• Date: 8-12 January 2024
• Location: Hotel Caracol, Terceira Island, Azores , Portugal
  
• Timezone: UTC -1; GMT-1
• Event Type: Hybrid, full-week, technical and networking. Remote is watch-only; active participation is limited.
• Registration for attendance in person is by invitation only

• Online attendance: Registration (Zoom)
• Slack channel: julialang.slack.com juliaeo (Channel ID: juliaeo )
• GitHub: JuliaEO24 repository (notebooks)
• JuliaEO 2023:
• Website
• GitHub: JuliaEO repository (notebooks)
• Datasets: Google Drive (Please download before the workshop)
• Subscribe to the workshop calendar

The training workshop jointly organized by the Atlantic International Research Centre (AIR Centre) and the United Nations Conference on Trade (UNCTAD) and Development aims at developing the computer programming skills of those working on Earth Observation, including the members of the Earth Observation Laboratory (EO Lab) and other laboratories.

To stimulate collaboration beyond the training, the workshop is in person (full week). However, due to the high level of interest, remote participation is also possible. Remote participants will be able to watch the sessions live. Remote active participation is possible but limited to text chat.

The topics covered include acquisition, processing, visualisation, and classification of Earth Observation data, using the Julia programming language.

The training workshop will emphasize practical activities including the use of datasets, libraries/packages, automated workflows, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and classification algorithms. Theory-oriented sessions will introduce the concepts and hands-on activities.

The open-source Julia language is relatively recent. It was created at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), first released in 2012, and reached the v1.0 milestone in 2018. Julia has a vocation for high-performance scientific computing, making it today’s ideal choice to work on resource-intensive datasets such as the Earth Observation ones.

Mutual benefits expected to arise from the collaboration of the AIR Centre and the Julia community include:

• Capacity building for invited institutions.
• Create collaboration opportunities between the participants and speakers.
• Create the potential to extend the Portuguese contribution to the scientific community.
• Bringing together the two communities around Julia: developers and end-users.
• Opening new avenues for collaboration on both software and science.
• Contributing to strengthening the open source / science community.
• Creating an axis of collaboration to study the Azores region using Earth Observation, numerical models, and data products.
• Finding new prospective contributors to Julia packages; helping developers build up their user community; identifying needs and desired new features.
• Providing additional exposure for the products and activity of the AIR Centre; via US and EU growing Julia communities.

The workshop will encompass different levels of expertise, from beginner to advanced, with a focus on Earth Observation concepts and programming skills.

Please be aware that online sessions will not be available on Friday, as this day is specifically designed for in-person participation.

 10:05 - 11:00: 1.1- Plots, Animations, & Graphics.  Mr. Simon Danisch

 11:05 - 12:00: 1.2- Visualizing Earth Observation Data with Tyler.jl.  Mr. Simon Danisch

The following speakers have been selected from the Julia community to participate in this training event. The speakers involve a mix of seasoned and young/aspiring scientists. The selection was based on the level of skill and commitment demonstrated, with contributions to the EO software packages which are most needed for AIR Centre’s current work and future development.

Additionally, there are a small group of scientists from the AIR Centre or related to its activities.

Confirmed Speakers (alphabetically)

Alexander Barth

Alexander Barth is an associate professor at the GeoHydrodynamics and Environment Research (GHER) group, of the University of Liège (Belgium). He obtained his PhD in 2004 at the University of Liège on data assimilation in nested ocean models. After his post-doc at the College of Marine Science of the University of South Florida, he worked on variational interpolation with DIVA and DIVAnd and he is principal investigator of several European projects aiming to apply and improve these tools for generating climatologies based on in situ observations. Recently he also investigated the use of machine learning techniques with ocean remote sensing data.

• GitHub
• ORCID

Andrea Giusti

Andrea Giusti is a Project Developer in the AIR Centre, supporting the execution of technical activities of the Earth Observation Laboratory related to the analysis of remote sensing data, design of geospatial workflows, including results dissemination and outreach activities. He holds a master’s degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Bologna. Previously, he collaborated within the United Nations Satellite Centre (UNOSAT) as GIS Analyst.

• LinkedIn

Chris Rackauckas

Research Affiliate and Co-PI of the Julia Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Director of Modeling and Simulation at Julia Computing and Creator / Lead Developer of JuliaSim Director of Scientific Research at Pumas-AI and Creator / Lead Developer of Pumas Lead Developer of the SciML Open Source Software Organization.

• GitHub
• Website
• X Twitter

Emanuel Castanho

Emanuel holds a master’s degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Beira Interior (UBI), Portugal. Currently, he works at the EO Lab (AIR Centre) as a Project Developer in projects of national and European scope. His specialization is EO data applications across ocean science domains, with a special focus on advanced machine learning techniques applied to satellite optical data to detect marine pollution. He is also involved in operation phases of new satellite missions, including use case definition according to stakeholder needs.

• GitHub

Francisco Campuzano

Francisco Campuzano is an oceanographer and numerical modeller at +ATLANTIC CoLAB. He was formed in the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain) and holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal) and an M.Sc. in Estuarine and Coastal Management and Science from the University of Hull (U.K.). He was involved in more than 20 European and national research projects. He is co-chairing the ICES WGOOFE WG and a member of three EuroGOOS Working Groups: IBI-ROOS, MONGOOS and Coastal. He is a member of Copernicus Marine Service Champion User Advisory Group (CUAG) and member of several UN Ocean Decade actions including EMODnet4OD-CIG and steering committee member in CoastPredict and Ocean Prediction DCC. He also participates in OSPAR ICG-EMO WG. He leads the EMODnet physics river node for providing near real time river data. In recent times, he was involved in the development of oceanographic operational systems linking watersheds, estuaries and the open ocean (Brito et al., 2015; Campuzano et al., 2016; Campuzano, 2018). He has led several European projects of operational oceanography and environmental management (e.g., Atlantic Area iFADO & CMEMS-LAMBDA) and is the author/co-author of 26 scientific papers and 16 book chapters.

• LinkedIn

Iga Szczesniak

Iga is a Project Developer at the Earth Observation Laboratory of the AIR Centre. She holds a master’s degree in Geoinformatics, Photogrammetry, and Remote Sensing obtained from the University of Science and Technology. Iga is involved in the implementation of projects using Earth Observation data and the Internet of Things, as well as the Julia programming language. Furthermore, she is interested in the commercialization of technology and sustainable development. Currently, she is pursuing a master's program in space entrepreneurship at the European Institute for Innovation and Sustainability.

• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• X Twitter

Indra A. Books

With 25 years of experience in both the public and private sectors, Indra has a passion for working with organizations to effect meaningful, goal-oriented change resulting in high-performing and inclusive team culture. She works to shift the focus in organizations to investments in culture, people, and mindset and from short-term process concerns to long-term outcomes.

• LinkedIn
• Website

Joaquim Luís

Joaquim Luis obtained his PhD in Geophysics in 1996, IPGP, France. He is currently an Auxiliary Professor at the University of Algarve. His research interests include Marine Geophysics, namely North Atlantic marine magnetic compilation, plate kinematics, tsunami modeling and scientific programming writing and development of visualization tools. He is a core developer of the Generic Mapping Tools since 2008, co-author of the GMTMEX (GMT MATLAB interface) and NSWING a tsunami modeling tool in C; and author of the Mirone (a MATLAB GMT GUI for Windows) and the Julia GMT.jl & RemoteS.jl packages.

Júlio Hoffimann

Dr. Hoffimann has more than 10 years of experience developing advanced statistical software for geosciences. He is the creator and lead developer of the GeoStats.jl framework, as well as various other open source projects that are widely used by the Julia language community.

His career goals include:

1. Advancing the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence to account for challenges that are unique to geosciences

2. Establishing new methodologies for uncertainty quantification and decision making involving the use of natural resources in the planet

To achieve these goals, he founded Arpeggeo®, a software company that offers consulting services and high-performance products written in Julia.

• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• ORCID

Kristian Sørensen

Kristian Aalling Sørensen earned his Master's in Earth and Space Physics and Engineering from the National Space Institute of Denmark (DTU Space) in 2021 with a specialisation on Earth Observation. Following his Master's, he pursued a Ph.D. at DTU Security from, where he worked to enhance maritime domain awareness and surveillance through the integration of satellite data and AI. His academic journey also included research in Canada, Korea, and Norway. Currently, he is channeling his expertise into a startup venture. His research primarily revolves around the fusion of satellite data, including Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and AIS data for mairtime surveiallance, and the development of predictive models for, e.g., trajectories.

• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• ORCID

Milan Klöwer

Milan Klöwer is a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He did his PhD at the University of Oxford, working on climate model development, low precision computing, data compression and information theory, predictability of weather and climate, and software engineering. During that time, he proposed the bitwise real information content as a way to distinguish between valuable information and noise in climate data, with the reference implementation BitInformation.jl. He currently develops SpeedyWeather.jl, a global atmospheric model designed to be a computational research playground to develop prototype ideas on computationally efficient climate models.

• GitHub
• Mastodon
• X Twitter
• ORCID

Manuel Rentschler

Manuel holds a MSc in Ship and Marine Technology from University of Rostock, Germany. During his industrial career he worked mainly on aero- and hydrodynamic analyses of floating renewable energy devices, aquaculture systems, and ships. He specialized in Computational Fluid Dynamics, cable dynamics, mooring design, and scientific coding. In 2022, he started a PhD at Instituto Superior Técnico working on numerical modelling of tidal energy resources and hydrokinetic turbines. More precisely, he is investigating new approaches to bridge the scale gap between regional ocean models and high-fidelity numerical tools enabled by High-Performance Computing methods. Computational performance, verification and validation of the developed numerical models are key aspects of the ongoing research. For instance, he is simulating tidal currents in Tagus estuary using the open-source water modeling software MOHID running in parallel mode on multi-core clusters.

• LinkedIn

Mariana Ávila

Mariana Ávila holds an Integrated Master’s Degree in Biological Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, and currently is a Project Developer in the Azores Earth Observation Lab, from the Atlantic International Research Centre. She has been actively involved in fundraising activities and project development in national and international contexts related to ocean and land use management and Earth Observation. Since January 2022 Mariana is also a PhD student in the University of La Laguna, working on the development of remote sensing- based approaches for pastureland monitoring, assessment and management in small oceanic islands.

• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• X Twitter

Nathanael Wong

Nathanael is a 5th-year PhD Candidate at Harvard University studying Tropical climate using a range of observations, reanalysis and modelling tools. He has developed a few Julia packages, such as GeoRegions.jl and NASAPrecipitation.jl, to help with his work that requires retrieval and use of Earth Observational datasets. He also uses Julia to analyze model output from WRF and SAM.

• GitHub
• X Twitter

Sébastien Lhoumeau

Sébastien Lhoumeau, PhD student of Biology (University of the Azores), has an M.D. in Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution with a speciality in terrestrial and tropical ecology. He is currently working in the Azores archipelago on the structures of native forest and the links with arthropods food webs. His research interests are in Arthropod Ecology, Biodiversity, Networks, Ecosystem Services, Remote sensing, Biostatistics and use of new technologies.

• LinkedIn

Simon Danisch

Simon is the author of Makie and currently works full time on Makie as a freelancer. He has been part of the Julia community for more than 10 years and is the author of many Julia packages. To just name a few that are still actively used by many people in the Julia community: Makie, GeometryBasics, GPUArrays, PackageCompiler, JSServe and FileIO.

His mission has always been, to create a sustainable plotting and graphics ecosystem for Julia, which enables visualizations in need of high performance as well as making it very easy to quickly create simple plots and integrate them into dashboards.

Nowadays, with Climate change threatening to destroy the fundament of our modern life, he is focusing his efforts on making sure that Makie works well for climate science to better understand the changes that are coming for us.

• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• X Twitter
• ORCID

Simon Kok Lupemba

Simon, the newest addition to the Scatterometry team at EUMETSAT, contributes to the operational observation of ocean winds needed for global weather forecasts. His daily work involves using Julia to monitor and maintain processing software for the ASCAT instruments aboard the METOP satellites. Additionally, he contributes to developing software tools for the upcoming SCA instrument on the METOP second-generation satellites.

Simon holds an MSc in Earth and Space Physics and Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark. His interest in Julia began during his studies in 2019. After a 2-year period of working with C# on medium-sized public IT projects in Denmark, Simon eagerly embraced the chance to return to scientific computing with Julia upon joining EUMETSAT.

Simon is excited about the potential to use Julia to improve the processing chain of Earth Observation (EO) and wants to play a part in the realization of this potential.

• LinkedIn
• GitHub

Tiago Gomes

Tiago is an Aerospace Engineer with a CFD specialization from Instituto Superior Técnico (Lisbon, Portugal). His Master Thesis focused on the verification of moving grid methods for the CFD simulation of wind turbines. Since then, while at blueOASIS, he has worked on various projects, and published several papers, in topics related to CFD applied to ocean sustainable solutions. Another one of his interests is underwater acoustics, having developed RAINDROP, the new underwater noise propagation tool from blueOASIS, capable of producing noise maps in real-time. Moreover, he is currently working on a project to model the waves in the World Surfing Reserve of Ericeira, using the tool REEF3D, in a partnership with the developers of the code at NTNU (Trondheim, Norway).

• LinkedIn

• Capacity building of the AIR Centre and invited institutions.
• Establish relationships with, and expand the Julia community.
• Establish the AIRCentre as an active member of the Julia community.
• Contribute to the development of existing packages.
• Identify opportunities for the creation of new packages.
• Strengthen the scientific community/network around the Atlantic/world.
• Seeding future collaborations.

1. Is there a fee to attend the workshop? No.
2. Do I need to register to attend the workshop?
   Yes. If you (your institution) received an invitation, please write to juliaeo@aircentre.org and request access to the form to register.
   
3. Does the AIR Centre provide transfers between the airport and the hotel? Yes, but only for the speakers on Terceira Island.
4. How to access the Slack channel? Go to the julialang.slack.com Workspace and type juliaeo in the Slack search bar.

The workshop will take place at Hotel do Caracol in Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira Island. The hotel is located close to the Historic Centre of the Town of Angra do Heroísmo ​​inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Invited speakers will also be hosted at the hotel.

In-person participants who wish to stay at the hotel shall mention the event to get special pricing.

• Joao Pinelo, Iga Szczesniak