Ms. Chisaphat Supunyachotsakul, a doctoral candidate in the geomatics area advised by Prof. James Bethel, is the recipient of the 2016 Robert E. Altenhofen Memorial Scholarship. This award is presented by the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) through the ASPRS Foundation from funds provided by Mrs. Helen Altenhofen as a memorial to her husband, Robert E. Altenhofen, a past president of ASPRS. He was an outstanding practitioner of photogrammetry and made notable contributions to the mathematical aspects of the science.

The Robert E. Altenhofen Memorial Scholarship was first given in 1986, intended to encourage and recognize college students who display exceptional ability and interest in the theoretical and mathematical aspects of photogrammetry and related mapping sciences. The last time a Purdue student received this award was 2008.

Chisaphat has an extensive background in photogrammetry and geomatics. She received a thesis-based Master of Science degree in Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics from Stuttgart, Germany. She also earned her second MSCE from Lyles School of Civil Engineering at Purdue University. Her second master thesis title is “Feasibility of the New Indiana Coordinate Reference System” under the supervision of Prof. James S. Bethel and Prof. Boudewijn H.W. van Gelder. This research project was funded by the Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT). The outcome of this study is a developed mapping system which is more commensurate with current high accuracy 3D surveys and dramatically minimizes the distortions with the ease of mathematical derivations based on closed-form formulae.

Chisaphat's PhD research is in the areas of 1) 3D LIDAR data processing focusing on 3D feature extractions and manipulations from both static and mobile platform and 2) the accuracy assessment of mobile laser scanning data and 3) L1-norm based minimization in data editing to detect and eliminate outliers resulting in robust estimation process. She has successfully developed some automatic algorithms for 3D corner detection at a variety of scales from point cloud datasets of buildings obtained from both static and mobile platforms. Parts of her research works were funded by INDOT under the supervision of Prof. James S. Bethel and Prof. Steven D. Johnson. The advancement resulting from her research works based on the automatic procedures will make it possible for the task of 3D feature extractions from structured buildings to be performed in a much simpler and faster fashion than it currently is. That means the accurate model of structures (which are the needed product for most construction related projects) can be produced faster and cheaper. Users could get more benefit from exploitation of 3D models with the improved procedures in creating them. The results from Chisaphat’s research in the part of accuracy assessment of mobile laser scanning data will provide insightful knowledge about data obtained from mobile mapping system surveys, aspects of its accuracy definition applied to this type of data and its processing techniques, as well as the necessary practices in data collection by a mobile mapping system.

Throughout her studies, Chisaphat has also had extensive industry training and experience being a teaching assistant. Last year she worked with NASA as contracted consultant in a project titled “Monitoring Risk and Extent of Drought for Enhanced Decision Making and Resource Allocation in the Kingdom of Thailand” at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. Furthermore, Chisaphat was a research assistant in many funded research projects and involved in many publications, and scientific presentations including the ones presented at Max Planck Institute of Optics and Imaging, Erlangen, Germany, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD as well as at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C.

Chisaphat has won many competitive awards, scholarships, and grants including the 2016 Robert E. Altenhofen Memorial Scholarship, the Roland S. Corning II Memorial Fellowship and the Royal Thai Government Scholarship.