Contacts

Dr. Franklin Percival Program Leader
Unit Leader of the Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, USGS-Biological Resources Division and Associate Courtesy Professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, University of Florida. He has worked for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and USGS-BRD as a wildlife research biologist in Washington, DC; Laurel, MD; and Gainesville, FL for over 30 years championing multi disciplinary and interagency research programs. Over 20 years ago, Dr. Percival began seeking a better, safer, and less expensive alternative to manned-aircraft flights for biological surveys. That idea formed the basis for our program.		 [email]
(352) 846-0543
Adam Watts Program Coordinator
The guy to go to when things need doing, Watts coordinates the efforts of the personnel involved in the project: six University faculty and six students (and counting!). Adam's academic interests include restoration ecology, ecological resilience, and adaptive management, with previous experience in reproductive ecology of Florida alligators, fire and mechanical disturbance in Florida ecosystems, and agroforestry extension in sub-Saharan West Africa.		 [email]
(352) 846-0638
Dr. Leonard Pearlstine Landscape Ecology
Leonard's interest is in community spatial patterns resulting from natural and anthropogenic disturbance and how these relate to sustainable wildlife communities, maintenance of natural processes, and habitat change. His dissertation was discrimination of an invasive plant, from aerial imagery using multivariate texture analyses. Leonard has worked statewide with the development of vertebrate habitat models and remote sensing for discrimination of natural communities.		 [email]
(954) 577-6335
Dr. Peter Ifju Aerospace Engineer
Dr. Peter Ifju is an expert in the areas of micro air vehicles (design, fabrication, system integration, applications, and experimental characterization), experimental stress analysis, optical methods for stress analysis (moiré interferometry, luminescent photoelastic coatings), and composite materials stress analysis and fabrication. The University of Florida MAV Team, lead by Dr. Ifju, won first place overall in the International MAV Competition in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. In 2000 Discovery magazine granted Dr. Ifju a Top Ten Technology Innovation Award for Micro Air Vehicle Development.		 [email]
(352) 392-6744
Dr. Bon Dewitt Photogrammetry
Bon is the Director of the Geomatics Program and coauthor of the widely-used textbook, “Elements of Photogrammetry – With Applications in GIS.” His research interests include computational photogrammetry and digital image matching. Dr. Dewitt and his students have led the effort to enable geographic positioning and referencing (georeferencing) to images collected by the UAV. One result of this effort has been a software program that collects individual frames from video and automatically generates a photomosaic.		 [email]
(352) 392-6010
Dr. Scot Smith Image Processing
Scot's interests include application of a variety of remote sensing approaches to environmental assessment. His long-term experience includes work in hydrological processes and the use of remote sensing in water resources protection and management. Scot is interested in utilizing merged multispectral data from UAVs for environmental monitoring protocols. 		[email]
(352) 392-4990
Dr. Ahmed Mohamed Navigation
Ahmed’s research interest is in the area of navigation, geo-referencing, and mapping. His research focuses on developing cost-effective-easily-deployable geospatial solutions for natural resource applications using technologies such as GPS-aided inertial navigation, digital imaging, and LiDAR systems. Ahmed’s expertise stems from industrial and academic geomatics positions he held in Canada, Egypt, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia prior to joining the University of Florida. Ahmed is a licensed professional engineer in Alberta, Canada. Dr. Mohamed and his students continue work on rapid image georeferencing, and anticipate integrating high-resolution inertial sensors into the system to enable accurate highly-accurate position estimation of objects viewed in UAV-gathered images.		 [email]
(352) 392-3465