Heike Haas
heike.haas@unibw-muenchen.de
The First International Summer School on Global Navigation Satellite Systems closed successfully on Sunday 9th September.

Organised by the Institute of Geodesy and Navigation in cooperation with Stanford University (USA) and École Nationale Supériore de l`Aéronautique et de l`Éspace (Toulouse) Summer School started on September 5th in Berchtesgaden, Germany where the Galileo Test Environment GATE is located.

About 50 attendees joined the unique event with its highly qualified lecturers as for example Bradford Parkinson (Father of GPS), Rainer Grohe (former Executive Director of Galieo Joint Undertaking) and Peter L. Levin (Founder and President of DAFCA Inc.). Organiser Prof. Dr. Guenter W. Hein from the Institute of Geodesy and Navigation was glad about this overwhelming echo. He pointed out that the main goal of the Summer School was to educate the PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and engineers interdisciplinaryly and to create a kind of Summer School Spirit which was ment to bring students and teachers close together. “The First International Summer School was a wonderful experience for me, and the highlight of my summer.”, Peter Levin told us. “The students there were self selected”, he went on, ”they ALSO were taking time to voluntarily participate in a special event, not required by the curriculum, to expand their horizons into technology and business. These are exactly the people who are incentivized, self-motivated, and exciting to spend a week with.”

The lecture program offered a broad spectrum of GNSS topics as there were: “The Future of Satellite Navigation”, “Frequencies, Signals and Signal Processing”, “Orbit Determination” and “Business Engineering”. This dense program was one of the special qualities of the Summer School. Dr. Christopher Hegarty from MITRE Corporation explained: “The First International Summer School was special in that brought together a very bright collection of students with lecturers with a diverse set of backgrounds and expertise in various aspects of GNSS.”

In the session “So, you really want to start a business?” Peter Levin answered the various questions of the attendees concerning business plans and funding. This helped the students to face the Student Work Competition where they had to create a new GNSS business idea with fundamental technical or application oriented background. The most innovative ideas were a toy for overweight kids and an intelligent life jacket. The best five groups were awarded at the end of the week.

The First International Summer School on GNSS and the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit are both famous Satnav events organised in charge by the Institute of Geodesy and Navigation. Next Summer School will be held in autumn 2008, Munich Satellite Navigation Summit will be held from 19.-21. February 2008 in the Residence Munich.