IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2015 - 47

Figure 8. Recipients of the Highest Impact Paper Award Thomas J. Jackson (left), Michael H. Cosh, Patrick J. Starks, David D. Bosch, Mark

Seyfried, David C. Goodrich, Mary S. Moran, and Jinyang Du.
Thomas J. Jackson (SM'96-F'02) is a research hydrologist with the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural
Research Service, Hydrology and Remote Sensing Lab.
He received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland in 1976. His research involves the application and
development of remote sensing technology in hydrology
and agriculture, primarily microwave measurement of
soil moisture. He is or has been a member of the science
and validation teams of the Aqua, ADEOS-II, Radarsat,
Oceansat-1, Envisat, ALOS, SMOS, Aquarius, GCOMW, and SMAP remote sensing satellites. He is a Fellow of
the IEEE, the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation
Engineers, the American Meteorological Society, and the
American Geophysical Union. In 2003 he received the
William T. Pecora Award (NASA and Dept. of Interior)
for outstanding contributions toward understanding the
Earth by means of remote sensing and the AGU Hydrologic Sciences Award for outstanding contributions to
the science of hydrology. Dr. Jackson received the IEEE
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Distinguished
Achievement Award in 2011.
Michael H. Cosh is a research hydrologist with the U.
S. Department of agriculture, agricultural Research Service,
Hydrology and Remote Sensing Lab in Beltsville, MD, USA.
He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 2002,
when he joined ARS. His research involves the scaling of
insitu ground data to remote sensing scales, spatial variability assessment of soil moisture, and developing methods to
establish long term validation sites for remote sensing platforms, including the use of temporal and spatial stability.
december 2015

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

Rajat Bindlish (SM'05) received his B.S. in civil engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in
1993, and the M.S. and Ph.D. in civil engineering from The
Pennsylvania State University in 1996 and 2000 respectively. He is currently with SSAI, working at USDA Agricultural Research Service, Hydrology and Remote Sensing
Laboratory, Beltsville, MD. His research interests involve
the application of microwave remote sensing in hydrology.
He is currently working on soil moisture estimation from
microwave sensors and their subsequent application in
land surface hydrology.
Patrick J. Starks received the Ph.D. degree in Agronomy
(specializing in micrometeorology and remote sensing)
from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, in
1990. He has been a Research Soil Scientist at the Grazinglands Research Laboratory, Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, El Reno,
Oklahoma since 1996. From 1992 to 1996 he was a soil
scientist at USDA's National Agricultural Water Quality
Laboratory in Durant, Oklahoma. Currently, he is the Acting Research Leader of the Forage and Livestock Production Research Unit in his laboratory. From 1996 to 2013 he
led the watershed research program where he investigated
the use of spatially derived data to address water resources
issues. His research program also investigated the use of
remotely sensed data to measure above ground dry mass of
invasive woody species and measure nutritive value of live
standing forages.
David D. Bosch received the Ph.D. degree in hydrology from the University of Arizona in 1990. He joined the
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - December 2015