Senior Scientist, NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

Dr. Michael Mishchenko received an M.S. in Physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and a Ph.D. in Physics (with honors) from the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, Kiev. Prior to his current position at NASA GISS, he worked as a Senior Research Scientist at SUNY/Stony Brook in New York, and was a Senior Scientist with STX/SSAI at NASA/GISS. He has an extensive amount of scientific developments to his name: an analytical theory of multiple scattering of polarized light in clouds composed of oriented non-spherical particles and several robust numerical techniques for computing the transfer of polarized radiation in the atmosphere; an efficient technique for computing the bidirectional reflection function for flat snow and soil surfaces based on numerically solving the radiative transfer equation; a vector theory of coherent backscattering of light and radar signals by particulate surfaces and interpreted quantitatively the photometric and polarization opposition effects exhibited by Saturn's rings and outer-planet satellites and peculiar radar returns caused by ice-covered surfaces; algorithms for retrieving aerosol optical thickness and size from multichannel AVHRR data, plus he created a long-term global satellite climatology of aerosol properties; and, an electromagnetic scattering software package, which is publicly available on the World Wide Web (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/mmishchenko), just to name a few. Among his many honors, he is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, The Institute of Physics, UK, The Optical Society of America, and The American Geophysical Union. In 2014, he was awarded the NASA Performance Award; in 2011, the NASA Group Achievement Award (Glory Mission, 2011); in 2010, the National Prize of Ukraine in Science and Technology; in 2008, the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. In 2010, he received the JQSRT Milestone Paper Award from Elsevier, and in 2009, Asteroid 22686 (1998 QL53) was named "Mishchenko" by the International Astronomical Union.