Alok Shrestha

Affiliation: NASA Ames Research Center (ARC)

Division: Earth Science (SG)

Group: Airborne Sensor Facility (ASF)

Email: alok.k.shrestha@nasa.gov

Phone: 650-604-2864

Professional Biography

Dr. Shrestha is a Senior Engineer with Earth Science Division at NASA Ames Research Center (ARC) supporting engineering activities at the Ames Airborne Sensor Facility (ASF) including providing electrical, system, and calibration engineering support and leading the calibration and instrument development tasks. Alok also led the EVS-4 proposal process and supports TD business development for the division. Dr. Shrestha research interest includes instrument characterization with a focus on the pre- and post- calibration and validation measurement activities for both airborne and spaceborne remote sensing instruments including multi- and hyperspectral sensors.

Before joining Ames in 2021 as civil servant, he led both the lab and field calibration activities of an airborne hyperspectral instrument supporting NEON project for Battelle. In addition, he supported climate and radiation branch at NASA Langley Research Center as a contractor through SSAI developing consistent Earth’s radiation budget dataset using measurements from various instruments onboard Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) satellites.

Education

Ph.D. Atmospheric Science, Hampton University, Hampton, VA, USA

M. Sc. Electrical Engineering, South Dakota State University, Brookings, SD, USA

B. E. Electronics Engineering, Institute of Engineering, Pulchowk Campus, Tribhuvan University, Nepal

Research Interests

Calibration/Validation, Radiation Budget, Instrument development, Wildfire, Hyper/Multi spectral sensors

Select Publications

Kevin R. Turpie, Kimberly A. Casey, Christopher J. Crawford, Liane S. Guild, Hugh Kieffer, Guoqing (Gary) Lin, Raymond Kokaly, Alok K. Shrestha, Cody Anderson, Shankar N. Ramaseri Chandra, Robert Green, Simon Hook, Constantine Lukashin, Kurt Thome, “Calibration and Validation for the Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) Mission Concept: Recommendations for a Multi-Sensor System for Imaging Spectroscopy and Thermal Imagery”, 2023, Accepted (Mar 17, 2023) to Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences, doi: 10.1029/2023JG007452

A. K. Shrestha, S. Kato, T. Wong, P. Stackhouse and R. P. Loughman, “New Temporal and Spectral Unfiltering Technique for ERBE/ERBS WFOV Nonscanner Instrument Observation”, in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 57, no. 7, pp. 4600-4611, July 2019. doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2019.2891748

T. Wong, G. L. Smith, S. Kato, N. G. Loeb, G. Kopp and A. K. Shrestha, “On the Lessons Learned From the Operations of the ERBE Nonscanner Instrument in Space and the Production of the Nonscanner TOA Radiation Budget Data Set”, in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, vol. 56, no. 10, pp.5936-5947, Oct. 2018.doi: 10.1109/TGRS.2018.2828783

Shrestha, A. K., S. Kato, T. Wong, D. A. Rutan, W. F. Miller, F. G. Rose, G. L. Smith, K. M. Bedka, P. Minnis, and J. R. Fernandez, 2013, “Unfiltering Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) scanner radiances using the CERES algorithm and its evaluation with nonscanner observations”. Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology

G. Chander, D. L. Helder, D. Aaron, N. Mishra, A. K. Shrestha, “An assessment of Spectral, Misregistration, and Spatial Uncertainties Inherent in the Cross-calibration Study”, 2012, IEEE TGRS, in Publication