SAR thematic area: crop classification, tillage assessment, over-winter cover classification,  SAR training

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About me

Originally from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, I grew up moving around a lot, including all across Canada and overseas to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I arrived back in Toronto, Canada at 18 and started work in the Financial Services industry in Marketing & Sales. In 2001, as with other people at that time, the shocking events of September 11 had a profound impact on me. I realized the importance of living your life as if every day was your last,  and that I needed to follow my passion and my dream: studying and researching in Geography. In January 2002, I started my BA in Geography at York University in Toronto focusing on Biogeography, Hydrology and in my fourth year I met a passionate young researcher who was teaching the Remote Sensing course and I was hooked! I realized I wanted to pursue remote sensing at the Masters level and went on to meet my next mentor at Carleton University, Dr. Douglas J. King. He was my MSc and PhD supervisor who supported me though the MSc on Land use and Land Cover Change using object based image analysis and Landsat imagery, and then through my PhD looking at wetlands using SAR and optical imagery.  As a matter of fact, he asked a pretty simple question that started a life long passion "Why don't you add some SAR to that?"  After my PhD, I started a post doctoral fellowship at Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada working on MODIS imagery for timeseries change analysis, and then worked on the JECAM SAR Inter-Comparison Experiment and finally landed on a fabulous research team, lead by Dr. Heather McNairn focused on using SAR data for crop monitoring and mapping.  My free time is spent with my partner of 17 years, Alistair Robertson, our two boys, our new dog Daisy, our guinea pigs and bearded dragon!

SAR thematic area: coastal hazards (oil slicks, coastline erosion), LCC, disaster damage mapping, Python algorithm development

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About me

Born in Thiruvananthapuram, a coastal city in India, I moved to Germany in 2009 to pursue a MSc in satellite engineering at the Technical University of Munich and have worked here ever since (except for a brief stint in Singapore in 2020). When I left India, I knew I loved two things: Star Trek (which is why I wanted to study satellite engineering) and the beach. Totally unexpected, I fell in love with SAR when I saw my first TerraSAR-X image while interning at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), Munich. To me, SAR offers an immense amount of potential and developing Python algorithms to extract data to understand and help our planet gives me a thrill. For my PhD, I developed the first automatic algorithm for estimating locations of natural offshore oil seeps from SAR data and have used SAR for marine, land and DRM applications, always returning to the beach.

As an expat with darker skin colour, I know what it is like to be the sole woman of colour in meetings, of applying for jobs with a 'foreign' name and to feel overlooked/invisible at the workplace & at conferences. Academia is hard enough without having to navigate through these challenges. 

In Jan 2020, I started a postdoc in Singapore hoping to work in a more diverse environment. Being isolated and alone in a foreign country in the middle of a pandemic gave me time to self-reflect  and understand what truly matters. This is why I fight the fight, why I am involved with Sisters of SAR,. Because making this field more inclusive and representative matters to me. 

I am now back home in Germany, reunited with my family and juggling SAR research and a 1 year old toddler. And slowly understanding the hardships & inequalities mothers in STEM face.

SAR thematic area: wetlands, shoreline mapping, machine learning, wetlands classification, SAR Training

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About me

I grew up in a small town about an hour south of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. As a kid I spent my summers either glued to my Nintendo or outside exploring the forests and wetlands in my neighborhood. I think this is how I got interested in geography, so from a very young age knew that it was going to be a big part of my life. When I left for university though, I thought I was going to be a geography teacher and so started pursuing a degree in concurrent education. After taking my first physical geography course however, I knew that I wanted to learn more, but had limited options in the program. Because of that I switched to geography and went on to complete both a bachelor’s and a master’s of science in physical geography at Carleton University. Afterward I worked as a visiting research scientist at German Aerospace Centre, then got a job as a physical scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada. I am now working while completing my PhD in physical geography at Carleton, which will focus on using Big SAR remote sensing data to map and monitor change in Canada’s wetlands.

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SAR thematic area: flood mapping, algorithm development, hazard forecasting, data assimilation, deep learning, climate change adaptation

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About me

I hail from the vibrant megacity of New Delhi, in India. In 2011, I moved to the small town of Dehradun, India to pursue a MSc in Environmental Science. Looking at my first Landsat image, showing a bird’s eye view of the Himalayas from space, I knew that I'd found my calling. During my second Master’s split between the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (ISRO) and the Faculty of Earth Observation and Geoinformation Science ITC, at the University of Twente in Netherlands, I experienced the “Himalayan Tsunami” of 2013 & got to see first hand the value of SAR during devastating floods. Learning the possibilities offered by EO in all phases of the disaster management cycle and the inevitability of climate change induced increases in their magnitude and frequency, led me to make this my life’s mission. Since then I have strived to leverage the advances in the EO sector for improving global climatic resilience. During my PhD, between IIT Bombay and Monash University, I developed a new sensor-independent flood mapping algorithm for SAR and an assimilation algorithm to leverage such maps to improve global flood forecasts. Now, during my Postdoc at the University of Osnabrück, I am investigating deep learning based data fusion methods to improve the cadence of high-res flood observations, besides working on developing a consistent validation methodology for EO based flood mapping. My research has led me to live in 3 different continents and 7 different cities. Lots of things changed, but what did not change was the unequal footing I mostly found myself on. The challenges I personally faced and saw my female colleagues face, fuels my passion to leverage the position I have now built for myself to amplify marginalised voices, and help develop the inclusive future, that I, and many others, want to see. If we want to combat the disastrous impacts of climate change, we need to offer everyone a seat at the table. A scientific community which does not accurately represent and reflect the society it draws from, cannot fully imagine the scope of the impacts nor the potential solutions. As a former climate activist, climate justice and equity are important guiding principles for me. Joining Sisters of SAR and actively contributing to creating more inclusive spaces in the EO sector, thus, seemed like the most natural next step for me