SmartSat is proud to congratulate students Yue Cai, Ziwei Wang and Nermine Hendy for submitting their theses, successfully completing their PhD journey.

Yue Cai from the University of Sydney has completed her PhD in Electrical and Information Engineering, with her research focusing on how to perform task offloading in LEO satellites. This achievement follows a Bachelor of Engineering in Telecommunication Engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University of China, and a Master of Philosophy in Electrical and Information Engineering, also from the University of Sydney. Find out more about her work here.

Ziwei Wang completed her PhD from the Australian National University, where she also received a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechatronics), researching ultra-fine attitude determination and control systems for optical remote sensing. Ziwei is interested in neuromorphic vision, asynchronous image processing and robotic applications. You can find out more about her work and read her publications here.

Nermine Hendy submitted her PhD thesis completed through RMIT University on Interference modelling, detection, and mitigation for improving spaceborne SAR performance. Nermine completed her Masters in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Alexandria University in Egypt, specialising in emotion recognition using neural networks. She has taught undergraduate courses in various adjacent research areas, such as network fundamentals and embedded systems. See more of her work and read her publications here.

These three are joining SmartSat’s exceptional group of alumni and taking the next step in their careers.

SmartSat’s current student cohort is also kicking goals, making the most of their PhD and achieving great things. Dr Peter Woodgate Scholarship for Earth Observation recipient, Oliver Hatswell, was awarded a grant from the Australian Archaeological Association (AAA) to support his research trialling the use of high-resolution remote sensing methods to map key geomorphic features to inform our understanding of archaeological potential, chronology, and depositional history. The AAA is the largest archaeological organisation in Australia, representing a diverse membership of professionals, researchers, students and others with an interest in archaeology. Meanwhile, Nur Fajar Trihantoro has been awarded the RACE Merit Allocation Scheme (RMAS) 2025, providing him access to cloud computing resources critical for the processing tasks in hi development of a more efficient wildfire detection method combining data from multiple satellites. You can find out more about his work here.

SmartSat students have been travelling around the globe to share their work, network and gather information at various conferences and events. Kithmini Weththasinghe has won the Best Paper Award at 23rd International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT2024) conference for her paper “Cognitive GEO-LEO Dual Satellite Networks: Multibeam Sensing”. You can read the paper here.

Vinicius Guedes Goncalves de Oliveira received the 2024 Dr Michael Simpson Scholarship granted by the Secure World Foundation, which supported him in attending the 2024 International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy last year. While there, Vinicius presented on his PhD topic, discussing the legal and policy frameworks of the Australian space infrastructure. He also gave presentations on the outcomes from Brazil’s recently enacted Space Activities Act, and on how middle powers can best navigate the increasing Sino-American space rivalry.

Harikesh Singh was awarded a scholarship to present at the Wildland Fire Canada Conference, where he gave an address on leveraging historical fire events to improve prediction of wildfires using machine learning techniques. You can find out more about Harikesh’s work developing an empirical and dynamic tool for prediction of forest fire spread using remote sensing and machine learning here.

Tuul Machlay
Project Support Officer