Personnel of the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory:
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Wolfgang Fink, Ph.D., is a Senior Researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, Visiting Research Associate Professor of both Ophthalmology and Neurological Surgery at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, and Visiting Associate in Physics at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. Dr. Fink conducts research in the areas of theoretical and applied physics, biomedicine, astrobiology, computational field geology, and autonomous planetary and space exploration. He is the founder and head of the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory at Caltech. Dr. Fink has been conducting interdisciplinary research at the interface of physics and medical sciences over many years, and, as a sub-discipline of Computational Medicine, has established a novel research field, namely Computational Ophthalmology. Furthermore, he conducts research and development efforts towards tier-scalable reconnaissance mission architectures for autonomous planetary and space exploration.
Dr. Fink is the recipient of the 2002 NASA Spaceflight Awareness Launch Honoree Award in support of human space flight, and the co-recipient of the “Silver Award”, awarded to the Evolutionary Computation Group at JPL, for demonstrating Human Competitive Performance (“Humie Award”) for “Evolutionary Computational Techniques for the Automated Design of Space Systems” from the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) 2005. In 2006 Dr. Fink won the Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC) 2006 “Huygens Probe Competition”, which was held at the World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI) 2006 in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Dr. Fink is a founding Co-Investigator to the recently (2003) awarded NSF-funded Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center at USC. His work is documented in numerous publications and patents. Dr. Wolfgang Fink joined JPL in 2001 as a Senior Researcher after completing a 3-year Postdoctoral Scholarship in Physics with Dr. Steven Koonin (Chief Scientist of BP and former Provost of Caltech) at Caltech. He earned his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics in 1997 from the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the Eberhard-Karls-University of Tübingen, Germany, in the groups of Dr. Erich Schmid and Dr. Eberhart Zrenner (Head of German Retinal Implant Project). His Ph.D. research concerned the interdisciplinary field of Applied Theoretical Physics and Ophthalmology/Neuro-ophthalmology. In 1993 Wolfgang earned his Diploma in Physics (M.S.) from the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Georg-August-University of Göttingen, Germany, working on models of Neural Networks in the group of Dr. Annette Zippelius and Dr. Andreas Engel.
Mr. Mark Tarbell is a senior software design engineer with more than 20 years of large-scale computer architecture analysis, design, and development. Mr. Tarbell designed and implemented the SRTM Space Shuttle ground data processor control infrastructure for JPL, which processed an unprecedented 9.8 terabytes of data (14,000 CDs) into ultra-high resolution 3D digital topography of the entire globe. He has designed and implemented real-time automation systems for radio dish antennae, large-scale (multi-terabyte) data archiving and retrieval systems, and distributed client/server command and control processing infrastructures for the U.S. military. For the Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory at Caltech, recently, he co-designed and implemented a remote telecommanding control system for a test bed for autonomous surface exploration, and co-developed an artificial vision support system, which uses various vision processing algorithms to interface to patients' implanted microelectrode retinal array prostheses in real time. He was involved with JPL's Jason JTCCS project, which supports real-time telecommanding of earth-orbiting satellites from wireless handheld PDAs. And most recently, he is the editor and illustrator of the IEEE Computer Society 60th Anniversary volume, The Cognitive Dynamics of Computer Science by S.M. de Gyurky.
Mr. Tarbell is the recipient of the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Group Achievement Award, the NIMA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission Team Award, the NASA Certificate of Recognition for Development of Technical Innovation, and a NASA TechBrief Award. He is an active member of the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Victor R. Baker is Regents' Professor of the University of Arizona in the departments of hydrology and water resources, planetary sciences and geosciences. He has more than 30 years experience in planetary science research, particularly in geological studies of Mars and Venus. He also has had long experience with interpretive studies of terrestrial remote sensing, especially in regard to his specialties in fluvial geomorphology and flood hydrology. Dr. Baker is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Honorary Fellow of the European Geosciences Union, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Foreign Member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He was the 1998 President of The Geological Society of America, and he holds the 2001 Distinguished Scientist Award from the Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division of that society. He is author or editor of 14 scholarly books or monographs, more than 300 scientific papers and chapters, and over 400 published abstracts and short reports.
Wentai Liu, Ph.D., professor of electrical engineering, has received the 2006 Outstanding Alumnus Award from Taiwan National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. Dr. Liu is campus director of the Center for Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems and leads UCSC's participation in a major project for the development of an artificial retina. His research interests include biomimetic microsystems, molecular electronics, microelectronics sensor design, and computer vision and image processing. Dr. Liu received a B.S. in electrical engineering from National Chiao Tung University, an M.S. in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, and a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Before joining the UCSC faculty in 2003, he was the Alcoa Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University.
Dirk Schulze-Makuch, is Associate Professor at Washington State University. His most recent scientific accomplishments are the publication of his book "Life in the Universe: Expectations and Constraints" (Springer Publ., Berlin, 2004) along with many refereed papers in international journals. His research is centered on a broad range of topics with astrobiological relevance. He is the Director of the Laboratory for Astrobiological Investigations & Space Mission Planning.
Laboratory for Astrobiological Investigation & Space Mission Planning
In addition to serving as head of Digital Media Services, Wayne Waller, manages the Digital Media Center (DMC) at Caltech and participates in its consulting, production, and teaching activities. He is also a Member of the Professional Staff at Caltech. Wayne attended UC Berkeley's School of Architecture and during his years there worked as a research coordinator at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, first for Luis Alvarez's group and later the Trilling-Goldhaber Research Group (his first indirect connection with Caltech). He went on to a second educational career at UCLA in film production and, eventually, to graduate and post-graduate work in the critical study of media. While on the faculty at USC, Wayne became part of a small group of early experimenters with interactive multimedia computing, eventually leaving to help establish a new software company. The pioneering work of this small firm in the use of the computer in psychotherapy and interpersonal problem-management was later honored by the Smithsonian Institute for software innovation in Medicine (1990). Before coming to Caltech, Wayne also worked extensively as a designer and communications consultant with corporate and institutional clients that included Johnson and Johnson, Harvard University, and numerous companies in the advertising and entertainment industries.
Digital Media Center Web Pages
Student feedback:
"My name is Ankur Datta and I am currently a PhD student at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University. I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Fink during my summer internship at Caltech in 2003. Dr. Fink at that time had an idea about extracting geologically valuable features from images of rock terrain and the goal for me was to utilize my computer vision knowledge to make it a working system. During the course of 3 months that I was there, he served as a capable mentor and more importantly a really nice person to interact with. Though I was technically under a JPL project, there were numerous occasions when he traveled to Caltech to have project discussions with me, which obviously saved me the trouble of going to JPL. We had quite a fruitful collaboration with 2 conference papers published and a journal paper currently under preparation. Now that I look back, it was quite easily the most productive and fun internship that I had done during my undergraduate years. The discussions with him are always lively and his ability to create a positive outlook on the mentor-mentee relationship is quite valuable for any student. I would highly recommend Dr. Fink as a mentor."
"My name is Daniel Micol, I am a Computer Science student from Spain and Wolfgang Fink was my SURF mentor in Summer 2005, on a project entitled 'SIMEYE: Computer Based Simulation of Visual Perception Under Various Eye Defects'. During the whole term of the SURF project Wolfgang Fink demonstrated to be very committed to me and my project, with several weekly meetings that could last for hours. Hence, I always felt supported and guided by him, and this was a determining factor to make our project finally successful. In fact, we presented a poster at an International Congress and have published a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, which is a tremendous success for a project that only lasted about two months. In addition, he always welcomes students not only from Caltech, but in particular also international students and from other US universities, in contrast to the majority of SURF mentors, that only accept Caltech students. Thus, I would strongly encourage any SURF applicant to consider Wolfgang Fink as his future mentor and I am sure he won't feel unattended in any moment."
"My name is Anna Michalska and I am a Computer Science student from the International University in Bremen, Germany. In summer 2006 I undertook research under the guidance of Wolfgang Fink, Ph.D., a seasoned mentor at the California Institute of Technology and Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, USA. My personal project involved: 'Comprehensive Web Page Design for the General Public and Domain Experts'. From the very beginning I knew that my experience at Caltech would be unique, which was definitely a merit of my mentor - Prof. Wolfgang Fink. It was he who always provided me with an invaluable atmosphere that encouraged creativity and innovation. Our "never-ending" meetings to consult the progress of the research project were stimulating and mind-expanding. We worked hard on designing and implementing accessible templates of a web page. In the end I felt great satisfaction from the finished project under the supervision of Wolfgang Fink, Ph.D., who empowered me to take on that challenge."
