Report on the Summer School on Robust Signal Processing

This September, 27 Ph.D. students and early career researches from all around the world attended the 2016 Joint IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) and European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP) Summer School on Robust Signal Processing. The participants enjoyed a unique event that took place in Rüdesheim am Rhein. The Summer School, which was organized by Dr.-Ing. Michael Muma and Prof. Abdelhak M. Zoubir, offered a well-balance program of lectures and diverse social events.

"The thing I enjoyed most was the diversity of people attending the school, both in the sense of people coming from all around the world and from different areas of expertise. The first helped in making friendly connections and the second in professional ones.“

Talks were given by world-class experts on advances in statistical signal processing with emphasis on robust statistics for signal processing. Supported by numerous advanced real-life applications, participants gained insights to innovative robust methods and algorithms for signal processing. For the interested reader, the slides of all tutorial are freely available at the Summer School homepage. Additionally, all lectures were recorded and the material will soon be available at the IEEE SPS Resource Center, the EURASIP Open Library, and the Technische Universität Darmstadt Open Lectures Archive.

"This summer school provided me several tools that I did not know. I’m pretty sure I can relate them to my work, and then improve the methods I am using.“

The participants also presented their own work and received feedback from the speakers and other attendees on how to best integrate robust statistics into their current research topics. Additionally, an examination was held at the end of the week for those who were interested.

"The arrangements for the social activities and the venue in the beautiful town of Rüdesheim were remarkably good.“

Besides the daily tutorials, the five-day Summer School also included a unique and diverse program of social events. Being part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Rüdesheim am Rhein itself is worth visiting and not without reason one of Germany’s biggest tourist attractions. As Rüdesheim is well-known for its winemaking, which was introduced by the Romans more than 2000 years ago, a historical guided city tour and a wine tasting were undertaken. Moreover, the group had a chill-out in the vineyards and a fine wine tasting in a more than 500 year old wine cellar. A further highlight of the social program was left for the last day, when the group took a boat tour on the Rhine river and a cable car ride to the Niederwald Monument, both offering spectacular views.

The Summer School received full sponsorship from the IEEE SPS and EURASIP, and was supported by LOEWE NICER and Technische Universität Darmstadt.