About the Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory
The Microwave Remote Sensing Laboratory at University at Albany - SUNY develops and tests theories and technologies regarding remote sensing of Earth and Space at microwave frequencies.
Opportunities
Research positions are available at MRSL. We are looking for skilled and motivated undergraduate and graduate students with a GPA of at least 3.5, a strong background in physics and mathematics, and prior MATLAB experience. Students interested in the fields of Remote Sensing, Electromagnetics, Earth and Planetary Sciences are encouraged to apply. To apply, please email your CV and transcript to Dr. Aksoy at [email protected]
News
- 07/2022 Professor Aksoy was featured on Today at UAlbany for his CAREER Award. More information about the research related to this award can be found under the projects section of this page. To read the article, click here.
- 06/2022 Professor Aksoy has won an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. This award will focus on modeling electrical properties of ice across wide ranges of frequencies and temperatures and developing efficient interference mitigation algorithms which will enable the next generation of wideband microwave radiometers to fully probe Earth’s ice bodies. In the past 3 years, Professor Aksoy has also received the NASA Space Technology Early Career Faculty and ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement awards. Congrats Professor Aksoy! To learn more, click here.
- 06/2022 Imara Nazar from our lab has won the 4th place in the Student Paper Competition at the URSI combined Atlantic/Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference. It comes with a $250 prize. Congrats Imara!
- 06/2022 Over the past week Rahul and Dr. Aksoy have been conducting experiments in the lab to measure the complex permittivity of various materials including water, oil, soil, human skin, and salt. The experiments were conducted using the Keysight Technologies Microwave Analyzer and our Dielectric probe kit. The next step will be test the permittivity of ice for our project “Characterization of the Antarctic Firn by Multi-Frequency Passive Remote Sensing from Space”.
- 05/2022 Our article titled, "Antarctic Firn Characterization via Wideband Microwave Radiometry" has been published in the Remote Sensing MDPI journal. We utilized the Global Precipitation (GPM) constellation to characterize the Antarctic firn in terms of its physical and thermal properties.The journal is open access, so please check it out.
- 04/2022 Imara Nazar has been selected as one of ten finalists in the URSI combined Atlantic/Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference. Her paper, "Radio Frequency Interference Detection in Microwave Radiometry: A Novel feature-based Statistical Approach" discusses novel interference techniques for microwave radiometers. Congrats Imara!
- 04/2022 Our lab group at the University at Albany, SUNY will present 5 papers at the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS2022) this summer in Malaysia covering various topics in the field of passive microwave remote sensing.
- 04/2022 PhD student Imara Nazar from our lab has been admitted into NYU Tandon School of Engineering's Faculty First Look Program. She will discuss her research on radio frequency interference detection and mitigation in passive remote sensing applications.
- 04/2022 Check out the Winter 2022 Issue of the Global Space-based Inter-Calibration System (#GCICS) Quarterly Newsletter for our article on the calibration of CubeSat radiometer constellations. We demonstrated a novel approach to calibrate cubeSats in their entirety as a single system. For more information on the Global Space-based Inter Calibration System, click here.
- 04/2022 Rahul Kar, a PhD student in our lab, has been awarded the Young Scientist Award from the International Union of Radio Science. He will be presenting his research on remote sensing of the Antarctic firn this summer at the URSI combined Atlantic/Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference. Also, Dua Kaurejo an undergraduate working with Rahul has been awarded the UAlbany Presidential Award for her research efforts.
- 04/2022 The preliminary program of the URSI combined Atlantic/Asia-Pacific Radio Science Conference 2022 is now available. Our lab group will be presenting 3 papers at the conference. Please check them out if you are attending!
- 03/2022 Our lab board at SUNY Albany showing some work with Transmission Lines, S-parameters, and the Smith Chart.
- 02/2022 NASA is soliciting proposals due March 2022 from US for-profit companies to develop cis-lunar, lunar suface, and in-space infrastructure and capabilities. See these two links for more information: Announcement for Partnership Proposals (AFPP) to Advance Tipping Point Technologies and Space Technology Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity (ACO)
- 02/2022 Happy International Day of Women and Girls in Science. A large applause to our female colleagues for their contributions to science and technology!
- 02/2022 NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate released this year's Early Career Faculty Award program solicitation. The focus subjects are (1) lightweight solar sail altitude technologies (2) solar power technologies that can enable lunar missions to hibernate through lunar night, and (3) tailorable composite design concepts for dimensionally stable structures. Dr. Aksoy is a former recipient of the award and highly encourages other assistant professors to submit proposals if their research interests include these topics.
- 02/2022 New equipment in our Microwave Remote Sensing Lab at University at Albany, SUNY! 50 GHz microwave analyzer (vector network analyzer + spectrum analyzer) with electronic calibration module, 50 GHz noise source, 50 MHz oscilloscope and waveform generator, 680 MHz - 18 GHz broadband antenna, -20C to 350C thermal imager, dielectric probe kit, and material measurement software; all of which will significantly expand our capabilities.
- 01/2022 Several students in our lab presented at the URSI National Radioscience meeting. Their presentations were on the calibration of microwave radiometers (ACCURACy, Machine Learning), passive microwave remote sensing of the Antarctic Firn, and radio frequency interference (RFI) detection and mitigation for microwave radiometry.
- 01/2022 Microwave passive remote sensing is a promising way to detect water ice reserved buried in the lunar regolith. Check out Dr. Aksoy's article on the subject here.
- 12/2021 Rahul Kar received a travel grant of $375 to travel to Boulder, Colorado for the 2022 National Radio Science Meeting, where he presented his research on remote sensing of the Antarctic firn. Congrats Rahul!
- 10/2021 Our publication "Radio Frequency Interference Detection in Microwave Radiometry Using Density Based Spatial Clustering" is now available on IEEExplore. To read, click here.
- 10/2021 Our publication "Potential of the Global Precipitation Measurement Constellation for Characterizing the Polar Firn" is now available. To read, click here.
- 10/2021 Our publication "Accuracy: A Novel Approach to Calibrate Cubesat Radiometer Constellations" is now available. To read, click here.
- 08/2021 PhD student Imara Nazar presented at URSI GASS on RFI Detection in Microwave Radiometry using Density Based Spatial Clustering.
- 08/2021 John Bradburn presented at CALCON, check out his presentation here.
- 07/2021 Our lab member, John Bradburn, was featured today on UAlbany news in the article “A UAlbany Summer: NASA Technologist”. John was selected for the highly competitive 2021 NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities program for his proposal “Enabling Low-power Smart Sensors with Machine Learning Calibration”. He will be working as a NASA Technologist for the next four summers with funding of $80,000 per year. John has been working in our lab with Dr. Aksoy for almost two years on projects regarding remote sensing and CubeSat technologies. Congratulations to John for this remarkable achievement! To learn more about this, please read the article by clicking the image below.
- 07/2021 PhD student Rahul Kar recently presented at IGARSS 2021 on the Potential of the Global Precipitation Measurement Costellation for Characterizing the Polar Firn.
- 07/2021 PhD student John Bradburn presented ACCURaCY: A Novel Approach to Calibrate Cubesat Radiometer Constellations this month at IGARSS 2021.
- 07/2021 Congratulations to John Bradburn and all other awardees of 2021 NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunities (NSTGRO)!
- 01/2021 We have recently published another open-access journal about the properties of the radio frequency interference in the protected portion of L-band. To read, click here.
- 04/2021 To read a recently published journal about the potential advantages and applications of 500–1400 MHz microwave radiometry for Earth observation, click here.
- 09/2020 Our new journal proposes a machine-learning based approach for radio frequency interference detection in microwave radiometry. To read, click here.
- 06/2020: Another open access journal article we put together on the calibration of microwave radiometers is available online. Please check it out if you are interested in radiometer gain characterization, specifically in a case of non-constant gain. To view the article, click here.
- 04/2020: To see our paper on microwave radiometer instability due to infrequent calibration, click here.
- 11/2019: Funded by NASA's Lunar Data Analysis Program, we, at University at Albany's Electrical and Computer Engineering department, will study microwave remote sensing of lunar regolith and bedrock. Please see the abstract of our project here.
- 10/2019: To check out our NASA funded project which aims to calibrate constellations of CubeSat Radiometers, click here.
- 09/2019: Professor Aksoy has been selected through the agency’s Space Technology Research Grants program as part of a prestigious group of nine researchers to lend their expertise and help identify and improve NASA’s current technological capabilities. For more details, click here.
- 07/2019: Professor Aksoy received the Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award certificate from UAlbany President Havidán Rodríguez. For more information, click here.
- 04/2019: To see our latest paper on L-band radio frequency interference for space-borne microwave radiometry, click here.
- 03/2019: The National Science Foundation will support our research on Remote Sensing of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from Space. Click here for more details.
PhD student John Bradburn (left) and Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Mustafa Aksoy (right). (Photo by Patrick Dodson)
