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).