The 2023 Marzano Prize goes to a UNISANNIO graduate

The IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) announces the winners of the "Frank Marzano 2023" Award, established in honor of Professor Frank Marzano to recognize the best doctoral and master's theses in Italy in the field of geoscience and remote sensing.

Among the winners stands out the engineer Chiara Zarro of the University of Sannio, graduated in Electronic Engineering for Automation and Telecommunications. His research work culminated in the thesis entitled "Fusion of Remote-sensed data for Urban classification using Object-based Image Analysis and Convolutional Neural Networks". The awards ceremony was held on Friday 10 May in Rome.

Chiara Zarro was guided in her doctoral path by Professor Silvia Ullo, a researcher who has been active for years on the topics of remote sensing and Earth observation, with classic and advanced techniques such as Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Machine Learning applied to the processing of satellite data .

The other two prizes for the best doctoral theses were awarded to Engineer Luca Bergamasco of the Bruno Kessler Foundation of the University of Trento and to Engineer Davide De Santis of the Tor Vergata University of Rome.

Chiara Zarro won a doctorate, financed by the Campania Region in response to industrial-oriented POR calls. The doctorate was carried out jointly with the German Space Agency (DLR) in the person of Professors Richard Bamler and Peter Reinartz, and with the MAPSAT of Benevento, in the person of Giuseppe Meoli. Stefan Auer and Daniele Cerra also collaborated on the research activity for the DLR.
Chiara had already won another national award from the IEEE GRSS Italy Chapter in 2019 for one of the three best master's theses; therefore, this second award is a further confirmation of the commitment and significant activities carried out in the field of remote sensing, and of the relevance that our University of Sannio manages to achieve in terms of training which places it at the top of the national level and international.

IEEE GRSS is the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, it is a community of researchers and professionals who collaborate and develop tools to understand the interaction with the Earth's ecosystems, to monitor its environments, oceans and ice sheets glaciers and to identify potential risks. The IEEE GRSS supports a worldwide collaboration network.