields in Cambodia since May 2009. He is a visiting Professor at Jilin University, China, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, and Mongolian University of Science and Technology. He was the technical chair of GPR96 and the general chairperson of IGARSS2011.
 
Evert Slob received the M.Sc. degree in mining and petroleum engineering, and the doctorate degree (cum laude) in applied sciences from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Delft, The Netherlands, in 1989 and 1994, respectively. In 1995, he joined the Department of Applied Earth Sciences, TU Delft; currently he is professor of geophysical electromagnetic methods in the Department of Geoscience & Engineering. He is director of studies Applied Earth Sciences. He is editor in chief for Geophysics (SEG) and associate editor for Near Surface Geophysics (EAGE). His current research interests are EM interferometry, hydrogeophysics, advanced imaging and inversion techniques, heterogeneity determination, and soil characterization including the study of fundamental relations between geological and EM and electrokinetic properties. He published over a 100 international peer reviewed journal papers on these subjects. Dr. Slob was the General Chair of the 10th International Conference on GPR in 2004. He organized ten international workshops and conference sessions and he was guest editor for 11 special journal issues on GPR and hydrogeophysics.
 
Francesco Soldovieri is Senior Research Scientist at IREA-CNR from 2006. He has been member of Scientific Committees and Technical Review panels for the International Conferences on Ground Penetrating Radar from 2004, for International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar from 2003. He was General Chair of the International Workshop on Advanced Ground Penetrating Radar 2007 that has been held in Naples, Italy and General Co-Chair at the International Conferences on Ground Penetrating Radar 2010. He is member of the Editorial Board of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters and of Journal of Geophysics and Engineering.  He has been Technical/Scientific coordinator of the project FP7 ICT-SEC “Integrated System for Transport Infrastructures surveillance and Monitoring by Electromagnetic Sensing”. He is now Coordinator of the Project FP7 IRSES Marie Curie Action “Active and Passive Microwaves for Security and Subsurface imaging (AMISS)”. His actual main scientific interests include electromagnetic diagnostics, inverse scattering, GPR applications, antenna diagnostics and characterization; sea state monitoring through X-band radar images  He is co-author of  more than 160 papers on national and international Journals and about 200 conference proceedings at International Conferences.
 
Mercedes Solla received the Ph.D. degree (cum laude with extraordinary doctorate award) in geodesy and geophysics from the University of Vigo, Spain, in 2010. Her present position is assistant professor at the Defense Centre University (Spanish Naval Academy). Since 2007, she is researcher in the Applied Geotechnologies Research Group of the University of Vigo, which has been recognized as a reference group and competitive research group by the Autonomic Government. Since 2012, she colaborates with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Her current research is focused mainly on GPR and other NDT techniques applied to civil engineering, and FDTD modelling. Since 2012, she is collaborating with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). Dr. Solla is an active member of the COST Action TU1208 “Civil Engineering Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar”. She is a Management Committee Substitute Member representing Spain, and the Vice-Chair of Working Group 4 (“Different Applications of Ground Penetrating Radar and other Non-Destructive Testing Technologies in Civil Engineering”).
 
Anh Phuong Tran obtained his Master in GIS & Water Resources from Sejong University (South Korea) in 2008 and Bachelor in Hydrology from Vietnam National University, Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2005. In 2014, he received his Ph.D. in Agricultural and Environmental Engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium). Since February 2014, he is a Postdoc Researcher at the Environmental science (Earth and Life Science Institute, UCL). From June 2014, he will join Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to work as a postdoc scientist at the Earth Sciences Division. His research interests are radar antenna modeling, full-wave electromagnetic inversion, hydrogeophysics and assimilation of geophysical data for characterization of hydrological and biochemical processes in the subsurface.
Jan van der Kruk received a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering in 1995 and a PhD in Geophysics in 2001 from Delft University of Technology. From 2001 to 2008, he was a lecturer and senior researcher with the Applied and Environmental Geophysics Group at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His research career has focused on the development of imaging and inversion methodologies and their application to solving applied problems. Since 2008, he has held a professorship position with RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and is a research group leader with the Research Center Jülich, Germany. He received in 2000 the Best Paper Award from the Department of Applied Earth Sciences, Delft University of Technology, and Honorable Mention for Best Paper in Geophysics in 2006. In 2011, he was general chair of the International Workshop on Advanced GPR (IWAGPR2011) in Aachen, Germany. In 2012, he presented a SEG online Virtual Class about ”Full-waveform Inversion of Ground Penetrating Radar Data” and he was co-organiser of the SEG-AGU Hydrogeophysics Workshop in Boise, U.S.A. Recent work has focused on the inversion of dispersive GPR waves propagating in surface waveguides, GPR full-waveform inversion techniques, and quantitative multi-configuration inversion of electromagnetic induction data.
 
Marc Van Meirvenne graduated as Agricultural Engineer specialized in soil sciences at the Ghent University, Belgium, in 1982. In 1991 he received his PhD on the application of Geostatistics to characterise soil variability. Since 1993 he is professor at the Department of Soil Management of the Ghent University with current teaching duties on Earth Sciences, Geostatistics and Soil Inventory Techniques. Between 1998 and 2002 he was chairman of the "Working Group on Pedometrics" and since October 2013 he is chairman of the "Working Group on Proximal Soil Sensing" (both working groups belong to the International Union of Soil Sciences). His research Group "ORBit" specializes in non-invasive techniques for soil inventory and applies multi-receiver electromagnetic induction (EMI) sensors to measure simultaneously the electric and magnetic properties of soil. Current research lines integrate EMI with GPR (both time and frequency domain systems). These techniques are implemented to address a wide range of applications such as soil mapping, precision agriculture, archaeological prospection, cleaning of historic battlefields, geological exploration and environmental pollution.
 
Craig Warren received the degrees of B.Eng. in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, and Ph.D. in Engineering from The University of Edinburgh, U.K. in 2003 and 2009, respectively. From 2010 to 2013 he held the positions of Teaching Fellow and Learning Technologist at The University of Edinburgh, U.K. He is currently a lecturer in Mechanical Engineering at Edinburgh Napier University, U.K. His main research interests are the development of numerical models of Ground-Penetrating Radar, and novel applications of GPR to engineering problems. He is also active in the field of engineering education and technology enhanced learning. He is a Chartered Engineer (C.Eng.) in the U.K. and a member of both the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), U.K., and the Institution of Engineering Technology (IET), U.K.
 
Xiong-Yao Xie is a professor and vice head in the Department of Geotechnical Engineering of Tongji University, China. And he is also the Secretary General of the committee of young scientist of Chinese Rock Mechanics and Engineering Society. He got his BS degree from Jinlin University on 1995, got his MS and PhD degree from Tongji University on 1998 and 2002. He did post-doctor research in Polytechnic Lille of France on 2004. And he has been a visiting scholar in Northwestern University, USA from 2008 to 2009. He was the general chairman of GPR 2012 and a guest editor of Journal of Geophysics and Engineering on Oct, 2013. Now his research interest is about non-destructive test in the field of geotechnical engineering and tunnel.
Richard Yelf is an international consultant with more than 35 years experience in Applied Geotechnics and Geophysics. He received his BSc Hons from Liverpool University in 1976 and his MSc from the University College London in 1979. He has worked full time in Ground Penetrating Radar for the past 25+ years. He introduced GPR to Australia in 1984 and commenced PhD studies on Applied GPR at the University of New England in 1985. He was subsequently awarded a National Research Fellowship for his work on the Applications of GPR to Mining and Geotechnical Engineering. He has conducted a very wide range of GPR projects, including Mining, Civil Engineering, Geotechnical Engineering, Environmental, Borehole Radar, Archaeological, Forensic and Military applications. He has numerous publications in the GPR forum and is the editor of the Standards Manual for GPR Testing published by ASEG-SEGJ. In 2004 he received the Inaugural Brite Award for Innovation in the Australian Construction Industry for the development and practical application of high resolution GPR inspection methods for examining concrete structures in civil engineering. He has been heavily involved with the organisation of the International Conferences on GPR since the mid 1980’s and in 2006 and 2008 was the Co-Chair of the technical sessions at this conference. In December 2009 he received an OCE Award from the Australian Government (nominated by CSIRO) for the development of a novel ground radar antenna for very deep penetration. This award funds a 3 year research project which is being conducted in conjunction with CSIRO at the QLD Centre for Advanced Technologies. He is the founder and Managing Director of Georadar Research Pty Ltd, an innovative Australian company which specialises in the introduction and application of new GPR methods.