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EROS and Ƶ — 50 years of collaboration

Thomas Loveland, chief scientist at EROS and co-director of the Ƶ GIS Center of Excellence, speaks at the center’s Sept. 1, 2005, dedication. Behind him, from left, are Senator John Thune, Senator Tim Johnson, EROS Director R.J. Thompson, South Dakota Board of Regents Executive Director Robert (Tad) Perry and Ƶ President Peggy Gordon-Miller.
Thomas Loveland, chief scientist at EROS and co-director of the Ƶ GIS Center of Excellence, speaks at the center’s Sept. 1, 2005, dedication. Behind him, from left, are Senator John Thune, Senator Tim Johnson, EROS Director R.J. Thompson, South Dakota Board of Regents Executive Director Robert (Tad) Perry and Ƶ President Peggy Gordon-Miller.

Ƶ formed its Remote Sensing Institute in 1969, EROS Data Center near Baltic opened in August 1973, and a year later EROS began a cooperative education program agreement with Ƶ to place students in work assignments paired with classroom studies. 

In the past 50 years, the connections between the university and the Earth Resources Observation and Science Center have been deeply intertwined. The relationship that began with Dennis Helder, Mary O’Neill and June Thormodsgard has continued through today’s group of collaborators, which is led at Ƶ by Larry Leigh, director of the Ƶ Image Processing Lab.

Leigh began working at the lab in fall 1999 as he finished his master’s degree and became the director with Helder’s retirement in June 2019.

“The strong relationship between Ƶ and EROS has been very enjoyable and beneficial to our students,” Leigh said.

“We are able to train the next generation of satellite calibration and validation engineers, working on real-world problems for real customers. Our students can be found at EROS in the Cal/Val group, where the number of students from Ƶ represents a significant portion of the group, but you will also find them at NASA and numerous commercial programs around the USA.

“I believe the reason our students are sought after is due to our strong partnership with USGS EROS and the fact students actually ‘play with’ real data and work real problems,” Leigh said.

This . 

To.

To read about Leigh’s history with EROS and the lab’s ongoing work.

The latest news on the Image Processing Lab.

 

 

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