Remote Sensing for Characterization of Geohazards and Natural Resources

Estelle Chaussard, Ph.D.
, is a Lead Research Scientist in the Structures and Geohazards Research group of commercial property insurer FM Global. Her work advances Natural Hazards characterization and champions effective use of satellite data for both rapid disaster response and long-term monitoring. Over her 15 years of research experience, she has led peer-reviewed publications in the fields of climate-change, water-sustainability, hydrology, earthquake science, volcanology, and satellite techniques. Estelle received a B.S. (2008) and a M.S. (2010) in Earth Sciences from the University of Montpellier (II), France, and a Ph.D. in Geophysics (2013) from the University of Miami, USA. Prior to joining FM Global, Estelle was a university professor and received funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), including the prestigious NSF Career Award.

Cathleen E. Jones, Ph.D.
, is a Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where she has worked as a scientist and systems engineer since 2004.  Her research focusses on the use of synthetic aperture radar to study natural and anthropogenic hazards, specifically land subsidence, security of critical infrastructure, remote sensing of marine pollution, and improved coastal resiliency.  Her recent research as the Deputy Principal Investigator of the NASA Delta-X  Earth Venture-Suborbital mission is a cross-disciplinary investigation of the processes controlling land building in deltas.   She has served as the Applications Co-Lead of the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) Science Team since 2016, working to enable practical application of SAR methods by operational agencies for monitoring, resource management, and disaster response and risk reduction.  She received B.S. (Texas A&M, 1982) and Ph.D. (California Institute of Technology, 1991) degrees in Physics, and is an editor for the American Geophysical Union's Earth and Space Science journal.   Awards include two NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals (2014, 2015), and the Remote Sensing and Drought Science Service Award from the California Dept. of Water Resources. 

Jingyi Ann Chen
, Ph.D
., has more than 15 years of experience in SAR/InSAR algorithm design for earth system science applications. She received a B.S. degree in geophysics from the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China in 2008; an M.S. degree in electrical engineering in 2012 and a Ph.D. degree in geophysics in 2014 from Stanford University, California, USA. In 2017, she joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor. Since 2018, she has also served as a faculty member (by courtesy) in the Department of Geological Sciences at UT Austin. She currently leads the Radar Interferometry Group housed in the Center for Space Research. Her group focuses on the development of new satellites, and especially interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) techniques, for studying natural and induced seismicity, groundwater resources, natural disasters, and permafrost hydrology and carbon storage.

Andrea Donnellan, PhD
 is manager of the Instrument Systems Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she is also a principal research scientist. Donnellan is on the NISAR science team and led NASA’s GeoGateway and QuakeSim projects for over twenty years. She leads NASA’s Surface Topography and Vegetation Study and is principal investigator of the QUAKES stereoimaging instrument suite. Donnellan studies earthquakes and crustal deformation combining a variety of geodetic imaging techniques with computational modeling and infrastructure. Donnellan has degrees in Geology (BS Ohio State University, 1986), Geophysics (MS and PhD Caltech 1988 and 1991), and Computer Science (MS University of Southern California, 2003). She held a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center from 1991–1993. She was a founding editor of the American Geophysical Union’s Earth and Space Science Journal and was President of the American Geophysical Union’s Nonlinear Geophysics Section. Donnellan is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and The Explorers Club. In 1996 she won the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers and in 2012 NASA’s Software of the Year Award. Donnellan was a finalist in the astronaut selection process three times. The Donnellan Glacier in Antarctica was named by Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in 2006 for her work on the Antarctic continent.