R & D ANNUAL REPORT 2015

UTAR Vice President elected as ASM Fellow

UTAR Vice President (Internationalisation & Academic Development) Prof. Dr. Ewe Hong Tat was elected as an Academy of Science Malaysia (ASM) Fellow for contributions in microwave remote sensing of environment during the 20th Annual General Meeting held on 25 April 2015. Prof. Ewe is a well-known researcher in Microwave Remote Sensing in Malaysia. Among his contributions, is the development of microwave remote sensing models for vegetation and development of applications to provide prediction of paddy yield and monitoring of oil palm growth. 

"In earth science, remote sensing refers to the ability of airborne or spaceborne sensors to detect electromagnetic radiation or scattered energy from subjects on the earth's surface", said Prof. Ewe.

He has also been involved in microwave sensing research in Antarctica with theoretical development and sea ice thickness retrieval model. Various classification algorithms based on methods such as multifractal, support vector machine and entropy decomposition have also been developed and applied on satellite image processing and classification.

"Microwave has the ability to penetrate through cloud or fog and it is suitable to be used for remote sensing of earth terrain by remote sensing satellites. In addition, for active remote sensing sensor, it can operate at any time and is independent from the sun as an illumination source", he continued. Earth terrain (such as vegetation, sea ice, etc) can be modelled by a multilayer physical configuration with embedded distribution of scatterers of various shapes, sizes and orientation. Theoretical models developed study the interaction of microwave with these media and scattering mechanisms involved, and also calculate the scattered energy received by the satellite sensors and this can be compared with the satellite images recorded and various applications can be developed for user communities to utilize such remote sensing data for problems such as monitoring of crops, paddy yield prediction, landuse classification, sea ice extent and thickness distribution and vegetation biomass estimation.

Besides his research, Prof. Ewe has worked with JobStreet.com for the development of intelligent job matching algorithm to serve its users in Malaysia and other countries. He has been a consultant/advisor for several listed companies and startups.

Some of his achievements include, a Gold Medal at Expo Science and Technology 2003 by MOSTI, 2004 Research Innovation Award by MAMPU, Young Scientist Award 1996 by International Union of Radio Science (URSI), a Gold Medal at the 32nd International Exhibition of Inventions 2004 in Geneva, The Outstanding Young Malaysian Award 2005 – Academic Leadership and Accomplishment Category by Junior Chamber International Malaysia and The Toray Science and Technology Award by Malaysian Toray Science Foundation in 2011.

Besides serving as UTAR's Vice President (Internationalisation & Academic Development), he is also the President of MIT Club of Malaysia, Educational Counselor of MIT and Malaysian Qualification Agency (MQA) Council Member.