Visiting period at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Sep 22, 2018·
Dr. Mauricio Zambrano-Bigiarini
Dr. Mauricio Zambrano-Bigiarini
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In August 2018 I got an invitation from the co-chair of the International Precipitation Working Group (IPWG) to conduct a two-week (18-Sep to 01-Oct 2018) visiting period at the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). This internship was carried out (and funded) by Ziad S. Haddad (Assistant Section Manager, Radar JPL Science and Engineering Section), to discuss a comprehensive evaluation of current rainfall products of global scale, to allow scientists and users of the international community to make objective evaluations and make informed decisions about the use of these products.

During this period, ziad and I attended a meeting at the Center for Hydrometeorology and Remote Sensing (CHRS) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), in order to discuss the methodology and time period to be used for the comprehensive evaluation of current rainfall products of global scale. In this opportunity I met Soroosh Sorooshian, Efi Foufoula-Georgiou and most of their team at UCL. This was an excellent opportunity to know all the people behind the excellent work producing the PERSIANN family of satellite precipititation estimates.

This internship ended with the publication of an Scopus article in the proceedings of the International Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

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Dr. Mauricio Zambrano-Bigiarini
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Associate Professor

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of La Frontera. I hold a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of Trento (Italy) and completed postdoctoral training at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. I have more than 20 years of experience in water resources research and have previously served as an Associate Researcher at the Center for Climate and Resilience Research (CR)2 and as a member of the Earth Sciences Assessment Group of the Chilean National Research and Development Agency (ANID).

My research lies at the interface of hydrology, data science, and environmental sciences, with a particular focus on the use of gridded datasets and open-source tools to investigate droughts, extreme events, and water-related impacts of global change.

I work across spatial and temporal scales to improve the understanding of catchment-scale hydrological processes and to translate this knowledge into operational modelling, forecasting, and early-warning systems that support robust environmental decision-making.

Please reach out to collaborate 😃