George Y. Lee and Charles Mondello have been named the 2013 ASPRS Fellow Award winners. The ASPRS designation of Fellow is conferred on active Society members who have performed excep¬tional service in advancing the science and use of the mapping sciences (photogrammetry, remote sensing, surveying, geographic information systems, and related disciplines). The designation of Fellow is awarded for pro¬fessional excellence and for service to the Society. Candidates are nominated by other active members, recommended to the Fellows Committee, and elected by the ASPRS Board of Directors. Up to 0.3 percent of the Society’s active members may be elected as Fellows in any one year. The nominees must have made outstanding contributions in a recognized Society specialization whether in practice, research, development, administration, or education in the mapping sciences. Members of the Fellows Committee and the Executive Committee are ineligible for nomination. The awards will be given next March at the ASPRS 2013 Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.
George Y. Lee, ASPRS Certified Photogrammetrist and Emeritus Member, is most deserving of the ASPRS Fellow Award due to his constant outstanding service to ASPRS, the USGS, and the imaging and photogrammetric community around the world through contributions of considerable personal time and professional expertise.
Lee was awarded a PhD in Engineering from the University of California Berkeley (Photogrammetry) in 1994. He received a MS in Engineering in 1974 and a BS in Engineering Mathematics and Statistics in 1973 from U.C. Berkeley as well.
In his professional life, Lee has worked for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for 38 years. He is currently the National Product and Service Lead for Orthoimagery within the USGS National Geospatial Program from his office in Menlo Park, California. He is responsible for providing policy and strategic guidance for all aspects of the USGS Orthoimagery Program including planning, production, distribution, archiving, and outreach. While he has had many varied accomplishments throughout his USGS career, one of the most significant for the country and the entire geospatial and imaging industry, was his leadership in developing and implementing the USGS (and partners) program to complete first time coverage of the United States with Digital Orthophoto Quarter Quadrangles (DOQs) in the early 1990s. Lee not only provided considerable leadership and technical expertise to make this significant accomplishment possible, he also broke new ground in implementing DOQ contracts that established an innovative kind of public-private partnership in getting the work done. In addition, he became part of a network of Federal, state, and local government; academic; and, private sector partners and DOQ “evangelists” who are still pushing digital orthoimagery forward around the world today. In addition, he served as the USGS technical lead on a research project with Microsoft Corporation’s Research Group that resulted in the TerraServer technology to serve imagery data over the Internet. While this may not seem significant today, in the early 2000s this was a groundbreaking precedent in freely distributing a large orthoimagery dataset to the public.
Lee’s ASPRS contributions and accomplishments are equally varied and significant. He has served on committees too numerous to individually mention, but, some of his more recent involvement includes membership on the Camera Calibration and Revised National Mapping Accuracy Standard Committees within the Primary Data Acquisition Division. He was also a member of the Professional Practice Division Professional Services Procurement Committee and the ASPRS Films Committee. He led the effort to establish and raise funding to fully endow the Francis H. Moffitt Memorial Scholarship and is still very actively involved in supporting this scholarship. The award has become one the fastest growing awards in the suite of awards that ASPRS Foundation gives annually. He was a critical link to the USGS in ASPRS’ development of recommendations to that organization for camera calibration activities. Last, but, certainly not least, Lee is currently spending his weekends as Technical Editor of the 6th edition of the Manual of Photogrammetry.
In 2007, Lee was recognized by ASPRS with the prestigious Photogrammetric (Fairchild) Award and in 2008 the Society awarded him the Outstanding Service Award for his work on the Moffitt Scholarship. Lee has also been recognized for exceptional service to the Department of the Interior by being awarded both the Superior and Meritorious Service Awards.
Charles Mondello exemplifies what is best in our Society. He has been a noted contributor to the scientific and commercial foundation of ASPRS and the industry. His tireless support to ASPRS and our industry not only covers many years, but also many roles. His work has been instrumental in the extension of geospatial technology to new markets and to our homeland security. His peers have shown their approval and recognized him through his nominations and election to multiple levels of ASPRS governance. Mondello continues his support to the Society and the industry through multiple works. These have given the community at large a better understanding of ASPRS, as well as how remote sensing and mapping can be used for the betterment of society as a whole.
Currently Deputy Chief Technical Officer at Pictometry International, Mondello helps provide corporate management direction for the overall development and of Pictometry. As such, he is involved in many facets of Pictometry’s engineering, production, marketing and sales efforts. Throughout his career, he has developed and directed various remote sensing programs that included film, digital sensing and output systems. Pictometry’s RAMS (Real Time Airborne Management System) provides immediate, geo-referenced images for use in disaster responses.
Mondello received his BS and MS degrees in Imaging Sciences from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He has served as Executive Vice President Corporate Development, Earth Data Technologies; Director of Technology at Litton Emerge; Director of Marketing and Sales at Eastman Kodak; as well as, Aerial Systems Product Line Manager at Kodak. He also served in multiple Federal Government and commercial positions prior to that.
Mondello’s accomplishments have been recognized by his peers through his election as the Director of the ASPRS Primary Data Acquisition Division (PDAD) and as the Director of the ASPRS/NASA 10-Year Remote Sensing Strategic Forecast. Also, Mondello developed the Digital Aerial Guideline for ASPRS. He currently chairs the development of the Digital Product Guideline for the ASPRS Professional Practice Division and the Oblique Industry Standard for PDAD. The Digital Product Guideline will become the definitive guide for procurement of geospatial products in our profession.
As Director of PDAD, he served on the ASPRS Board of Directors for two years. He has been the Chair of the Aerial Film Guidelines, a specification to provide guidance on film based data acquisition; Chair of the Digital Aerial Guideline, a tutorial on digital remote sensing; and, chaired the 10-Year Industry Forecast for 13 years since its inception. The Forecast has grown under his leadership to become the definitive guide to the direction and growth within the geospatial industry.
As a lead writer for the ASPRS 10-Year Forecast, Mondello has been published in Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing on six occasions and as a separate publication, in print and on the ASPRS web site. He is also a co-author of the ASPRS Manual of Photogrammetry, 5th Edition. He is the Primary Author & Investigator in four Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grants defining Littoral Remote Sensing for NGA and Real Time airborne imaging in active and passive based a
irborne sensing for DHS. In addition, he served a two-year term as one of 28 members on the inaugural National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) for the Secretary of the Interior.
Mondello holds multiple patents as a co-inventor in oblique remote sensing and was a principle investigator and designer of the Digital Aerial Camera In-Lab Calibration System now in use at EROS data center. Mondello is a four-time ASPRS Presidential Citation Recipient and he is a certified Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP.)
About ASPRS
Founded in 1934, ASPRS is an international professional organization of 6,000 geospatial data professionals. ASPRS is devoted to advancing knowledge and improving understanding of the mapping sciences to promote responsible application of photogrammetry, remote sensing, geographic information systems and supporting technologies.