From April 27 to May 2,  Andrey Kostianoy and Nickolay Sheremet(SIO) visited the CNR team in Pisa in the framework of the plan of the exchange visits during 2008. The visit focused on (1) taking decisions about the book on Coastal Altimetry, just approved by Springer publisher; (2) checking status of INTAS payments to all partners; (3) updating the plan of exchange visits; (4) drafting the agenda of the forthcoming final ALTICORE meeting to be held during September; (5) reviewing the altimetry work done in the Eastern regional Seas; (6) reviewing the joint work about LPC monitoring using coastal altimetry and SST; (7) taking decisions about attendance at forthcoming 2nd Coastal Altimetry Workshop in Pisa (6-7 November 2008) and Jason-1 meeting in Nice (10-12 November 2008). 

During the visit, Nickolay also developed an important Matlab script to upload data files generated by the X-Track altimeter processor developed by Lauren Roblou (LEGOS). The script was successfully tested in the Caspian Sea by selecting two ground tracks from Jason-1 and Envisat during 2002-2005. 

Stefano Vignudelli (CNR) also provided business opportunities to the Russian delegation during their staying in Pisa. Andrey Kostianoy gave a seminar talk at Tea Company (click here to know more) in Pisa on 28 April 2008. The focus was lesson learned from a Russian project about operational oil spill monitoring. There were a lot of particularly interesting questions and discussion at the end with a hope of collaborative work in the future.  

Andrey Kostianoy also met Emilio Tesi, director of Ocean Team Ltd (click here to know more) in La Spezia. They discussed about joint work, particularly in the possibility of exploiting remote sensing observations in some proposals in due course. 

Here some photos during the visit at CNR (click above to view real size) 

Andrey Kostianoy (left), Nickolay Sheremet (centre) and both at CNR entry (right)