ERIK BLASCH (S’98-M’99-SM’05-F’18) is a Program Officer at the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Arlington, VA. From 2012-2017, he was a principle scientist at 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. Additionally, his assignments include USAF Colonel (ret) Reserve officer in charge of supporting developments of information fusion products and 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).  

Dr. Blasch served as an AESS BoG member (2011-2016) as the International Chapters Chair and was active in the 2011 AESS Chapters Summit as well as AIAA/AESS representative (2013-2016) and an AESS Distinguished lecturer. He was the IEEE Dayton Representative to the Sections Congress (2003, 2005), an IEEE Dayton (2007), and Montreal (2010) AESS Chapter President. He has been a contributing organizing committee member to the IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conference (NAECON) (since 1997), ISIF Fusion Conference (since 1998) and the IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference (Since 2013). Other roles include IEEE AESS track standards panel member, associate IEEE SMC editor, IEEE T-AES reviewer, and Associate Editor for the AESS Magazine, among other journals. Dr. Blasch was a founding member of the International Society of Information Fusion (http://www.isif.org) in 1998 and was the 2007 ISIF President.  

He has focused on information fusion, image fusion, targeting tracking, avionics, and human factors research compiling 5 books, 12 co-edited books, 71 patents, 180 journal papers, 600+ conference papers, among numerous tutorials and book chapters. 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 the recipient of 21 performance medals, 8 named awards, as well as Fellow of AIAA (astronautics), IEEE (electrical), MSS (sensing), RAeS (aerospace), and SPIE (optical) societies.