2008 Data Fusion Contest: MSU team among top five

A Mississippi State University team is the sole U.S. entry ranked among the top five in recent worldwide computing competition attracting more than 2,000 submissions.

MSU also is the only one among the five with an all-student team in the 2008 Data Fusion Contest, a part of the International Geosciences and Remote Sensing Symposium held this year in Boston, Mass.

Final scores were so close and number of entries so large that a 1-5 ranking was not issued. The four other top teams came from France, Italy and Spain.

Representing MSU-and the United States-in the final recognition were Jacob A. Bowen of Belden; Jeffrey S. “Jeff” Brantley and Terrance R. West, both of Meridian; Matthew A. Lee of Millbrook, Ala., and Saurabh Prasad of Starkville.

Bowen and Brantley are senior computer engineering majors; Lee, a doctoral student in computer engineering; and Prasad and West, doctoral students in electrical engineering.

In addition to the team achievement, Prasad received the first-place award for student research papers. His entry in this category was selected over those of peers at Colorado State and Ohio State universities, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, and institutions in China, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Using satellite-collected data, the team event required the design and implementation of automated image-processing systems to produce the most accurate groundcover maps.

All of the MSU team members, along with adviser Lori Mann Bruce, work on campus at the GeoResources Institute. Bruce is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and the institute’s associate director.

“All of the other top five teams had non-students, including research faculty members,” she said. “Ours is made up exclusively of currently enrolled students.”

Prasad’s first-place win “also is most impressive when you consider the international field of entrants against whom he was competing,” she added.

Bruce said she and colleagues in the GRI and Bagley College of Engineering “are very proud of our students and the leadership they demonstrated under pressure in the contest.”

Now in its 28th year, the IGARSS symposium is sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and its Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society.

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