Career Development Panel Discussion and JPL Postdoc and Internship Info Session

Events > Webinar > Career Development Panel Discussion and JPL Postdoc and Internship Info Session

Wednesday, February 17, 2021
2:00 – 3:30 PM US Eastern time
11:00 – 12:30 PM US Pacific time
Moderator:
  Mehmet Ogut, JPL, USA
Opening Talk:
  Mariko Burgin, JPL, USA
Opportunities and Application Process:
  Rowena Dineros, PostDoc Office, JPL, USA
  Jenny Tieu, Education Office, JPL, USA
Panelists:
  Simon Yueh, JPL, USA
  Paul Stek, JPL, USA
  Omkar Pradhan, JPL, USA
  Naiara Pinto, JPL, USA
  Carissma L. McGee, JPL, USA

Sponsored by GRSS

GRSS Webinar: Career Development Panel Discussion and JPL Postdoc and Internship Info Session

There will be an opening presentation by Mariko Burgin, the Executive VP of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, and Systems Engineer with JPL. This will be followed by a panel discussion with several JPL scientists and engineers: Simon Yueh, Paul Stek, Omkar Pradhan, Naiara Pinto, and Carissma L. McGee. Then there will be presentations from Rowena Dineros of the JPL PostDoc Office, and Jenny Tieu of the JPL Education Office. The event will be concluded with a Q&A session for JPL Postdoc Office and Education Office.

PARTICIPANT’S BIOs:

Mehmet Ogut received his B.S. degree in electrical and electronics engineering from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey (2007-2011), M.S degree in electrical engineering from the George Washington University, Washington, DC (2011-2013) and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Colorado State University (CSU), Fort Collins, CO, USA (2015-2018).

During the Ph.D. study, he worked on the Tropospheric Water and Cloud Ice (TWICE) small satellite instrument funded by the NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) Instrument Incubator Program (IIP-13) to develop a millimeter- and sub-millimeter-wave (118 GHz to 670 GHz) radiometer instrument including both window and sounding channels for 6U CubeSat deployment. He focused on the design and testing command and data handling, and power regulation boards, on-orbit reliability analysis of the TWICE instrument including radiation testing and analysis of electrical components, and testing, characterization and calibration of TWICE receivers. In addition, he worked on the deep-learning techniques on the microwave and millimeter-wave radiometry. He applied the deep-learning calibration to High-Frequency Airborne Microwave and Millimeter-wave Radiometer NASA ESTO IIP-10 project instrument. Currently, he is a technologist in the Microwave Instrument Science Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. He is the CO-I and JPL lead of Ultra-Wideband Photonic Spectrometer for PBL Sensing funded under NASA ESTO ACT-20, and the CO-I of Smart Ice Cloud Sensing (SMICES) awarded under NASA ESTO IIP-19 program. His expertise is design, testing, calibration and analysis of microwave and millimeter-wave radiometer instruments, developing innovative concepts in radiometry and artificial intelligence applications in remote sensing.

Dr. Ogut is a member of Eta Kappa Nu, IEEE GRSS and MTTS societies. He was the IEEE R5 ExCom member (2018-2019) and the chair of IEEE High Plains Section Young Professionals Affinity Group (2017-2018). He is currently the Young Professional Ambassador of the IEEE GRSS and IEEE Rising Stars Organizing Committee member (2019-2022).

Ms. Rowena Dineros is the founding administrator of the Postdoc Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She began her role in late 2007 and has been the NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Center Representative since then. She received her BS in Human Resources Management/Personnel Administration from California State Polytechnic University-Pomona in 2004.

Jenny Tieu is an Education Project Manager at JPL. [Full bio is currently not available]

Mariko Burgin (Senior Member, IEEE) received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering and information technology from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland, in 2008, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Radiation Laboratory, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, in 2011 and 2014, respectively. From 2014 to 2015, she was a Post-Doctoral Scholar with the Water and Carbon Cycles Group, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA. From 2015 to 2019, she was a Scientist with JPL, and from 2017 to 2019, she was a Visiting Associate Researcher with the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, CA, USA. She is currently a Systems Engineer in project systems engineering and formulation with JPL, where she focuses on advanced technology development for new NASA missions, with a special interest in the early concept stage. Her research interests include theoretical and numerical studies of random media, development of forward and inverse scattering algorithms for geophysical parameter retrieval, the study of electromagnetic wave propagation and scattering properties, machine learning, feature extraction, analysis of multi-temporal data, computer vision, and data fusion. Dr. Burgin is a Senior Member of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS), the IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE), and the IEEE Young Professionals (YP). She was a recipient of two NASA Group Achievement Awards and served on the SMAP Science Team. She is the IEEE GRSS Executive Vice-President, the Treasurer of the IEEE Metropolitan Los Angeles GRSS Chapter, and a Member of the IEEE GRSS Administrative Committee (AdCom).

Dr. Simon Yueh received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in January 1991 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from February to August 1991. In September 1991, he joined the Radar Science and Engineering Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He was the supervisor of radar system engineering and algorithm development group from 2002-2007, the deputy manager of Climate, Oceans and Solid Earth section from July 2007 to March 2009, and the section manager from April 2009 to Jan 2013. He served as the Project Scientist of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Aquarius mission from January 2012 to September 2013, the Deputy Project Scientist of NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission from Jan 2013 to September 2013, and the SMAP Project Scientist since October 2013. He has been the Principal/Co-Investigator of numerous NASA and DOD research projects on remote sensing of ocean salinity, ocean wind, terrestrial snow and soil moisture. He has authored four book chapters and published more than 200 publications and presentations. He received the 2014 IEEE GRSS Transaction Prize Paper award, 2010 IEEE GRSS Transaction Prize Paper award, 2002 IEEE GRSS Transaction Prize Paper award, the 2000 Best Paper Award in the IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Symposium 2000, and the 1995 IEEE GRSS Transaction Prize Paper award for a paper on polarimetric radiometry. He received the JPL Lew Allen Award in 1998 and Ed Stone Award in 2003. He was an associate editor of Radio Science from 2002 to 2006. He is the Editor in Chief of IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing and is the Fellow of IEEE.

Dr. Paul Stek is currently Deputy Section Manager for the Instrument Electronics and Software Section (386). Along with supporting flight instrument developments, 386 is home to groups developing microwave through THz electronics and applying microwave measurement science to future NASA needs. Prior to serving in this role, Dr. Stek developed receiver electronics and calibration systems for MIRO and MLS, managed a group responsible microwave technology and flight development, and managed the development of the AMR instrument for SWOT. He earned his degree in plasma physics from MIT developing microwave diagnostics for plasma fusion research.

Dr. Omkar Pradhan is a postdoctoral fellow in the Submillimeter Wave Advanced Technologies (SWAT) group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He is mainly involved in the hardware design and signal processing development of FMCW radars for planetary exploration and Earth science applications. His research interests include millimeter and sub-millimeter wave active remote sensing technologies, radio wave propagation in random media and synthetic aperture radar design. He received his PhD from the University of Colorado-Boulder in 2019.