Dr Armando Marino

Associate Professor

Biological and Environmental Sciences Stirling

Dr Armando Marino

About me

I received an MSc in Telecommunication Engineering at the Universita’ di Napoli “Federico II” in 2006. In 2006, I joined the High Frequency and Radar Systems Department (HR), German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen where I developed my MSc thesis, which focused on SAR multi-pass retrieval of forest parameters.

In 2011, I was awarded a PhD degree from the University of Edinburgh, (School of Geosciences), Edinburgh, UK in the field of polarimetric SAR interferometry. It was a great experience and my PhD thesis was awarded “Best PhD Thesis 2011” by the RSPSoc (Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry Society) and “Outstanding PhD Thesis” by Springer Verlag, which published the thesis in 2012.

From March 2011 to October 2011, I worked at the University of Alicante, Institute of Computing Research, in Alicante, Spain. Besides enjoying the sunny weather, I earned experiences in processing stuck of radar images for change detection.

From December 2011 to May 2015, I was a post-doctorate researcher and lecturer at the ETH Zürich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, Switzerland. At ETH I was presented with a unique opportunity to assert myself as a researcher and at the same time to gain teaching skills.

From June 2015 to April 2018, I was a lecturer at the Open University, Department of Engineering and Innovation, in Milton Keynes, UK. At the OU I had the possibility to think a lot about best ways of teaching and I worked on really exciting projects.

Since June 2018 I am a Senior Lecture in Earth Observation at the University of Stirling, Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences. Here, I enjoy my time being involved in both teaching and research, along with having walks on the hills surrounding the campus.

Award

Outstanding Collaborator
University of Stirling

Nomination: “Armando is always available and willing to engage with any potential collaborations, regardless of time or other constraints, and does so always in good spirit and with contagious excitement. On ongoing projects, he always delivers important and timely contributions, and as a PI he is also always very open and engaging when inviting collaborators to work on new submissions. Most importantly, all my interactions with Armando have been overly positive and inspiring. Overall, Armando is one of the people I have enjoyed collaborating with the most in Stirling.”


Other Project

PlasticSurf: Can the Microbial Communities in the Oceans Help Satellites to Monitor Micro-Plastic Pollution?
European Space Agency

https://www.esa.int/…Marine_Litter%20
This project was founded by the European Space Agency (ESA) OSIP programme to study the detectability of plastic using radar remote sensing. It mays for 3 year scholarship (Morgan Simpson), £15,000 for fieldwork equipment and the in-kind time of 4 academics: Armando Marino (lead), Andrew Tyler, Peter Hunter, Evangelos Spyrakos and Trevor Telfer. The award was 80,000 euros.

Forth ERA: Flood and peatland test case

In within the Forth ERA I am the lead of the EO flood test case and I am involved in the peatland test case. I am more generally leading all the activities related to the use of radar satellite data. Forth ERA has bought out the 50% of my time over these years. This correspond to around £100,000 of funds from the project.

MoLaDy: Monitoring Land Dynamics using Polarimetric ALOS-4 SAR data
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

This project was founded by JAXA and it allows us to order and receive ALOS-2/4 satellite acquisitions to monitor the Forth Valley region. We got awarded 40 acquisitions for a value of approximately £80,000. I lead this project including scientist from different locations: Andrew Tyler, Peter Hunter, Cristian Silva, Javier Ruiz-Ramos (Permian Global, UK), Marian Scott (Glasgow University), Joan Suarez-Sanchez (Forestry Research, UK), Paola Rizzoli (DLR, Germany) and Marco Lavalle (JPL, NASA, USA).

Ship and Coastal Water Pollution Observation with Polarimetric SAR Architectures (SCoPeSAR)
This project funded by ESA and MOST (China) under the DRAGON-4 framework aims at fostering collaborations between European and Chinese colleges. In this specific project that I lead in Europe we aim at generating added value products based on a proper processing of remotely sensed multi-polarization Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) measurements and ancillary optical data. The final goal is to allow managing effectively coastal areas and related hazards, with special focus on detecting targets of interests in SAR images. In particular, we will focus on ship detection and coastal water pollution observation. Value: travel costs