Isaac Gerg is a Staff R&D Engineer working remotely on Kitware’s Computer Vision Team. He is focused on machine learning tasks where he’ll be collaborating with researchers and training algorithms to solve challenging problems.

Isaac is also a co-founder and primary algorithm developer for ASASIN, the advanced synthetic aperture sonar imagining engine. ASASIN was created in 2012 as an image formation code for synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) systems. It has been deployed in situ on embedded hardware in underwater drones, desktop systems for Navy operators, and in the cloud for distributed processing.

Prior to working at Kitware, Issac worked at Penn State’s Applied Research Lab as a staff scientist. He focused on remote sensing but a large portion was specific to undersea remote sensing with synthetic aperture sonar (SAS) on board REMUS 600 unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). His tasks included developing custom algorithms for signal processing (beamforming), image processing, object recognition, saliency detection, autofocus (image enhancement), image segmentation, and image compression. This research led him into the area of perception which has been a passion since taking his first undergrad classes in computer vision. During this time, Isaac was invited to take a sabbatical as a visiting scientist at the NATO Centre for Maritime for Research & Experimentation in La Spezia, Italy where he developed deep-learning algorithms for their SAS systems.

Before working at Penn State, Isaac worked at Raytheon as a software engineer, eventually making his way to the algorithms group. He was responsible for developing distributed signal processing algorithms for an HPC system. He obtained his masters while working full-time studying the area of hyperspectral remote sensing.

Isaac received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State), working under Dr. Vishal Monga. He also received his master’s degree in the same area, focusing on remote sensing, and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Penn State.

Awards

• 3rd Place in the Student Paper Competition presented by IEEE IGARSS, 2021

• 2nd Place in the Student Poster Competition presented by IEEE OCEANS, 2021

• Penn State Applied Research Lab’s Engineering Excellence Award presented by Penn State, 2016

Invited Talks & Media

• Isaac D. Gerg. Demystifying AI in Healthcare: An Intro to Large Language Models. At International Pediatric Endosurgery Group, Virtual, United States. June 2023.

• Isaac D. Gerg, et al. Coupling rendering and generative adversarial networks for artificial sonar image generation. At Synthetic Data for Privacy, Security and Augmentation. Center for Accountable, Responsible and Transparent AI. University of Bath. 2022.

• Isaac D. Gerg, Daniel C. Brown. The Advanced Synthetic Aperture Sonar Imaging eNgine (ASASIN), a time-domain backprojection beamformer using graphics processing units. At Acoustical Society of America, Hawaii, United States. October 2016.

• Isaac D. Gerg, Daniel C. Brown. Moving away from the phase center approximation in micronavigation for synthetic aperture sonar. At Acoustical Society of America, October 2016. Hawaii, United States

• Isaac D. Gerg. New and Open Source Technologies for Next Generation SIGINT Applications. At Raytheon Information Systems & Computing Symposium, Norwood, MA. April 2009.

• Isaac D. Gerg. Speedy, Unsupervised Hyperspectral Exploitation. At 7th Raytheon Systems and Software Symposium, Tucson, AZ. May 2008.

• Isaac D. Gerg and Stephen Wagner. High-Speed Interconnect Trade Study for a Real Time Signal Processing System. At 5th Raytheon Systems and Software Symposium, Denver, CO. March 2006.

• Isaac D. Gerg. Low Cost/Performance Distributed Architecture Evaluation for Use in a Real-Time Signal Processing System. At Raytheon PSTN Mini-Expo, Fort Wayne, IN. October 2005

Professional Associations & Service

• Session Chair – IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2022