scientific community through a series of international conferences on remote sensing and geospatial information technologies, in the spirit of the first International Symposium on Remote Sensing of the Environment held in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1962. ERIM played key-roles in the development and implementation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR), at the time, an entirely new concept of radar technology. Development of an optical processing system for SAR data led Emmett Leith, Adam Kozma and Juris Upatnieks to use the newly invented laser in conjunction with the holographic theories outlined by Dennis Gabor. Leith and Upatnieks developed a practical technique for wave-front recording and reconstruction using lasers, thereby making possible the field now known as holography. Holograms have since found a wide variety of applications. Corporate history In 1997, claiming an inability to compete with for-profit industry, President Peter Banks and ERIM's board of trustees spun off a for-profit subsidiary under the name ERIM International, Incorporated. Nearly all of ERIM's R&D work and contracts moved to the for-profit entity, while the buildings, property, and a small fraction of personnel and contracts were retained by the not-for-profit ERIM. Banks and many board members allotted themselves high numbers of shares in the new for-profit venture, which were exercised for considerable sums when ERIM International, Inc. was sold to Veridian Corp. of Washington, D.C. in 1999. Veridian was later bought by General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in 2003, and the heritage-ERIM part of the organization became its Michigan Research and Development Center (MRDC) and moved from Ann Arbor to nearby Ypsilanti. Proceeds from the sale of ERIM International were used by the not-for-profit ERIM to acquire Center for Electronic Commerce (CEC), another Ann Arbor not for profit in 1998. ERIM acquired Vector Research, Inc. (VRI) in 2001 to form the Altarum Institute, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan. On October 1, 2006, Michigan Technological University purchased the Altarum Institute's Environmental and Emerging Technologies Division (EETD), which was mostly comprised by the heritage-ERIM portion of the Institute, to form the Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI). The Altarum Institute is a nonprofit now solely focused on health systems research, while the environmental and remote sensing research continues at MTRI. On October 3, 2014, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), Canadian corporation, completed the acquisition of the Ypsilanti, Michigan building and employees therein from General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems. With MDA's corporate restructuring following the acquisition of Digital Globe