Research Team
PI - Dr. Alia L. Khan, PhD
Dr. Khan has been working in polar and high mountain regions for over a decade to quantify the impacts of black carbon and other light absorbing particles on the surface albedo of the cryosphere. She combines optical remote sensing (by UAV and satellite) with ground-based biogeochemical analysis to document snow and ice melt in mountainous and polar regions. She completed her PhD in August 2016 in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Colorado – Boulder, while working at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, an interdisciplinary research institute focused on documenting environmental change in the polar regions. She then worked as a Postdoc at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO with a primary focus on water and snow chemistry in High Mountain Asia as part of a USAID funded project. Dr. Khan moved to CU from Western Washington University. She is currently looking for prospective PhD to join her group, as well as a lab/project manager. Students and staff have the opportunity to get involved with her active NSF and NASA-funded research grants.
Research Associate - Colby Rand, MS
Colby Rand has been collecting and analyzing drone and satellite imagery to map snow and ice algae in Greenland, Antarctica, Alaska, and the North Cascades. He has conducted fieldwork in each region and published two manuscripts from his MS thesis work on remote detection and mapping of snow algae with UAVs and Commercial SmallSat data.