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Prof. Antonio J. Plaza


As of September 13, 2022 this website is no longer maintained - see http://sites.google.com/view/antonioplaza for updated information

 

IEEE Fellow

"for contributions to hyperspectral data processing and parallel computing of Earth observation data"
 

Highly cited researcher: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

Member of Academia Europaea - The Academy of Europe (elected in 2020)

Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association

Research Profiles: Google Scholar - Scopus - Publons - Orcid - DBLP - ResearchGate - LinkedIn 


Full Professor / Catedrático de Universidad

Head of the Hyperspectral Computing Laboratory 

Department of Technology of Computers and Communications

Escuela Politécnica de Cáceres, University of Extremadura / Universidad de Extremadura (UEX)

Avda. de la Universidad S/N, E-10003 Cáceres (SPAIN)

Phone: +34 927 257 000 (Dial extension 51662 during voice message)

E-mail: aplaza@unex.es

 


Bio and research interests. Antonio J. Plaza was born in Caceres, SPAIN, in March 1975. He received the Computer Engineer degree in 1997, the M.Sc. degree in 1999, and the Ph.D. degree in 2002, all in Computer Engineering. Dr. Plaza is a Full Professor with the Department of Technology of Computers and Communications, University of Extremadura, Spain, where he is the Head of the Hyperspectral Computing Laboratory (HyperComp). He has authored or co-authored more than 700 publications, including 376 journal citation report (JCR) papers (276 in IEEE journals), 25 international book chapters, and 325 peer-reviewed international conference papers (150 in IEEE conference proceedings and 60 in SPIE conference proceedings). He is a highly cited researcher (included in the 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 Highly Cited Researchers List by Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics). His main research interests comprise remotely sensed hyperspectral image analysis, signal processing, and efficient implementations of large-scale scientific problems on high performance computing architectures, including commodity Beowulf clusters, heterogeneous networks of computers and clouds, and specialized computer architectures such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) or graphical processing units (GPUs).


Bibliometric indicators. In the following, several bibliometric indicators about the research works of Dr. Plaza are provided. These indicators were collected on September 9, 2022:

- Clarivate Analytics Highly cited researcher: 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021

- Google Scholar: 37153 citations, h-index: 87 (source).
- Scopus: 627 publications, 27875 citations, h-index: 78 (source).
- Web of Science: 541 publications, 23928 citations, h-index: 73, verified reviews: 399, verified editor records: 6814 (source).

- DBLP: 322 journal articles and 179 conference and workshop papers (source).

- Orcid: 594 publications (source).

- ResearchGate: 723 publications, 137881 reads, 31705 citations, 15356 research interest score, h-index: 82 (source).

- Highest h-index in the area of Electrical & Electronic Engineering in Spain (source).
- Highest h-index in the area of Imaging Science & Photographic Technology in Spain
(source).
- Highest h-index in the area of Remote Sensing in Spain
(source).
- 4th researcher with highest h-index in the area of Computer Science in Spain (source).
- One of the most highly cited researchers in Spain (source).

- Highest h-index in the University of Extremadura (source).
- 30 papers currently labeled as “Highly Cited Papers” in Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics Essential Science Indicators (ESI).


Distinctions and awards. Dr. Plaza was selected as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. He was elected in 2020 as a Member of Academia Europaea - The Academy of Europe. He is a Fellow of IEEE and AIAA. He received the 2021 Outstanding Paper Award at the IEEE Workshop: Hyperspectral Sensing meets Machine Learning and Pattern Analysis (HyperMLPA), for the contribution entitled "A New Max-Min Convolutional Neural Network for Hyperspectral Image Classification". He received the 2019 Outstanding Paper Award at the IEEE Workshop on Hyperspectral Image Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing (WHISPERS), for the contribution entitled "Efficient Convolutional Neural Network for Spectral-Spatial Hyperspectral Denoising." He received the 2017 Outstanding Associate Editor Award of the IEEE Access journal. He is a recipient of the 2015 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Column Paper Award, for the contribution entitled "Parallel Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing" published in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine in April 2011. He is a recipient of the 2014 Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Prize Paper Award of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (JSTARS), for the contribution entitled "A Web-Based System for Classification of Remote Sensing Data" published in JSTARS in August 2013. He is a recipient of the recognition of Best Reviewers of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing journal in 2010. He is a recipient of the recognition of Best Reviewers of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters journal in 2009. He is a co-author of the 2011 Best Student Paper at the IEEE International Conference on Space Technology, entitled "FPGA Design of the N-FINDR Algorithm for Spaceborne Hyperspectral Missions." He received the Top Cited Article award of Elsevier's Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (in 2005-2010) for the contribution entitled "Commodity Cluster-Based Parallel Processing of Hyperspectral Imagery." He is a recipient of the 2008 Best Paper award at the IEEE Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology, for the contribution entitled "Morphological Feature Extraction and Spectral Unmixing of Hyperspectral Images." He is a recipient of the Best Ph.D. Dissertation award at University of Extremadura in 2002. Seven of his students have received the Best Ph.D. Dissertation award at University of Extremadura, and one of his students has received the Best Ph.D. Dissertation award at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. His student M. D. Iordache received the recognition as the best Romanian student of the year in 2011. Several of his students have also received best student paper awards at different conferences/symposia.


Visiting researcher/professor positions. Dr. Plaza has been visiting researcher/professor at several institutions, including the Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; the Remote Sensing, Signal and Image Processing Laboratory (RSSIPL) at the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the Microsystems Laboratory at the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP); the AVIRIS group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California; the Telecommunications & Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Pavia, Italy; the GIPSA-Laboratory, Grenoble Institute of Technology, Grenoble, France; the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE), Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), the School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China; and the Department of Electrical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, China, funded by the prestigious ChangJiang Scholar grant to serve as visiting professor (part-time) in 2017-2019. He was also a visiting professor with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, in 2013. He has also been a visiting scholar with many Chinese universities, including Nanjing, Wuhan, Xi’an, Beijing or Shanghai.


Editorial activities. Dr. Plaza is serving as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing journal for five years (appointed in January 2013, finished his term in December 2017). During his term, the journal increased its impact factor from 2.993 to 4.662. He has been an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (2007-2012, 2018-now) in the areas of Hyperspectral Image Analysis and Signal Processing. He is an Associate Editor for IEEE Access (since March 2013, being recognized as Outstanding Associate Editor of the journal in 2017), and the Journal of Real-Time Image Processing (since February 2009). He was also an Associate Editor for the EURASIP ISRN Signal Processing journal (2010-2012), and the Remote Sensing journal (2009-2012). He has edited a book on High-Performance Computing in Remote Sensing for CRC Press/Taylor and Francis (the first book on this topic in the published literature) and guest edited 10 special issues for different journals, including the Proceedings of IEEE (Special Issue on Spatial Technology and Social Media, published in October 2017), the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (Special Issue on Spectral Unmixing of Hyperspectral Data, published in November 2011), the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (Special Issue on High Performance Computing in Remote Sensing, published in September 2011; Special Issue on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing, published in April 2012; Special Issue on Big Data in Remote Sensing, published in September 2015), the International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, the Journal of Real-Time Image Processing (2 special issues), or the SPIE Journal of Applied Remote Sensing (2 special issues). He has also edited 9 proceeding volumes for different conferences for which he served as Chair. He served as a member of the steering committee of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (2011-2012). He is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Spanish Remote Sensing journal. He served as an Associate Editor for Education Activites for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter (2011-2012).


Coordination of international research projects. Dr. Plaza was the project coordinator of the Hyperspectral Imaging Network (Hyper-I-Net), a four-year Marie Curie Research Training Network (total budget: 2.800.000 Euro) designed to build an interdisciplinary European research community focused on hyperspectral imaging activities. This project had an important impact on the advancement of the hyperspectral imaging area in Europe. He was also a member of the Management Committee and coordinator of a working group on Applications of Hierarchical-Heterogeneous Systems in the Open European Network for High Performance Computing on Complex Environments (ComplexHPC), funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) programme. He was also a partner of the Marie Curie Action for International Research Staff Exchange (IRSES) Tools for Open Multi-Risk Assessment Using Earth Observation Data (TOLOMEO), which involved cooperation between several Universities in Europe and South-America. He was also a partner of the HOST project (total budget: 2.226.268 Euro) funded under the capacities research potential (REGPOT) programme of the European Commission. He currently serves as a partner of the EOXPOSURE IRSES project funded by the European Commission under H2020 initiative. He also coordinates several national projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation on fundamental research and infrastructures and participates in relevant research networks at the Spanish level, such as CAPAP-H.


Involvement in technical societies. Dr. Plaza is a Fellow of IEEE "for contributions to hyperspectral data processing and parallel computing of Earth Observation data" (elevated in 2015) and a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA). He was elected as a voting member of the Administrative Committee (AdCom) of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) in 2011, and was appointed international Director of Education for GRSS (2011-2012). On January 2013 he started a three-year term as Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing Journal, which was extended for two years until December 2017. He served as the President of the Spanish Chapter of GRSS (2013-2016). He has been re-elected for the AdCom of GRSS for the period 2018-2020, and he currently serves as Chair of the GRSS Publications Awards Committee and Vice-Chair of the GRSS Fellow Evaluation Committee.


Participation in educational activities. Dr. Plaza has supervised 16 PhD dissertations on hyperspectral image analysis. He was nominated for the Excellence of Teaching Award of University of Extremadura in 2015 and 2018, and was the winner of the Excellence Teaching Award of University of Extremadura in 2019. He served as Director of Education of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (2011-2012). He has been a member of the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) Student Prize Paper Award Committee from 2011-2019, and was the main responsible for the allocation of Travel Grants for IGARSS in 2011-2012 as GRSS Director of Education. He served as an Associate Editor for Education Activities for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter (2011-2012). He was vice-chair and one of the main organizers of the First IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Summer School (RSSS12) held in conjunction with IGARSS 2012 in Munich, Germany, where he also served as one of the lecturers of the summer school. He was the general chair of the First Hyper-I-Net School on Hyperspectral Imaging held in Cáceres, Spain, in October 2007, and co-organizer of the Second Hyper-I-Net School on Earth Science and Applications using Imaging Spectroscopy held in Wageningen, The Netherlands, in September 2008, the Third Hyper-I-Net Summer School on Hyperspectral Data: From Images to Processing held in Pavia, Italy, in September 2009, and the Fourth Hyper-I-Net Summer School on Hyperspectral Imaging held in DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, in September 2010. He was the chair of a special invited session on Hyperspectral Imaging Training at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Barcelona, Spain, 2007. He served as one of the main lecturers of the International Summer School on Very High Resolution Remote Sensing held in Grenoble, France, in September 2008. He has also one of the main lecturers of the International Summer School on Data Fusion and High-Performance Computing Onboard Aircrafts, held in the University of Pavia in September 2011. He taught (with Q. Du) an IEEE GRSS tutorial on Spectral Unmixing of Hyperspectral Data at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Honolulu, Hawaii, July 2010. He also taught (with Q. Du) an IEEE GRSS tutorial on Recent Advances in Spectral Unmixing of Hyperspectral Data at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Vancouver, Canada, July 2011. He taught a tutorial on Spectral Unmixing of Hyperspectral Data at the 4th IEEE Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing in June 2012 in Shanghai, China, and also taught (with Q. Du) a tutorial on Recent Advances in Hyperspectral Data Analysis at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Munich, Germany, July 2012. He taught a tutorial on Recent Advances in Spectral Unmixing of Hyperspectral Data at the 5th IEEE Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing that took place in June 2013 in Gainesville, Florida, and also taught (with Q. Du) a tutorial on Recent Advances in Hyperspectral Data Analysis at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Melbourne, Australia, July 2013. He was one of the three plenary speakers at the 5th IEEE Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing that took place in June 2013 in Gainesville, Florida. He taught a 30-hour course on Parallel Processing of Remotely Sensed Images at the Telecommunications & Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Pavia, Italy, in October 2011. He taught a 40-hour course on Recent Advances in Hyperspectral Imaging at the Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE), Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, People’s Republic of China, in August 2013. Since then, he has been keynote speaker in numerous conferences/symposia, and presented invited keynote talks and many different events.


Participation in committees of international conferences and symposia. Dr. Plaza was a General Co-Chair of Jornadas SARTECO 2019, held in Cáceres, Spain, in September 2019. He was a General Co-Chair of the Fourth IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Big Data (BigMM 2018) held in Xi'an, China, in September 2018. He was the General Chair (with J. M. Bioucas-Dias) of the Third IEEE Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing (Whispers'11) held in Lisbon, Portugal, in June 2011. He has been a Technical Program Coordinator (TPC) for the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium since 2011. Dr. Plaza has been General Chair of yearly conferences held in USA, Europe and Asia: the SPIE Conference on Satellite Data Compression, Communication and Processing, part of SPIE Optics and Photonics, San Diego, California (2009-2013), the SPIE Conference on High Performance Computing in Remote Sensing, part of SPIE Remote Sensing Europe (2011-2015), and the IEEE International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing in Remote Sensing, part of the IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (2011). He is also Chair of a Special Session on Pattern Recognition Applications in Remotely Sensed Hyperspectral Image Analysis at the International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods (ICPRAM 2012). Dr. Plaza chaired (with Q. Du and Y.-L. Chang) a special invited session on High Performance Computing for Hyperspectral Image Analysis at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Cape Town, South Africa, July 2009, and also chaired (with Q. Du and J. Bioucas-Dias) a special invited session on Recent Advances in Spectral Mixture Analysis of Hyperspectral Data at the First IEEE GRSS Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing (WHISPERS), Grenoble, France, August 2009. He chaired (with M. Parente) a special invited session on Statistical versus Geometrical Spectral Unmixing at the IEEE GRSS Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing (WHISPERS), Iceland, June 2010. He chaired a special invited session on Spectral Unmixing of Hyperspectral Data at the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), Vancouver, Canada, July 2011. He has been a member of the Technical Program Committee and chaired sessions for more than 50 international conferences and symposia, with many sessions chaired for IEEE and SPIE conferences.


Proposal evaluation and reviewing activities. Dr. Plaza has served as a proposal evaluator for the European Commission (Marie Curie Actions, Engineering Panel, FP7 and Space Program, H2020), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the European Space Agency, the Belgium Science Policy, the Israel Science Foundation, and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. He has participated in the Tenure Track Selection Committee of different Universities in Italy, Spain and Australia. In 2012-2013 he reviewed more than 70 research proposals for the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education, including the prestigious Spanish Programmes Juan de la Cierva and Ramón y Cajal, as well as participated on the evaluation committee of fundamental research projects submitted to TIN (Information Technology) program of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Currently, he serves as a collaborator of the Spanish Research Agency (AEI), working in the main committee for the evaluation of proposals submitted to different calls in Spain. He has also served as an active reviewer for more than 50 international journals. According to Publons, his number of verified reviews is 372 and his number of editor records is 6814 (total number of manuscripts handled as Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editor). Prof. Plaza served as a reviewer for the following journals:


1.   IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.
2.   IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.
3.   IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters.
4.   IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
5.   IEEE Transactions on Computers
6.   IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging
7.   IEEE Transactions on Image Processing
8.   IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
9.   IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems
10. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks
11. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
12. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
13. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
14. IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems
15. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing
16. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
17. IEEE Signal Processing Letters
18. IEEE Sensors Journal
19. IEEE Computer Journal
20. Remote Sensing of Environment
21. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
22. International Journal of High-Performance Computing Applications
23. Concurrency & Computation: Practice and Experience
24. Information Fusion
25. Information Sciences
26. International Journal of Remote Sensing
27. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
28. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
29. Computer Vision and Image Understanding
30. Cluster Computing
31. Neurocomputing
32. Journal of Real-Time Image Processing
33. Signal Processing
34. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
35. Optical Engineering
36. Journal of Electronic Imaging
37. Journal of the Optical Society of America
38. Environmental Modelling
39. EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing
40. IET Image Processing
41. Optics and Lasers in Engineering
42. Journal of Systems and Software
43. SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences
44. Sensors
45. Computers in Biology and Medicine
46. Pattern Recognition Letters
47. Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation
48. Journal of Real-Time Image Processing
49. Computers & Geosciences
50. Journal of Computational Physics
51. The Computer Journal
52. GeoInformatica
53. Applied Optics
54. Remote Sensing Letter

55. Spanish Remote Sensing Journal


Relevant scientific contributions. Prof. Plaza is a pioneer scientist in remotely sensed hyperspectral imaging (1999-2020), applying this new technique to important problems worldwide (land-cover classification, precision agriculture, water quality analysis). He has promoted the University of Extremadura (UEx) to become a top-30 institution in the field of remote sensing in the world, as indicated by Shanghai Ranking. He has been a leader of UEx in IT activities, being the most highly cited researcher of UEx and one of the most highly cited researchers in Spain. Prof. Plaza coordinated the Hyperspectral Imaging Network project, a four-year Marie Curie Research Training Network (Budget: 2.800.000 Euro) designed to build an interdisciplinary European research community focused on hyperspectral imaging. This project had an important impact on the advancement of the hyperspectral imaging area in Europe. It included 15 European partners, with 9 universities, 3 research institutes and 3 SMEs, resulting in 15 PhD dissertations that helped establishing the current role of Europe as a leader in this field. Through the TOLOMEO and EOXPOSURE European projects, Prof. Plaza helped consolidating hyperspectral imaging in Latin America, creating an important network of scientific contacts which spans several countries in that continent, increasing the presence of Europe in one of the world's developing regions of most interest. He also established an extensive network in China, being recognized as a Visiting Professor by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Changjiang Scholar by Hunan University, and a Chair Professor by Nanjing University. He was the initiator and founder of the successful series of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) Summer Schools, and also organized four summer schools within the Marie Curie Hyper-I-Net project. He organized other multiple education and training activities on hyperspectral imaging across Europe. These activities have helped defining a new generation of remote sensing scientists in Europe. In addition, he holds and has held very important positions within the IEEE, such as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (TGRS), 2013-2017, Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems (since 2020), Chair of the IEEE GRSS Publication Awards Committe, or Vice-Chair of the IEEE GRSS Fellow Evaluation Committee. Prof. Plaza has been recognized in 2015 by the IEEE as Fellow “for contributions to to hyperspectral data processing and parallel computing of Earth observation data.” He is a highly cited researcher (included in the 2018, 2019 and 2020 Highly Cited Researchers List by Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics).


List of Publications


Last update: September 2022