On Sept. 27, CITRIS at UC Santa Cruz organized a workshop to explore the challenges and opportunities of using drones to advance innovative research. Co-hosts included Katia Obraczka, faculty director of CITRIS at UC Santa Cruz; Michael Matkin, executive director of CITRIS at UC Santa Cruz; Becca Fenwick, director of the CITRIS Initiative for Drone Education and Research (CIDER); and Jeffrey Weekley, UC Santa Cruz’s director of research IT.
The event, held at the UC Santa Cruz Silicon Valley campus, brought together drone researchers and practitioners from all four CITRIS campuses, local community colleges, national institutions and more to build a comprehensive perspective of the impact of drones on all levels of the data management process.
“One of the main goals of this workshop was to bring together researchers, academics, practitioners across a wide spectrum of disciplines,” said Obraczka. “We also need to think about how we are involving students at all levels — as a university, that’s our mission.”
Panels of speakers discussed data collection with drones; processing, analysis and visualization of data; and ensuring information is findable, accessible, interoperable and repeatable.
CITRIS’s director, Alexandre Bayen, gave a keynote address on the growing opportunities — including some unexpected ones —within drone research.