Geospatial Research and Education Lab

Dr. Waqas A. Qazi

About | Research | Publications | Teaching | Honors & Awards | Students |

I received my PhD from University of Colorado, Boulder, USA, in 2013 under a Fulbright fellowship. At CU-Boulder, I studied at the Dept. of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, and the focus area for my PhD was Remote Sensing, Earth and Space Science. I'm an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Space Science at Institute of Space Technology (IST), and have been one of the co-founders of the Geospatial Research & Education Lab (GREL).

My general expertise is in Remote Sensing where I have worked with various remote sensing datasets through my career, while for my PhD thesis I specifically worked on Remote Sensing using SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) and Oceanography, working extensively on development of techniques to measure ocean surface currents from space-borne SAR intensity images and interferometric data.

I am a reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Geoscience & Remote Sensing, IEEE Geoscience & Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations & Remote Sensing, Advances in Space Research, Forest Ecology & Management, Remote Sensing, Forest Ecosystems, Journal of African Earth Sciences, GIScience & Remote Sensing, Regional Studies in Marine Science, and Italian Journal of Agronomy (publons profile here). I am an alumnus of Pakistan National Physics Talent Contest (NPTC), an alumnus of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, a Fulbright alumnus, and the Pakistan National Point of Contact for Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC). I was an invited speaker at the TEDx Islamabad event in Nov., 2014 where I spoke about how remote sensing and satellite imaging is used to unravel the secrets of our planet. I've served as mentor in the NASA International Space App Challenge Islamabad events in April 2015 and April 2016. I was an invited panelist at the School of Tomorrow event - A World of Tomorrow Reimagined, Karachi, Nov., 2018. I also serve regularly on the interview panel for final selection of Fulbright MS and PhD candidates from Pakistan. I am an HEC approved PhD supervisor.

I blog at EarthEnable on topics related to remote sensing, earth observation, scientific programming, and academic publishing.

Research Interests: Remote sensing, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery and interferometric data processing & analysis, Visible/Infrared/High-resolution satellite image processing & analysis, Oceanography, Earth system study and modelling, LIDAR data processing and analysis, Scientific programming.