Avik Bhattacharya (born 1976) is a professor at the Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering,

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT- Bombay or IIT-B) is a public research university and technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. IIT Bombay is mainly known for the highly competitive four-year Bachelor of Tech ...

, Mumbai, India. He has been working in the field of radar polarimetry theory and applications for more than a decade. His main focuses on the use of

synthetic aperture radar Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) is a form of radar that is used to create two-dimensional images or 3D reconstruction, three-dimensional reconstructions of objects, such as landscapes. SAR uses the motion of the radar antenna over a target regi ...

(SAR) data for land use classification, change detection and qualitative and quantitative biophysical and geophysical information estimation.

Education

Bhattacharya received his M.Sc. degree in mathematics from

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur or IIT-KGP) is a public institute of technology, research university, and autonomous institute established by the Government of India in Kharagpur, West Bengal. Founded in 1951, the in ...

West Bengal West Bengal (; Bengali language, Bengali: , , abbr. WB) is a States and union territories of India, state in the East India, eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabi ...

, India, in 2000, and the Ph.D. degree in ''Indexing of Satellite Images Using Structural Information'' from jointly at the Department of Traitement et Interprétation des Images, Télécom Paris-Tech,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

and

INRIA The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics. It was created under the name French Institute for Research in Comp ...

, ARIANA Project Group,

Sophia Antipolis Sophia Antipolis is a 2,400 hectare technology park in southeast France, and as of 2021 home to 2,500 companies, valued today at more than 5.6 billion euros and employing more than 38,000 people counting more than 80 nationalities. The park is ...

in 2007.

Professional career

Bhattacharya joined the Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering,

, in 2011, as an assistant professor. He has been the principal and co-principal investigator of numerous projects sponsored by the Department of Science and Technology (DST),

Defense Research and Development Organization The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is an government agency, agency under the Department of Defence Research and Development in the Ministry of Defence (India), Ministry of Defence of the Government of India, charged with t ...

(DRDO),

Indian Space Research Organization The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO ) is India's national space agency, headquartered in Bengaluru, Karnataka. It serves as the principal research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), overseen by the Prime Minister o ...

(ISRO) and ''GEOGLAM-JECAM'' SAR Inter-Comparison Experiment. He has authored several scientific publications in refereed international journals and conference proceedings Bhattacharya was the

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The editor-in-chief heads all departments of the organization and is held accoun ...

of the ''IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters'' (GRSL) (2019-2024). He is also the founding chairperson of the

IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office i ...

(GRSS) Chapter, Bombay section, India. Bhattacharya has also served as a visiting professor at the following institutes: *LISTIC – Polytech Annecy-Chambéry, Université Savoie-Mont Blanc, France (2018) *Instituto Gulich,

National University of Córdoba The National University of Córdoba (), is a public university located in the city of Córdoba, Argentina. Founded in 1613, the university is the oldest in Argentina, the third oldest university of the Americas, with the first university being ...

, Argentina Space Agency (CONAE), Argentina, (2018) *Visiting Scientist at the Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing Ottawa, ON, Canada (2011)

Major research contributions

*Stochastic Distance Based Y4O Polarimetric SAR Decomposition (SDY4O) This is a radar polarimetric decomposition technique based on the field of statistical information theory. Here a method is devised to estimate the polarization (OA) orientation angle from the full polarimetric SAR data using the Hellinger distance. *Adaptive General Four-Component Scattering Power Decomposition In this method, one out of the two types of complex special unitary transformation matrices is identified and chosen to transform a unitary rotated coherency matrix in real space based on the greatest value of degree of polarization (DOP) commonly termed as adaptive general four-component scattering power decomposition method (AG4U). *Sen4Rice – A cloud-based SAR processing pipeline with Google Earth Engine Here a framework for monitoring and mapping of rice fields especially from rice cultivation regions of India using time-series of

Sentinel-1 Sentinel-1 is the first of the Copernicus Programme satellite constellations conducted by the European Space Agency. The mission was originally composed of a constellation of two satellites, Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B, which shared the same orbi ...

data is developed using the Google Earth Engine's cloud computing platform.

Other research

Other significant research includes development of various methods like relative de-correlation Measure in Polarimetric SAR decomposition, decomposition algorithm development consisting (S-Ω) and Modified (m-χ) and crop monitoring using machine learning. In past, Prof. Bhattacharya was also actively involved in study related to snow dynamics in Himalayas involving SAR data from satellites like

RADARSAT-2 RADARSAT-2 is a Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Earth observation satellite. It launched on 14 December 2007 aboard a Starsem Soyuz-FG rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. The spacecraft is owned by MDA (formerly MacDonald Dettwiler and As ...

Honors and awards

Regional Leader Award (2024) * Australian Government Endeavor Executive Fellowship Award (2016) * Young Faculty Award,

(2011) * Visiting Scientist Fellowship at the

Canada Centre for Remote Sensing The Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation (CCMEO) (formerly ''Canada Centre for Remote Sensing (CCRS)'') is a branch of Natural Resources Canada's Earth Science Sector. It was created in 1970 with Lawrence Morley as the first Director Gen ...

under ''Canadian National Laboratories'' (2008)

Selected bibliography

Articles

* * * * *

Books

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bhattacharya, Avik 1976 births Living people Academic staff of IIT Bombay IIT Kharagpur alumni Télécom Paris alumni Remote sensing professionals People from Kharagpur