Academic and technical staff

RSSRG group leader. David received a doctorate degree in oceanography from the Université Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, France, in 1995. His research interests include marine optics, bio-optics, radiative transfer and applications, satellite ocean colour remote sensing including atmospheric corrections, modelling of oceanic primary production from satellite ocean colour. He has set up and maintained for 15 years a long-term time series program in the Mediterranean Sea, collecting physical, optical and biogeochemical data in support to bio-optics research and to calibration / validation of satellite ocean colour remote sensing observations. He has been working over years on regional and global applications of ocean colour remote sensing to study long-term changes in ocean phytoplankton and primary productivity.

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Dr. Fearns has over 18 years experience in physics and remote sensing science. His work has recently focussed on ocean colour remote sensing and in-water optical processes, reef and coastal habitat mapping, dredge plume monitoring, bush fire detection, and airborne vegetation mapping. He is a member of the Curtin University’s Remote Sensing and Satellite Research Group. The group has expertise in field-based collection of optical and biogeochemical validation data, processing and analysis of aircraft and space-based remotely sensed data, reception and management of direct broadcast data, and processing of very large data sets using High Performance Computing facilities. The group has a long history of modelling and algorithm development in atmospheric, land and ocean remote sensing. Dr. Fearns has been involved in all aspects of the Group’s research.

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I have been a University staff member since the teaching of Physics commenced on the Bentley campus in February 1966 while completing my PhD is solid state physics at the University of WA. It was in 1987 that RSSRG was established. So, it is now 30 years old. My role in the Group at the outset was to initiate research by engaging graduate students, seeking research funding, building national and international links and, of course, teaching UG Physics. I rose through the ranks from Lecturer to Professor over the years. Some 4 years were spent overseas on sabbaticals in Europe and the USA promoting links with Curtin and establishing Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) and research collaborations with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; NOAA/NESDIS, Washington; the Space Science and Engineering Center, Univ of Wisconsin; the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Univ of California – San Diego; MIT (Cambridge, MA); Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)) and Univ of California – Berkeley. I formally retired to the position of Adjunct Professor at the end of 2012. Since then I brought 9 students to completion of their PhDs.

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Eriita is a planetary and space scientist with a background in astrophysics, passionate about applications of satellite remote sensing and data fusion techniques to solving meaningful problems. Her main research applications have been in surface and subsurface water analysis using space based sensors, particularly the detection and characterization of subsurface water and potentially habitable environments on Mars, and the measurement of vegetation water use on Earth, using multispectral data. She has worked/is working in academia in Australia and Canada, with the Canadian Space Agency, with industry in areas of viticulture, forestry, and environmental water quality, and with the SmartSat CRC. She is also connected with international planetary research in machine learning and Mars image analysis, and with the CSIRO’s Future Science Platform. She is a Review Editor for Frontiers Environmental Informatics and Remote Sensing. She is a former EMCR member on the National Committee for Space and Radio Science and President of the Women in Space Chapter of the National Space Society of Australia.
Eriita works across Curtin and University of Southern Australia.

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Joseph specializes in remote sensing of the environment (Environmental Geoinformatics), i.e., sensing of changes in stored freshwater (surface, underground, vegetation, and soil moisture) and Climate Change using satellites (GRACE/GRACE-FO, GNSS, Landsat, Sentinel-2, Precipitation and Altimetry, etc), reanalysis (ERA5, MERRA-2, etc) and hydroclimate models (GLDAS, WGHM, AWRA, etc). These satellites, reanalysis and hydroclimate models are employed to face the emerging challenges of the 21st century posed by increased food insecurity and extreme hydroclimatic conditions, e.g., severity and frequency of droughts in Australia and Greater Horn of Africa (GHA), and the changing monsoon characteristics in Asia and Africa leading to floods. Indeed, Africa, Asian and Australian continents are experiencing impacts of climate change that is affecting their water potential and food security, thereby worsening the situation for its inhabitants who rely heavily on rain-fed agriculture. Environmental Geoinformatics, thus enables a wide understanding of natural and human systems using “big data” that is both spatial and temporal in nature. He attained an International Editorial role in Springer Earth Science Books, he is an Associate Editor of the top-ranked Remote Sensing of Environment. Besides remote sensing of environment, he engages in Mathematical Geosciences: Hybrid-symbolic solutions that delivers hybrid symbolic-numeric computations (HSNC). HSNC is a large and growing area at the boundary of mathematics and computer science and currently an active area of research.

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Ashraf Dewan is a member of Curtin’s Remote Sensing and Satellite Research Group. He has more than two decades of experience working in the remote sensing and climate science fields and is skilled in leading multidisciplinary research teams in environmental science projects employing a wide variety of geospatial analytical techniques. His research speciality areas include climate science, human-environment interaction, and spatial epidemiology. His research work on climate change and associated flood risk in South Asia has recently been mentioned on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) earth observatory website. He has actively contributed to his research field by taking on associate editor, editorial board member and guest editor roles. His research work has gained significant media exposure in the mainstream national and international media. Ashraf was recently appointed co–chair (for 2022–2026) of the working group Environment and Health, a part of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS). He has previously served as secretary of the working group IV/5 of the ISPRS from 2013 to 2016.

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Mick holds a PhD (Curtin) and Bachelor of Geoinformatics and Surveying (Hons1)(University of South Australia). His major area of expertise is geodesy, focussing on heights and vertical datums, land deformation observed using satellite-borne synthetic aperture radar interferometry (InSAR) and coastal oceanography relating to sea level and tides.
Filmer’s experience in heights and vertical datums includes research into the integrity of the Australian Height Datum (AHD) relating to systematic errors in the continental levelling network, constraints to short period mean sea level (MSL) at 32 tide gauges, and the lack of observed gravity in the normal orthometric height system used for the vertical datum. He has conducted analysis of models of the ocean’s mean dynamic topography (MDT) to demonstrate that the north south AHD slope was caused by the systematic effects of MDT biasing MSL. He has developed an experimental continent-wide vertical datum using a novel combination of modelled gravity to compute a gravity based height system, constrained with GNSS stations and tide gauge observed MSL corrected by modelled MDT. He has experience with least squares variance component estimation (VCE) to estimate errors in each of these combined geodetic datasets. He has contributed to the Colorado geoid experiment evaluation of gravity related height computation methods in this challenging mountainous region in the US.
Expertise on vertical land motion includes initiating an InSAR capability at Curtin University. He has processed and analysed TerraSAR-X InSAR time series in the Perth Basin, identifying subsidence and uplift that is non-linear in time, revealing its impact upon tide gauges and their interpretation of sea level change. This InSAR analysis has also been used to monitor managed aquifer recharge in the Perth basin, identifying land uplift correlating with the injection of treated wastewater into the aquifer to replenish groundwater reserves. He has research experience investigating InSAR noise estimation, and using InSAR to develop 2D land deformation models with associated error estimates to enable the correct interpretation of vertical and horizontal motion rates. This experience extends to testing different methods of relating the differential InSAR land motion rates to a terrestrial reference frame, and the propagation of errors through this transformation so that error estimates reflected the combined errors from InSAR and GNSS constraints.
His experience in coastal oceanography has been developed through leading a scoping project to evaluate data requirements and methodology suitable for connecting land and sea vertical datums, testing the modelled height of the lowest astronomical tide (LAT) above a defined ellipsoid surface.

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Dr. Parida is a Research fellow working on the ARC- Discovery project. He received his doctorate degree in Oceanography from Berhampur University, Odisha, India. His doctoral work was on Bio-optical modelling of Case-II waters of the Bay of Bengal. Before joining Curtin University, He was working as a Research Associate at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. He has 10 years of working experience on Ocean optics and Remote Sensing. His research interests include Marine Optics, Bio-physical Oceanography, Bio-optical modelling, Satellite Oceanography. In addition to this he has nearly 500 days of on-board experience of participating in several national and international scientific cruise programs.

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I received my joint PhD in Oceanography between Université Laval (Canada) and Wuhan University (China). My work was about the detection of phytoplankton in the Arctic Ocean in terms of algorithm evaluation, tuning and development, aiming to solve the problems raised by the dominant constituent CDOM (coloured dissolved organic matter) in Arctic waters, especially for coastal waters, using ocean color remote sensing.
I jointed RSSRG as a research fellow on mid August 2022, and will work in the frame of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS). My project is to improve our understanding of bio-optical properties and relationships in the Southern Ocean based on filed observations, which will in return improve our interpretations of satellite ocean colour observations. The goals are to better derive information on phytoplankton biomass and community composition from satellite ocean colour remote sensing in this remote, yet critically important oceanic region, and ultimately assess long-term changes in this critical compartment of the ocean carbon cycle and of marine food webs.

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In July 2023, Andrew moved to Western Australia to work at Curtin University as an engineer within the MarONet project. This project, known as a “Marine Optical Network,” will deploy scientific buoys off of Perth to gather light data used to calibrate NASA’s PACE Satellite, scheduled to take orbit in 2024.

Andrew’s received a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Marine Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. His post-graduation path led him to the fishing boats of Alaska, where he established the foundation for a career firmly rooted in fieldwork at sea. Subsequently, he recieved a Master’s degree in Biological Oceanography from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. Staying on the island, he worked for a decade at NOAA’s Ecosystem Sciences Division at the Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center in Honolulu.

During his time in Hawaii, Andrew also worked for San Jose State University on the MOBY project, where he served as a scientific diver for an optical buoy similar to MarONet stationed off Lanai island.  This experience laid the groundwork for his present position at Curtin University he continues to work closely with the MOBY project while working in Australia.

Andrew’s professional trajectory has consistently revolved around fish biology, ecology, and populations, frequently involving extensive fieldwork at sea and on remote islands. These collective experiences amount to over 600 days spent in a variety of roles, encompassing buoy deployment, instrument recovery, boat operations, scientific diving and lots and lots of logistic.

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Luyen K. Bui received the Bachelor degree of Surveying and Mapping and the M.Sc. degree in Geodesy from the Hanoi University of Mining and Geology in2004 and 2010. He then received the PhD degree in Spatial Sciences from Curtin University in 2021. He was then a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the University of Houston between 2020 and 2022, where he undertook research on Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) uncertainty propagation under projects granted by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (USACE-CRREL). His research interests include the application of Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) to monitor the land deformation associated with groundwater exploitation, mining and tectonic activities, LiDAR data processing and application including uncertainty propagation, environmental geoinformatics, machine learning and deep learning application to geoinformatics.

James (Jim) Davies is employed part-time as a Research Associate in atmospheric and in-water radiative transfer. Jim received his B.App.Sci(Physics) from the Western Australian Institute of Technology in 1985. He worked for a decade in computer software and materials science before returning to complete his Ph.D. in ocean color satellite remote sensing, conferred by Curtin University of Technology in 2003. In the late 1980s with two colleagues he developed microNOAA, a software package used for many years by scientists at CSIRO to study the Leeuwin Current via its sea surface temperature expression. He has lectured on interfacing computers to ADCs and DACs for signal processing and control systems, and through the 1990’s and 2000’s he wrote software for purposes as various as driving hardware for satellite data decryption, remotely controlling solar photometer instrumentation, programming sea-going data logging equipment, simulating atmospheric UV scintillation for electronic warfare early warning systems, and measuring solar blind UV scintillation in the tropics. From 2008 at University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) he worked initially on atmospheric correction of satellite ocean color data for coastal sediment retrievals. In the past few years before returning to Australia in 2022, he was responsible for upgrading SSEC’s International MODIS/AIRS Processing Package (IMAPP) virtual appliance; for implementing Infusing Satellite Data Into Environmental Applications – International (IDEA-I) aerosol and ozone trajectory forecasts under IMAPP; and for the systems integration of 3 NOAA operational software products (MIRS, NUCAPS/HEAP, ACSPO) into SSEC’s Community Satellite Processing Package (CSPP).

Hoa Thi Pham received a Ph.D. degree in geodesy at Hanoi University of Mining and Geology, Vietnam. She is currently a lecturer at Hanoi University of Natural Resources and Environment, Vietnam, and an adjunct research fellow at the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, Australia. Her research interests include Geodesy, Climate change/variability, and Using Geoinformation for monitoring Natural Resources and Environment.