Amr Abd-Elrahman is a Geomatics Professor and Program Advisor at the University of Florida's (UF) Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC) and co-directs the Geospatial Mapping and Applications lab in the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatics Sciences. Abd-Elrahman earned his B.S. degree in Civil Engineering and M.S. degree in Digital Mapping from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering – Geomatics concentration, with a minor in Computer and Information Science Engineering, from the University of Florida. Dr. Abd-Elrahman has taught more than seven undergraduate and graduate courses in the Geomatics, Remote Sensing, and Geospatial Analysis areas, including Survey Computations, Image Processing for Remote Sensing, Geospatial Analysis, GIS Applications, and Forest Information Systems. His research focuses on utilizing remote sensing imagery and spatial analysis to support natural resource management and precision agriculture. Dr. Abd-Elrahman's most recent research focuses on the use of small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) imagery for wetland classification and invasive plant mapping through machine and deep learning techniques and the use of lidar to characterize coastal vegetation. Abd-Elrahman's research involves image-based high-throughput phenotyping and plant growth modeling. His research has received funding from federal and state agencies, including NSF, NOAA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and USDA, as well as the private sector. Recently, Dr. Abd-Elrahman was awarded an NSF grant to support Geomatics students and to study the factors affecting student success in a geographically distributed education system.
Dr. Abd-Elrahman serves as Chair of the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Education and Professional Development Committee, as Director of the ASPRS Remote Sensing Applications Division, and is a member of several other professional organizations. He has served as an ASPRS UAS certificate application evaluator. He co-edited the Sector Insights column in the PERS journal, coordinated the ASPRS Young Professional Council, and coordinated the workshop program of the ASPRS annual conference for three consecutive years. Dr Abd-Elrahman serves as an editor of the ISPRS International Journal of Geoinformatics and the European Journal of Remote Sensing Journals. He also serves as a reviewer for several high-impact journals in the remote sensing and geospatial analysis areas. Dr. Abd-Elrahman has been a reviewer/ panelist for the National Science Foundation of the USA, Austria, Brazil, and Qatar, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ERDC, and the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which manages the International Space Center National Laboratory under a cooperative agreement with NASA. Abd-Elrahman is the recipient of the Florida Surveying and Mapping Society Professional Excellence Award, the UF College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Graduate Advisor of the Year Award, North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture (NACTA) Teaching Scholar Award, the UF Term Professorship Award; the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Conference Technical Program Coordination Award (two years); ASPRS Presidential Citation; NACTA Teacher Fellow Award; and a GCREC Outstanding Faculty Award.
