The 532 Award for 2011 goes to AHAB CTO Andreas Axelsson.
The award committee motive for the prestigious price is;
"Andreas has over the last 15 years engineered and continuously developed bathymetric LiDAR systems. In 1995, early in his career Andreas was appointed technical responsible of the HawkEye I where he coordinated the development within the SAAB Group and its subcontractors. His latest achievements encompass the development of the shallow water algorithms used in the HawkEye II. He has also developed and improved the reflectance algorithms for seafloor characterization. For more than 15 years Andreas has developed procedures and algorithms focused on improving LiDAR system performance. He was instrumental in developing the HawkEye II system to survey both land and water simultaneously. Andreas has also headed the development team bringing the HawkEye II to its current state-of-the-art technology achieving 4 kHZ bathymetric data collection rate. Also, during this period, Andreas has developed the depth sensitivity of the bathymetric systems to accurately reach depth of 40 m and more. Andreas Axelsson co-founded in 2002 the company Airborne Hydrography AB, and is today Technical Director and one of the key owners of the company."
The 532 Award is given by the US Army Corps of Engineering and the JALBCTX organisation for a significant cumulative achievements award. The recipient will have a history in lidar bathymetry and airborne coastal mapping and charting, contributing to the advancement of the technologies, market, and/or worldwide area surveyed using this capability. No single event or achievement will justify this award, but rather a number over a period of years. This should be awarded to the most accomplished and critical person on earth (or beyond) in the field of lidar bathymetry and airborne coastal mapping and charting.