Management Committee 2025

President

Sebastian Robertson
Birdi

In 2016, Sebastian established Birdi and is the current CEO. Birdi is an aerial intelligence platform, offering an end-to-end solution by harnessing drone technology for data capture, visualization, and insights. With operations spanning more than 50 countries, Birdi's transformative impact is evident, with a community of over 3,000 drone operators contributing to its success. It is focused on increasing Australia's trajectory in aviation and Earth observational data insights, and remains committed to supporting enterprises to further engage with the Earth observation community.

Prior to Birdi, Sebastian established Batyr, a prominent charity dedicated to delivering mental health initiatives for young Australians aged 14 to 30. He was the founding CEO for five years, and then Non-Executive Chairman of the Board for a further 8. Batyr has reached over 400,000 young individuals through its programs and grown to a team of more than 60 full-time professionals, in addition to over 150 part-time/casual staff and a dynamic network of volunteers.

Sebastian has a Bachelor of Commerce and Economics from the Australian National University (ANU) and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors program (GAICD). He has served as a member of the Global Nexus Mental Health Council, an Advisory Board member to Corporate Match (a philanthropic venture), and an adviser within Hatchstone VC and Trampoline Ventures. 

Vice-President

A/Prof Bradley Evans
University of New England

Bradley is an Earth observation and remote sensing specialist who has worked on projects associated with NASA’s OCO2 Mission, Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, Ecosystem Modelling and Scaling Infrastructure and the Australian Government Department of Defence where he served on the AquaWatch and other committees related to EO. As a Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council Training Centre on CubeSats, UAV’s and Their Applications, Bradley has led the development of an OpenSource Hyperspectral Imaging Spectrometer, OpenHSI (https://openhsi.github.io/), together with his students and CUAVA postdocs and in collaboration with PI Bachmann from Rochester Institute of Technology. Now at The University of New England, Bradley established the Earth Observation Laboratory with a special focus on water and wildlife habitat and riverine water quality in NSW. He is a contributor to NASA JPL’s Surface Biology Geology mission community group, who have funding for future Hyperspectral satellites and has a positive collaborative relationship with HyVista and Yamaha SkyTeam. 

Secretary

Debbie Chamberlain

Debbie is a dedicated Earth observation researcher with a PhD from the University of Queensland's School of the Environment, focusing on remote sensing of coastal vegetation communities in Central Queensland. Debbie’s postdoctoral work with the Reef Catchment Science Partnership involved collaborating with the Department of Environment, Science and Innovation on spectral distance analysis for improved ground cover estimation using Landsat time-series data. Additionally, she contributed to the Earth Observation Research Centre’s (previously the Remote Sensing Centre) efforts in analysing field transect data for vegetation monitoring in Queensland.

Debbie is passionate about serving on the EOA Management Committee to advance the critical role of Earth observation in environmental understanding and management. As Secretary, she aims to foster collaboration between researchers, government agencies, and industry, advocating for increased use of Earth observation data in policy and management.

Treasurer

Alex Leith
Auspatious

Alex has been working in the Earth observation space for the last 5 years and has relationships with other EO professionals from across the world.  His work at Digital Earth Australia and Africa has delivered significant impact to people through making EO data more easily accessible. Alex has supported the community around the Open Data Cube, including getting it recognised as an OSGeo Community project. Alex's work now includes the Digital Earth Pacific program, empowering people across the Pacific to more easily access EO data.

Dr Alex Held
CSIRO

Alex has been working in the Earth observation sector for over 30 years, conducting applications research, but also representing Australia at several high-level international committees. He also brings experience in working across government agencies, federal and state, and most recently was part of the team that developed Australia’s Earth Observation from Space Roadmap.

Dr Anthony Rea

Anthony has a long association with the Australian Earth observation community dating back 25 years. He has a PhD in Meteorological Satellite Remote Sensing from RMIT and was a leading expert in satellite applications and programs at the Bureau of Meteorology until his departure in 2019. During this time Anthony worked closely with colleagues in CSIRO and GA to build a collaborative approach to space activities that have been further developed under the guidance of the Australian Space Agency. In his current role at WMO Anthony is responsible for global requirements for satellite observations spanning weather, climate, water and cryosphere as well as coordination and capacity development. Anthony is also the Director of the secretariat of the Global Climate Observing System which is a major source of requirements to the global EO community and the UNFCCC. Anthony participates in the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS) and hosted its 50th meeting in 2022. Anthony is also connected to CEOS and is the CEOS Principal for WMO.

Barbara Harrison
Digital Concepts

Barb has been involved in remote sensing since 1983 when she worked at CSIRO on the BRIAN (Barrier Reef Image ANalysis) and microBRIAN projects. microBRIAN became a popular commercial microcomputer system which was used for several decades in tertiary institutions, government agencies and small businesses throughout Australia and Asia.

Barb has initiated, coordinated and edited the series of online textbooks entitled “Earth Observation: Data, Processing and Applications”, which can be freely downloaded from the EOA website (https://www.eoa.org.au/earth-observation-textbooks). This project involved working with a broad group of EO practitioners across Australia to create a comprehensive, freely available instructional resource for remote sensing students and professionals.

Barb hopes that the EOA can continue to maintain a cohesive remote sensing community in Australia, where the skills acquired by experienced practitioners are readily shared with newcomers to the field and the value of remote sensing is clearly visible to our political masters.

Carsten Laukamp
CSIRO

Carsten is a Principal Research Scientist with CSIRO Mineral Resources, overseeing a portfolio of collaborative research projects with government agencies and industry. His work aims to evaluate remote and proximal sensing technologies for critical metals exploration and resource characterization. Carsten’s research spans from studying the physicochemistry underlying mineral and vegetation spectral signatures to ML-assisted modelling of geochemical and petrophysical parameters, and integration of optical and geophysical Earth observation. He is a co-lead of IEEE’s Working Group on Spectroscopic Sensing of Earth Materials of the Geoscience Spaceborne Imaging Spectroscopy Technical Committee (GSIS TC) and a member of advisory boards for EU-funded projects on multi-scale Earth observation (e.g. hyperspectral, LIDAR).

Dr Tim Whiteside
The Environmental Research Institute of the Supervising Scientist (ERISS), Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

Tim is a remote sensing research scientist in the Office of the Supervising Scientist within the Australian Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. He has a PhD in remote sensing , specifically multiscale mapping of savanna vegetation using very high resolution satellite imagery. More recently Tim has moved into applied research of drones as tools for Earth observation. This has included the building and integration of a variety of sensors, and developing methods for collecting, processing and analysing drone data (including hyperspectral, multispectral, and LiDAR) for environmental monitoring.

Tim is currently involved in with a team of like-minded colleagues in organising a workshop comparing of sensors and methods for the calibration and validation of satellite imagery using hyperspectral drone data.

Dr Fang Yuan
FrontierSI

Fang is excited to be a member of the EOA Management Committee as she is keen to help build a dynamic and inclusive community that can realize the value of Earth observation for the benefit of societies in Australia and world-wide.

With a PhD in Physics and over 10 years of professional experience as an astrophysicist and EO scientist, Fang has a wide range of technical expertise in remote sensing and data science, as well as rich experience in partnership, project and program management. In her previous roles at Geoscience Australia, Fang led application development for natural resources mapping, disaster management, and land cover change monitoring for Australia and Africa, working closely with partners from government, industry and research organizations. Fang has helped to establish Digital Earth Africa, an internationally recognized platform and program that uses Australian innovation to transform use of EO data across the African continent. In her current role as the EO technical lead at FrontierSI, Fang continues to follow her passion of making positive impacts using technology and through collaboration.

Fang would like to help strengthen the relationship between EO and the broader geospatial and science communities. Fang has been an active supporter of gender equity, diversity and inclusion and values every opportunity to help build an EO community where we value people as individuals, support each other to grow and actively listen to other voices from within and outside the community.

Emerita Professor Megan Lewis
The University of Adelaide

Megan has had a long career as a university academic and researcher in environmental remote sensing. She particularly specialises in hyperspectral sensing of vegetation, soil and water, and has an extensive record of collaborative research with environmental managers and government agencies, developing new remote sensing approaches and tools for assessment and monitoring in a range of terrestrial and aquatic environments.