Aqua and Terra MODIS Characterization and On-Orbit Calibration
I lead aspects of the operational calibration and algorithm development for the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) instruments on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. MODIS is a scanning radiometer that images the Earth in 21 reflective solar and 15 thermal emissive wavelengths. Over 20 years of MODIS data forms a large part of our global climate record for cloud, aerosol, land, ocean, and molecular properties.
A major focus of my work is improvements to MODIS on-board and Earth-view vicarious calibration in the post-constellation exit era. I use co-incident multi-angle and/or polarimetric data, vector radiative transfer modeling, and deep learning approaches. This work builds the foundation for instrument performance monitoring for upcoming NASA missions, such as PACE and AOS. For more details, visit https://mcst.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
The Hyper Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP)
The HARP instrument is a wide field-of-view, multi-angle imaging polarimeter that advances the way we measure and interpret aerosol and cloud microphysical properties from space. HARP was funded through the NASA ESTO InVEST program and was developed jointly by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in Baltimore, MD, and the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL) in Logan, Utah. I led the pre-launch calibration and cloud science applications with HARP, and also contributed to its development at all stages, including optical design, deployment, algorithm development, and on-orbit trending.
The HARP instrument won Small Satellite of the Year 2020 from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and is the first American instrument of its kind in space. This work paved the way for aircraft instrumentation (Airborne HARP) and a highly optimized HARP2 onboard the upcoming NASA PACE mission. For more details, visit https://esi.umbc.edu/.