Clifford W. Greve and Vincent V. Salomonson Selected as ASPRS Honorary Members

Clifford W. Greve and Vincent V. Salomonson have been selected as the next Honorary Members of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS).  Their nominations were recently approved by the ASPRS Board of Directors. This is the highest award bestowed by ASPRS and there can be only 25 living Honorary Members of the Society at any given time.  

Initiated in 1937 this life-time award is given for professional excellence in recognition of individuals who have rendered distinguished service to ASPRS and/or who have attained distinction in advancing the science and use of the geospatial information sciences.  Greve and Salomonson will receive their awards at the ASPRS 2012 Annual Conference in Baltimore Maryland.

Clifford W. Greve has over 25 years of work experience in project management systems development and corporate management. Since 2006 he has served as Senior Vice President Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) where as an unscheduled professional he provides part time technical and management services to help in the conduct of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) GGI contract. He also helps in proposal preparation and business development.  From 1995-2006 Greve was SAIC Senior Vice President/Director of Imagery and Remote Sensing Systems where he was manager of the NGA Omnibus and GGI contracts and was capture manager on both of those efforts. He also served as manager of the NOAA Coastal Mapping and USGS CSC-II contracts and was capture manager on those efforts as well.  

Before moving to SAIC Greve worked for the U.S. Geological Survey for three years as Special Assistant for Technology to the Chief National Mapping Division and was responsible for advising the Chief on technology matters. In the performance of these duties Greve was intimately involved in legislative and technical issues surrounding the Landsat program and has been a liaison to many interagency committees involved in the definition of Landsat and other earth observing systems. He managed a research project in Temporal Geographic Information Systems among other duties. He defined and guided the procurement of the National Advanced Remote Sensing Applications Program a suite of workstations designed to combine civilian and intelligence remote sensing for land management and environmental applications. He chaired the “proponency” panel of the Classification Review Task Force and was instrumental in generating the policy that released the early intelligence satellite imagery into the public domain and decompartmented much of the remainder of the information. He was the Civilian Applications Committee delegate to the Imagery Policy Subcommittee and the Imagery Research and Development Committee. He served on the National Imagery Agency Task Force and Steering Committee representing the Civilian Applications Committee.

Greve worked for Autometric Incorporated from 1972-1992.  There he served in many capacities beginning at Senior Scientist culminating in the CEO position which he held from 1979 until 1991. During his tenure as CEO Autometric grew from an annual sales volume of $1.1 million to an annual volume of $23 million. He was program manager on numerous technical efforts including the development of on line photogrammetric mensuration systems the development of the target scene generation system for the conventional cruise missile and the development of the Wetlands Analytical Mapping System for the Fish and Wildlife Service. In addition he holds a patent on the APPS-IV Analytical Stereoplotter. He has participated heavily in many studies and development efforts for the military and intelligence communities and served as a member of the Mapping Sciences Committee of the National Research Council.

Greve’s early career included work in the Topographic Division at the USGS then four years in the U.S. Army where he was assigned to the U.S. Army Engineer Topographic Laboratories.  While there he performed investigations into error modeling for ambiguous range positioning systems and developed software to drive an automated stellar comparator. He also performed research into the optimization of geodetic network observations using non-linear programming methods.  He received a BSE and MSE in Civil Engineering (1966 1967) from the University of Michigan and a PhD in Geodesy and Photogrammetry from Cornell University (1969).  

A Past President and Fellow of ASPRS and Vice President of the ASPRS Foundation Greve is a Certified Photogrammetrist.  He is a member of American Congress on Surveying and Mapping and several honorary societies.  In 1980 he received the ASPRS Photogrammetric Award and in 1994 received the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion- Presented by the DCI for efforts on the Classification Review Task Force.  He has published more than 25 professional papers and authored or been a primary contributor to well over 100 technical reports.

Vincent V. Salomonson is a Research Professor at the University of Utah where he has served since 2005. He has substantial depth and breadth of experience spanning nearly 40 years working at NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Center relative to developing and applying space technology for basic and applied research studies of Earth system processes and applications enabling Earth resources surveys and management. He was a Senior Scientist in the Earth Sciences Directorate at the Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA from 2001-2005.  From 1988 to 2009 he served  as the Science Team Leader for the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) facility instrument called the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) that is flying on the EOS Terra and Aqua missions and as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator for the development and refinement of the MODIS snow and ice products. In the Science Team Leader position he was leading a Science Team of over 90 Principal Investigators providing some 40 data products from MODIS to the Earth science and applications communities and performing scientific studies of global and regional land ocean and atmospheric processes and trends using MODIS observations.

Prior to being Senior Scientist Salomonson served with distinction as the Director of the Earth Sciences Directorate at the Goddard Space Flight Center NASA from 1990-2000. In that capacity he was responsible for overseeing and coordinating the activities of approximately 300 civil service scientists and engineers in the Directorate who were actively involved in research of the Earth-Atmosphere system using advanced technology along with over 700 supporting contractors students and visiting faculty. He served at Goddard as the Deputy Director for Earth Sciences in the Space and Earth Sciences Directorate (1988-1990) Chief of the Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics (1980-1988) Project Scientist for Landsat 4 and 5 (1977-1989) the Head of the Hydrospheric Sciences Branch (1973-1980) and as a research meteorologist (1968-1973).

Prior to his employment at Goddard Salomonson spent three years as Weather Officer in the United States Air Force (1959-1962). His academic training includes a BS degree in Agricultural Engineering from Colorado State University (1959) a BS degree in Meteorology from the University of Utah (1960) an MS degree in Agricultural Engineering from Cornell University (1964) and a PhD in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University (1968).  His publication record shows more than 130 publications in scientific journals conference proceedings and NASA reports.

Salomonson has received numerous recognitions for his work and leadership. These include the Goddard Exceptional Performance Award (1975) for his work as Chairman of the NASA Sub-discipline Panel for Water Resources the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1976) for outstanding contributions in the practical applications of remote sensing data in the water resources field the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (1983) in recognition of his extensive contributions to land remote sensing as Landsat 4 and 5 Project Scientist the NASA/U.S. Geological Survey William T. Pecora Award (1993) for his overall contributions to satellite remote sensing and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal (1996) for his leadership of the Goddard Earth Sciences Directorate. In 1993 he received the rank of Meritorious Executive and in 1998 the rank of Distinguished Executive in the Senior Executive Service. In 2002 he was named a Goddard Senior Fellow and received the William Nordberg Memorial Award from the Goddard Space Flight Center.

Salomonson has served the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRS-S) in several leadership capacities including being a member of the Executive Administrative Committee (“Ad-Com”) for several years. He has also served in leadership capacities for the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) including being ASPRS President in 1991/1992. He was made a Fellow of ASPRS in 1994. In 1999 he was made a Fellow of the IEEE. He is also a member of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union and serves as an Associate Editor for the Remote Sensing of Environment Journal.