Deputy Director, Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)/University of Maryland

Dr. Marc Imhoff is the Deputy Director of PNNL’s Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, MD. He began his career at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in 1980 as a Regional Applications Project Manager integrating remote sensing technology with the resource management activities of state governments. In the mid-1980s, Dr. Imhoff moved to the Space Data and Computing Division and won a position on the science team of the Shuttle Imaging Radar-B (SIR-B) mission, researching the use of vegetation penetration radar imaging systems to target malaria vector breeding habitats in the tropics. He concurrently worked on the Landsat-4 Data Quality Assessment Team and helped run a series of NASA/DoD technology transfer projects. He then worked as an Instrument Manager with the Earth Observing System Project Office. In 1990, Dr. Imhoff was awarded a Research and Study Fellowship to Stanford University, where he developed methods for measuring forest structure and biomass using radar imaging and polarimetry for global carbon inventory, resource assessment, and terrain analysis. He served as the Earth System Science Pathfinder Program Project Scientist (ESSP) (2001-2004) where he developed the solicitation of and review of proposals, and recommended the selection of new missions. From 2005 to Sept 2012, Dr. Imhoff was the Project Scientist for Terra, an active on-orbit satellite mission consisting of five instruments and science teams covering seven Earth system science research focus areas, and was also Chair of the mission science team, justifying mission continuation and managing the annual budget required for flight operations and science team activities.