Lori Magruder
Lori Magruder is an Associate Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin and holds the Myron L. Begeman Fellowship in Engineering. Dr. Magruder is a subject matter expert in remote sensing remote sensing instrumentation, implementation, validation and 3D geospatial data exploitation. She also serves as the Director of the UT Center for Space Research, an organized research unit in the UT Cockrell School of Engineering. Dr. Magruder received her bachelor’s degree from The University of Southern California in Aerospace Engineering and her master’s degree from Princeton University in Mechanical an Aerospace Engineering. Her Ph.D. was earned from The University of Texas at Austin with a focus on ground-based validation studies for NASA’s ICESat mission. She has held positions at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory prior to returning to UT Austin. After 10 years of Science Team leadership on the NASA ICESat-2 mission, Dr. Magruder has moved onto positions on other climate-driven remote sensing science teams. Dr. Magruder leads many other NASA research efforts in addition to supporting programs through the Department of Defense with her expertise in geospatial topics and the unique link she brings between engineering and multi-disciplinary science applications.
Jonathan Sipps
Jonathan Sipps is a third year Ph.D. student and a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellow (NSTGRO recipient). His research is focused on distributed spacecraft mission (DSMs), such as constellations. The DSMs offer significant advantages for spaceborne remote sensing applications that require higher spatial coverage and faster revisit intervals. The problem that he is addressing is the complexity of iterative processing needed to design such systems. Jonathan’s research will develop a computationally efficient tool and surrogate model for faster and more accurate DSM design, enabling mission planners to take advantage of modern spacecraft technologies, launch capabilities and remote sensing instrumentation for the exploration of Earth and beyond. Jonathan has a bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from UT Austin and worked several years as an Engineering Research Associate at the UT Applied Research Laboratories prior to pursing his Ph.D.
Jonathan Markel
Jonathan is a second-year Ph.D. student and 2022 Future Investigator in NASA Earth and Space Science Technology (FINESST) recipient. His research combines statistics, geospatial data science, and environmental modeling, primarily relying on NASA’s ICESat-2 space-based laser altimeter. Going forward, his work will be on coastal elevation modeling with ICESat-2 and other satellite data. This research will be focused on Arctic environments where surveying is challenging due to sea ice and turbidity, but especially important as coastal erosion accelerates. Jonathan has an undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from UT Austin.