Prof. Jonathan Bull
Talk: Water Column Measurement, Monitoring and Verification for Carbon Capture and Storage Complexes

Professor Jonathan Bull is based at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton, University of Southampton, U.K. He uses passive and active acoustics to understand the environment both within the water column and beneath the seabed. His work is characterized by the leadership of large projects which has included: the development of machine learning algorithms to analyze acoustic sources; the design, build and application of high-resolution 3D seismic systems (3D Chirp); the development of new active acoustic systems to monitor carbon capture and storage complexes. He has developed a broad understanding of the propagation of the acoustic wave field through the water column and the sub-seabed from numerous projects in regions as diverse as Bangladeshi rivers, offshore New Zealand, the central Indian Ocean, the northern North Sea. Currently he is working on acoustic systems to detect gas flux emissions across the seabed, including from new carbon capture and storage complexes. Another major focus is on real-time detection of acoustic sources in the water column utilizing linear hydrophone arrays on the seabed, connection to a surface buoy, and communication to shore stations.

Prof. Woon-Seng Gan
Talk: Spatial Audio Intelligence: Sound Event Localization and Detection

Woon-Seng Gan is a Full Professor of Audio Engineering and Director of the Smart Nation TRANS (national) Lab in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He received his BEng (1st Class Hons) and Ph.D. degrees, both in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, the UK in 1989 and 1993, respectively. He has held several leadership positions at Nanyang Technological University, including serving as the Head of the Information Engineering Division from 2011 to 2014, and as the Director of the Centre for Info-comm Technology from 2016 to 2019. His research has been concerned with the connections between the physical world, signal processing, and sound control, which resulted in the practical demonstration and licensing of spatial audio algorithms, directional sound beams, and active noise control for headphones and open windows. He has published more than 400 international refereed journals and conference papers, co-authored three books, and has translated his research into 6 granted US patents. He is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES); a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET); and elected as the IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer. He served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE/ACM Transaction on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing (TASLP; 2012-15); Senior Area Editor of the IEEE Signal Processing Letters (SPL, 2019-24); and serving as the Associate Technical Editor of the Journal of Audio Engineering Society (JAES; 2013-); Senior Editorial member of the Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association Transaction on Signal and Information Processing (ATSIP; 2011-). He is also elected as a member of the prestigious IEEE Audio and Acoustic Signal Processing technical committee to drive audio /acoustic activities in the IEEE signal processing community. He is currently the President of the Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA).

Prof. Andrew Singer
Talk: Title to be announced

Professor Andrew Singer is the Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Stony Brook University, with courtesy appointments in the Institute for Advanced Computational Science and the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. He earned his S.B., S.M., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and previously served as the Fox Family Endowed Professor and Associate Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A nationally recognized scholar and technology entrepreneur, he has secured over $35 million in research funding, published more than 270 peer-reviewed articles, and holds 12 U.S. patents across signal processing, communications, acoustics, and financial modeling. Additionally, Prof. Singer co-founded Intersymbol Communications, Inc. and OceanComm, formerly served as a research scientist at Sanders (a Lockheed-Martin Company), and directed UIUC’s Technology Entrepreneur Center. He is an IEEE Fellow and the recipient of numerous accolades, including the NSF CAREER Award, the Xerox Faculty Research Award, and multiple best paper awards from the IEEE.

Prof. Filippo Campagnaro
Talk: Low-cost underwater acoustic modems and their application in everyday life: from niche applications to everyday use

Professor Filippo Campagnaro (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in information engineering from the Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Padua, Italy, in 2019. He is currently an Assistant Professor within the same department and the Co-Founder of SubSeaPulse SRL, a startup company active in developing innovative solutions for underwater communications and wireless sensors for studying biodiversity and climate change in coastal areas. Since 2014, he has been working in UW networks, participated in more than 20 sea trials, and developed several research and industrial prototypes. Since 2021, he has also been working on wireless sensors for studying biodiversity and climate change in coastal areas. He is one of the maintainers of the DESERT Underwater framework for underwater network simulation and experimentation.

Prof. Chengbin He
Talk: OTFS for Underwater Acoustic Communications: From Theory to Experimental Validation

Professor Chengbing He (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the School of Marine Science and Technology, Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), Xi’an, China, in 2009. He joined the faculty of NPU in the same year and is currently a Professor. His research interests focus on underwater acoustic communications. He currently serves as a member of the Executive Committee and Chair of the Conference Committee of the IEEE Xi’an Section. He has also served on the Organizing Committee of IEEE ICSPCC since 2011.

Prof. Lu Ma
Talk: High-Reliability Underwater Acoustic Communication: Diversity Processing Research and Preliminary Study on Semantic Communication

Professor Lu Ma, PhD Supervisor, Harbin Engineering University, IEEE Senior Member. She is a recipient of the National Young Talents Program, and won the 2022 Heilongjiang Province Youth Science and Technology Award. She is mainly engaged in underwater acoustic high-speed communication and networking. She has published more than 50 papers, and has authorized 40 invention patents. She has been serving as the Associate Editor of IET Communications since 2019, and deputy Director of Heilongjiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Marine Information Technology. And she was selected as the IEEE OES WIE PROPEL Laureates 2022-2023. She won the first prize of Science and Technology Progress of Heilongjiang Province, the first prize of Science and Technology Award of China Society of Naval Architecture Engineering, the first prize of Ocean Engineering Science and Technology Award and so on.

Prof. Yahong Rosa Zheng
Talk: Massive MIMO Transmit Arrays for Underwater Acoustic Communications Using Aperiodic Tiling

Professor Yahong Rosa Zheng received the Ph.D. degree from Carleton University, Ottawa, ONT, Canada, in 2002. She was an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow for two years with the University of Missouri-Columbia. Then, she was on the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology for 13 years. Since Aug. 2018, she has been a professor in the ECE department at Lehigh University. Her research interests include underwater and underground IoT, wireless communications, wireless sensor networks, compressive sensing, machine learning and robotics. She has served as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member for many IEEE international conferences. She served as Associate Editor for three IEEE journals and a senior editor for IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine. She is currently an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering. She is the recipient of an NSF faculty CAREER award in 2009. She has been an IEEE fellow since 2015. She has also served as Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and on the IEEE Fellow evaluation committee of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society in the past few years. She founded Sea-Gal Technologies Inc. in 2023.