Dr. Erik Blasch
ERIK BLASCH is a principal scientist at the the US Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) in the Information Directorate at Rome, NY. From 2009-2012, he was an exchange scientist to Defence R&D Canada (DRDC) at Valcartier, Quebec. From 2000-2009, Dr. Blasch was the Information Fusion Evaluation Tech Lead for the AFRL Sensors Directorate - COMprehensive Performance Assessment of Sensor Exploitation (COMPASE) Center supporting AF and DARPA evaluations. Dr. Blasch was previously an Adjunct Electrical Engineering Professor at Wright State University and the Air Force Institute of Technology in Dayton, Ohio teaching signal processing, target tracking, and information fusion (2000-2010). He is also a reserve Lt. Col. with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) in Washington, DC supporting physics, electronics, and nanotechnology developments.
Dr. Blasch served as an AESS BoG member (2010-2013) as the International Chapters Chair and was active in the 2011 AESS Chapters Summit. He is currently an AIAA/AESS representative (2013-2014) and an AESS Distinguished lecturer (2013-2014). Dr. Blasch was a founding member of the International Society of Information Fusion (www.isif.org) in 1998, held various leadership roles in the Fusion conferences, and was the 2007 ISIF President. He was the IEEE Dayton Representative to the Sections Congress (2003, 2005), an IEEE Dayton (2007) and Montreal (2010) AESS Chapter President, an IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conference (NAECON) Committee member, and received the IEEE Russ Bioengineering award. He is currently an IEEE AESS track standards panel member, associate IEEE SMC editor (since 2006), IEEE T-AES reviewer, and associate editor for the AESS Magazine. He has focused on robotics, automatic target recognition, targeting tracking, and information fusion research compiling 400+ scientific papers, tutorials, and book chapters. His recent book is High-Level Information Fusion Management and Systems Design (Artech House, 2012).
Dr. Blasch received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992 and Master’s Degrees in Mechanical (‘94), Health Science (‘95), and Industrial Engineering (Human Factors) (‘95) from Georgia Tech and attended the University of Wisconsin for a MD/PHD in Neurosciences/Mech. Eng until being called to Active Duty in 1996 to the United States Air Force. He completed an MBA (‘98), MSEE (’98), MS Econ(’99), and a PhD (’99) in Electrical Engineering from Wright State University and is a graduate of Air War College (’08). He is a Fellow of SPIE, Associate Fellow of AIAA, and a senior member of IEEE