Antonio Plaza
Professor, University of Extremadura
IEEE Fellow | Member of Academia Europaea | Highly Cited Researcher (2018-2025)
72,000+ citations | h-index 120 | 900+ publications
Head of the Hyperspectral Computing Laboratory | Dept. Technology of Computers and Communications
E-mail: aplaza@unex.es
Research Profiles: Google Scholar - Scopus - Web of Science - Orcid - DBLP - ResearchGate - ScholarGPS
Bio and research interests
Antonio Plaza was born in Caceres, SPAIN, in March 1975. He received the Computer Engineer degree in 1997, the M.Sc. degree in 1999, and the Ph.D. degree in 2002, all in Computer Engineering. Dr. Plaza is a Full Professor with the Department of Technology of Computers and Communications, University of Extremadura, Spain, where he is the Head of the Hyperspectral Computing Laboratory (HyperComp). He has authored or co-authored 982 publications, including 555 journal citation report (JCR) papers, 28 international book chapters and 334 peer-reviewed international conference papers. He has guest edited 26 JCR journal special issues on remote sensing data processing and analysis. He has been included in the 2018-2025 Highly Cited Researchers List by Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics (eight consecutive years). His main research interests comprise hyperspectral imaging, signal processing, machine/deep learning, and efficient implementations of large-scale scientific problems on high performance computing architectures, including clusters, heterogeneous networks of computers and clouds, and specialized computer architectures such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) or graphical processing units (GPUs).
Relevant scientific contributions
Prof. Plaza is a pioneer scientist in hyperspectral imaging (1999-2026), applying this new technique to important problems worldwide (land-cover classification, precision agriculture, water quality analysis). He has helped promoting the University of Extremadura (UEx) to become #12 institution in the field of remote sensing in the world (#2 in Europe and #1 in Spain), as indicated by the 2025 edition of ARWU Shanghai Ranking Research Fields. He has been a leader of UEx in IT activities, being one of the most highly cited researchers in his field in the world (currently #2 highly ranked scientist in hyperspectral imaging, #2 highly ranked scientist in earth observation and #5 highly ranked scientist in remote sensing, according to ScholarGPS) and in Spain (currently top cited Spanish scientist in remote sensing, electrical and electronic engineering and imaging science and photographic technology according to grupo DIH, as well as fourth top cited Spanish scientist in computer science according to research.com). Prof. Plaza coordinated the Hyperspectral Imaging Network project, a four-year Marie Curie Research Training Network (Budget: 2.800.000 Euro) designed to build an interdisciplinary European research community focused on hyperspectral imaging. This project had an important impact on the advancement of the hyperspectral imaging area in Europe. It included 15 European partners, with 9 universities, 3 research institutes and 3 SMEs, resulting in 15 PhD dissertations that helped establishing the current role of Europe as a leader in this field. Through the TOLOMEO and EOXPOSURE European projects, Prof. Plaza also helped consolidating hyperspectral imaging in Latin America, creating an important network of scientific contacts which spans several countries in that continent, increasing the presence of Europe in one of the world's developing regions of most interest. He also established an extensive network in China, being recognized as a Visiting Professor by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Changjiang Scholar by Hunan University, and a Chair Professor by Nanjing University. In addition, he holds and has held very important positions within the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), such as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (TGRS), 2013-2017, and Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems (JMASS), 2020-2021. He has also been actively involved with IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS), where he served as Chair of the IEEE GRSS Publication Awards Committe (2018-now), Vice-Chair (2019-2022) and Chair (2023-2025) of the IEEE GRSS Fellow Evaluation Committee. As International Education Director of IEEE GRSS (2011-2012), he was the initiator and founder of the successful series of IEEE GRSS summer schools, and also organized four summer schools within the Marie Curie Hyper-I-Net project. He also organized other multiple education and training activities on hyperspectral imaging across Europe. These activities have helped defining a new generation of remote sensing scientists. Prof. Plaza has been recognized in 2015 by the IEEE as Fellow “for contributions to to hyperspectral data processing and parallel computing of Earth observation data.” He was also elevated to Fellow status by the International Academy of Artificial Intelligence Science. He was elected as a member of Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe) in 2020. He is a highly cited researcher (included in the prestigious Highly Cited Researchers List by Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics in 2018-2025), and consistently listed among the 2% top cited researchers in the world according to Stanford University).
Selected publications
D. Hong, C. Li, N. Yokoya, B. Zhang, X. Jia, A. Plaza, P. Gamba, J. A. Benediktsson and J. Chanussot. Hyperspectral Imaging. Nature Reviews Methods Primers, vol. 6, Art no. 19, 2026 (pdf) [IF(2025)=54.2].
B. Tu, T. Zhou, B. Liu, J. Li and A. Plaza. Multi-Scale Autoencoder Suppression Strategy for Hyperspectral Image Anomaly Detection. IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, vol. 34, pp. 5115-5130, 2025 (pdf) [IF(2025)=15.3]. ESI Highly Cited Paper (ESI Hot, Research Front).
G. Vivone, L.-J. Deng, S. Deng, D. Hong, M. Jiang, C. Li, W. Li, H. Shen, X. Wu, J.-L. Xiao, M. Zhang, J. Chanussot, S. Garcia and A. Plaza. Deep Learning in Remote Sensing Image Fusion: Methods, Protocols, Data and Future Perspectives. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 269-310, March 2025 (pdf) [IF(2025)=13.7]. ESI Highly Cited Paper (ESI Hot, Research Front).
D. Hong, B. Zhang, X. Li, Y. Li, C. Li, J. Yao, N. Yokoya, H. Li, X. Jia, A. Plaza, P. Gamba, J. A. Benediktsson and J. Chanussot. SpectralGPT: Spectral Remote Sensing Foundation Model. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 46, no. 8, pp. 5227-5244, August 2024 (pdf) [IF(2024)=18.6]. ESI Highly Cited Paper (ESI Hot, Research Front).
D. Hong, Z. Han, J. Yao, L. Gao, B. Zhang, A. Plaza and J. Chanussot. SpectralFormer: Rethinking Hyperspectral Image Classification with Transformers. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 60, pp. 1-15, Art no. 5518615, 2022 (pdf) [IF(2022)=8.2]. ESI Highly Cited Paper (Research Front).
S. Minaee, Y. Boykov, F. Porikli, A. Plaza, N. Kehtarnavaz and D. Terzopoulos. Image Segmentation Using Deep Learning: A Survey. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 44, no. 7, pp. 3523-3542, July 2022 (pdf) [IF(2022)=23.6]. ESI Highly Cited Paper.
D. Hong, L. Gao, J. Yao, B. Zhang, A. Plaza and J. Chanussot. Graph Convolutional Networks for Hyperspectral Image Classification. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 59, no. 7, pp. 5966-5978, July 2021 (pdf) [IF(2021)=8.125]. ESI Highly Cited Paper (Research Front). 2025 Highest Impact Paper Award of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society.
M. Chi, A. Plaza, J. A. Benediktsson, Z. Sun, J. Shen and Y. Zhu. Big Data for Remote Sensing: Challenges and Opportunities. Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 104, no. 11, pp. 2207-2219, November 2016 (pdf) [IF(2016)=9.237]. ESI Highly Cited Paper.
J. M. Bioucas-Dias, A. Plaza, N. Dobigeon, M. Parente, Q. Du, P. Gader and J. Chanussot. Hyperspectral Unmixing Overview: Geometrical, Statistical and Sparse Regression-Based Approaches. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 354-379, April 2012 (pdf) [IF(2012)=2.874]. Most highly cited paper of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.
A. Plaza, J. Plaza, A. Paz and S. Sanchez. Parallel Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 119-126, May 2011 (pdf) [IF(2011)=4.066]. 2015 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Column Paper Award.
Bibliometric indicators
Clarivate Analytics Highly cited researcher: 2018-2025 (eight consecutive years)
46 papers currently labeled as “Essential Science Indicators” (ESI) by Web of Science/Clarivate Analytics (source).
Google Scholar: 71,921 citations, h-index: 120 (source).
Scopus: 814 documents, 56,726 citations, h-index: 107 (source).
Web of Science: 861 documents, 47,939 citations, h-index: 100, 26,217 citing articles, 140 citing patents, verified peer reviews: 429, verified editor records: 6,814 (source).
ResearchGate: 918 publications, 64,014 citations, h-index: 114 (source).
ScholarGPS: 743 publications, 63,565 citations, h-index: 115 (source).
Listed among the 2% top cited researchers in the world according to Stanford University (source).
Positioning in research rankings
#2 highly ranked scholar worldwide in hyperspectral imaging (lifetime), according to ScholarGPS (source).
#2 highly ranked scholar worldwide in earth observation (lifetime), according to ScholarGPS (source).
#4 highly ranked scholar worldwide in remote sensing (lifetime), according to ScholarGPS (source).
#4 highly ranked researcher in computer science in Spain, according to research.com (source).
University of Extremadura ranks #12 worldwide in remote sensing (#2 in Europe and #1 in Spain), according to Shanghai Ranking (source).
University of Extremadura ranks #3 worldwide in hyperspectral imaging (lifetime), according to ScholarGPS (source).
University of Extremadura ranks #4 worldwide in hyperspectral imaging (prior five years), according to ScholarGPS (source).
Distinctions and awards
Highly Cited Researcher (WoS/Clarivate Analytics) in 2018-2025 (eight consecutive years).
2025 Highest Impact Paper Award of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society for the contribution entitled "Graph Convolutional Networks for Hyperspectral Image Classification" published in the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing in July 2021.
Research Track Record of Excellence Award at University of Extremadura, 2024.
Aritmel Award of the Spanish Computer Science Society (SCIE) and BBVA Foundation, 2023.
2023 Top Cited Paper of the CAAI Transactions on Intelligence Technology journal for the contribution entitled "Spectral-Spatial Sequence Characteristics-Based Convolutional Transformer for Hyperspectral Change Detection".
Fellow of the International Academy of Artificial Intelligence Sciences in 2021.
Elected as a Member of Academia Europaea - The Academy of Europe in 2020.
Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2015.
Distinguished with the 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026 "Computer Science in Spain Leader Award" by research.com (source).
2021 Outstanding Paper Award at the IEEE Workshop: Hyperspectral Sensing meets Machine Learning and Pattern Analysis (HyperMLPA), for the contribution entitled "A New Max-Min Convolutional Neural Network for Hyperspectral Image Classification".
2019 Outstanding Paper Award at the IEEE Workshop on Hyperspectral Image Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing (WHISPERS), for the contribution entitled "Efficient Convolutional Neural Network for Spectral-Spatial Hyperspectral Denoising."
2017 Outstanding Associate Editor Award of the IEEE Access journal.
2015 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Column Paper Award for the contribution entitled "Parallel Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing" published in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine in April 2011.
2014 Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Prize Paper Award of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (JSTARS), for the contribution entitled "A Web-Based System for Classification of Remote Sensing Data" published in JSTARS in August 2013.
Best reviewer of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing journal in 2010.
Best reviewer of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters journal in 2009.
Co-author of the 2011 Best Student Paper at the IEEE International Conference on Space Technology, entitled "FPGA Design of the N-FINDR Algorithm for Spaceborne Hyperspectral Missions."
Top Cited Article award of Elsevier's Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (in 2005-2010) for the contribution entitled "Commodity Cluster-Based Parallel Processing of Hyperspectral Imagery."
2008 Best Paper award at the IEEE Symposium on Signal Processing and Information Technology, for the contribution entitled "Morphological Feature Extraction and Spectral Unmixing of Hyperspectral Images."
Best Ph.D. Dissertation award at University of Extremadura in 2002.
Several of his students received the Best Ph.D. Dissertation award at University of Extremadura, and one of his students has received the Best Ph.D. Dissertation award at Complutense University of Madrid, Spain. His student M. D. Iordache received the recognition as the best Romanian student of the year in 2011. Several of his students have also received best student paper awards at different conferences/symposia.
Editorial activities
Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing journal for five years (appointed in January 2013, finished his term in December 2017). During his term, the journal increased its impact factor from 2.993 to 4.662.
Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Miniaturization for Air and Space Systems (2020-2021).
Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing (2007-2012, 2018-2021) in the areas of Hyperspectral Image Analysis and Signal Processing.
Associate Editor of IEEE Access (2013-2019), being recognized as Outstanding Associate Editor of the journal in 2017).
Associate Editor of the Journal of Real-Time Image Processing (since February 2009).
Associate Editor of the EURASIP ISRN Signal Processing journal (2010-2012)
Associate Editor of Remote Sensing journal (2009-2012).
Editor of a book on High-Performance Computing in Remote Sensing for CRC Press/Taylor and Francis (the first book on this topic in the published literature).
Guest Editor of 26 JCR journal special issues on remote sensing data processing and analysis.
Editor of 9 proceeding volumes for different conferences for which he served as Chair.
Served as a member of the steering committee of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing (2011-2012).
Member of the Editorial Board of the Spanish Remote Sensing journal.
Associate Editor for Education Activites for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter (2011-2012).
Involvement in technical societies
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) - Member (2005), Senior Member (2007), Fellow (2015).
Member of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) since 2005.
Elected voting member of the Administrative Committee (AdCom) of IEEE GRSS since 2011.
International Director of Education of IEEE GRSS (2011-2012).
President of the Spanish Chapter of IEEE GRSS (2013-2016).
Chair of the Ad-Hoc Plagiarism Committee of IEEE GRSS (2018).
Chair of the History Committee of IEEE GRSS (2018).
Vice-Chair of the Fellow Evaluation Committee of IEEE GRSS (2019-2022).
Chair of the Fellow Evaluation Committee of IEEE GRSS (2023-2025).
Chair of the Publications Awards Committee of IEEE GRSS (since 2019).
Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Strategic Industry Engagement and Impact of IEEE GRSS (since 2026).
Visiting researcher/professor positions
Microsystems Laboratory at the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park (2001).
AVIRIS group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California (2002).
Computational and Information Sciences and Technology Office (CISTO) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland (2003).
Remote Sensing, Signal and Image Processing Laboratory (RSSIPL) at the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County (2004).
Telecommunications & Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Pavia, Italy (2010).
GIPSA-Laboratory, Grenoble Institute of Technology, Grenoble, France (2011).
Center for Earth Observation and Digital Earth (CEODE), Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China (2013).
School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China (multiple times in between 2014 and 2019).
Department of Electrical Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, China, funded by the prestigious ChangJiang Scholar grant to serve as visiting professor (part-time) in 2017-2019.
Visiting scholar with many Chinese universities in different cities, including (among others) Nanjing, Wuhan, Xi’an, Beijing or Shanghai.
Coordination of international research projects
Coordinator of the Hyperspectral Imaging Network (Hyper-I-Net), a four-year Marie Curie Research Training Network (total budget: 2.800.000 Euro) designed to build an interdisciplinary European research community focused on hyperspectral imaging activities. This project had an important impact on the advancement of the hyperspectral imaging area in Europe.
Member of the Management Committee and coordinator of a working group on Applications of Hierarchical-Heterogeneous Systems in the Open European Network for High Performance Computing on Complex Environments (ComplexHPC), funded by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) programme.
Partner of the Marie Curie Action for International Research Staff Exchange (IRSES) Tools for Open Multi-Risk Assessment Using Earth Observation Data (TOLOMEO), which involved cooperation between several Universities in Europe and South-America.
Partner of the HOST project (total budget: 2.226.268 Euro) funded under the capacities research potential (REGPOT) programme of the European Commission.
Partner of the EOXPOSURE IRSES project funded by the European Commission under H2020 initiative.
Coordinator of several national projects funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation on fundamental research and infrastructures and participant of relevant research networks at the Spanish level.
Educational activities
Dr. Plaza has supervised 20 PhD dissertations on hyperspectral imaging (D. Valencia, C. González, A. Paz, J. Li, D. Iordache, S. Sanchez, G. Martín, S. Bernabé, I. García, M. Khodadadzadeh, J. Sevilla, L. I. Jiménez, Y. Liu, J. M. Molero, J. M. Haut, M. E. Paoletti, X. Tao, E. C. Rodriguez-Garlito, L. Han and Z. Wu).
He was nominated for the Excellence of Teaching Award of University of Extremadura in 2015 and 2018, and was the winner of the Excellence Teaching Award of University of Extremadura in 2019.
He served as Director of Education of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (2011-2012).
He has been a member of the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) Student Prize Paper Award Committee from 2011-2019, and was the main responsible for the allocation of Travel Grants for IGARSS in 2011-2012 as GRSS Director of Education.
He served as an Associate Editor for Education Activities for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Newsletter (2011-2012).
He was vice-chair and one of the main organizers of the First IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Summer School (RSSS12) held in conjunction with IGARSS 2012 in Munich, Germany, where he also served as one of the lecturers of the summer school.
He has been keynote speaker in numerous conferences/symposia, and presented invited keynote talks and many different events.
Proposal evaluation and reviewer activities
Dr. Plaza has served as a proposal evaluator for the European Commission (Marie Curie Actions, Engineering Panel, FP7 and Space Program, H2020), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the European Space Agency, the Belgium Science Policy, the Israel Science Foundation, and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. He has participated in the Tenure Track Selection Committee of different Universities in United States, China, Australia and Europe. He has reviewed many research proposals for the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education, including the prestigious Spanish Programmes Juan de la Cierva and Ramón y Cajal, as well as participated on the evaluation committee of fundamental research projects submitted to TIN (Information Technology) program of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. He served as a collaborator of the Spanish Research Agency (AEI), working in the main committee for the evaluation of proposals submitted to different calls in Spain. He has also served as a reviewer for more than 60 international journals. According to WoS, his number of verified reviews is 429 and his number of editor records is 6814 (total number of manuscripts handled as Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editor). Specifically, Prof. Plaza served as a reviewer for the following journals:
IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
IEEE Transactions on Computers
IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging
IEEE Transactions on Image Processing
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration Systems
IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing
IEEE Signal Processing Letters
IEEE Sensors Journal
IEEE Computer Journal
Proceedings of the IEEE
Science
The Innovation
Remote Sensing of Environment
Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
International Journal of High-Performance Computing Applications
Concurrency & Computation: Practice and Experience
Information Fusion
Information Sciences
International Journal of Remote Sensing
ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation
Computer Vision and Image Understanding
Cluster Computing
Neurocomputing
Journal of Real-Time Image Processing
Signal Processing
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Optical Engineering
Journal of Electronic Imaging
Journal of the Optical Society of America
Environmental Modeling
EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing
IET Image Processing
Optics and Lasers in Engineering
Journal of Systems and Software
SIAM Journal on Imaging Sciences
Sensors
Remote Sensing
Computers in Biology and Medicine
Pattern Recognition Letters
Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation
Journal of Real-Time Image Processing
Computers & Geosciences
Journal of Computational Physics
The Computer Journal
GeoInformatica
Applied Optics
Remote Sensing Letters
Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing
Participation in committees of international conferences and symposia
Co-Chair of Track 6: Multidisciplinary, Domain-Specific and Applied Parallel and Distributed Computing, Euro-Par 2024, Madrid, Spain, August 2024.
General Co-Chair of 2019 Jornadas SARTECO (Socieded de Arquitectura y Tecnología de Computadores), held in Cáceres, Spain, in September 2019.
General Co-Chair of the Fourth IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Big Data (BigMM 2018) held in Xi'an, China, in September 2018.
General Chair (with J. M. Bioucas-Dias) of the Third IEEE Workshop on Hyperspectral Image and Signal Processing: Evolution in Remote Sensing (Whispers'11) held in Lisbon, Portugal, in June 2011.
Technical Program Coordinator (TPC) for the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium since 2011.
General Chair of yearly conferences held in USA, Europe and Asia, such as the SPIE Conference on Satellite Data Compression, Communication and Processing, part of SPIE Optics and Photonics, San Diego, California, the SPIE Conference on High Performance Computing in Remote Sensing, part of SPIE Remote Sensing Europe, and the IEEE International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing in Remote Sensing, part of the IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems.
Member of the Technical Program Committee and chaired sessions for more than 50 international conferences and symposia, with many sessions chaired for IEEE and SPIE conferences.
