A Note from Dr. Gens
What an experience! From the feedback, we have concluded that there is a need for this kind of course and we hope to provide it again next summer.
In late June, we had a two-week summer course, SAR and InSAR: Principles and Applications. The rapid paced, two-week summer course was very intense. Nevertheless, it allowed people to learn about SAR and InSAR without taking a semester long course that may not be available at other universities.
The days of the course were divided in two parts: 1) lectures were held in the mornings and, 2) hands-on lab exercises filled the afternoons. During the first week, we covered SAR fundamentals, processing, geocoding, terrain correction and SAR applications. In the second week we tackled in-depth interferometry techniques including interferometric processing, interferogram generation, phase unwrapping, DEM generation and differential interferometry.
ASF welcomed guest lecturer, Richard Carande, of Neva Ridge Technologies, who provided an overview of SAR data and a glimpse of its current applications in research. ASF Engineering Manager, Jeremy Nicoll, introduced the class to our SAR training processor and its various functions. Additionally, presentations from the ASF and UAF research community, including Matt Nolan, Claude Duguay and myself, provided results of extensive research work that utilized a number of different SAR methods and applications.
We learned a lot from the students about their particular application backgrounds, spanning volcanology and glaciology to various forms of deformation measurement. The sessions were extremely interactive with a lot of questions, answers and interest in the processing aspects of SAR and SAR interferometry.
As the main instructor of the summer SAR class, and on behalf of ASF, I would like to thank the course participants (especially the 10 students that visited us from outside Alaska), collaborative guests and researchers whose contributions made the sessions a complete success.
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