Dr. Tarendra Lakhankar is working as a post-doctorate researcher at Co-operative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), which is an independent NOAA/DoD/NPS cooperative primarily dedicated to research, housed at Colorado State University.  Dr. Lakhankar received a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from The City University of New York, specializing in applications of remote sensing in water resources.  He holds Bachelor degree in Civil-Water Management from SGGS College of Engg and Tech., Nanded and Master Degree in Environmental Engineering from Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, INDIA.

He is presently working on application of data assimilation system in land surface parameters (soil moisture, land-cover, etc) retrieval from satellite remote sensing data.   During his Ph.D. tenure, he was associated with research work on application of remote sensing in water resources by processing and analyzing data from different Earth observation satellites through NOAA’s Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (NOAA-CREST) in City University of New York.  He participated with a multidisciplinary research team in the development of new soil moisture mapping model using neural network and fuzzy logic and to understand the dynamic of soil wetness under different land cover conditions using a combination of optical and microwave remote sensing data.  More details can be found at: http://tarendra.lakhankar.com

His primary research/teaching interests are in the areas of Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS), such as: Satellite Surveying, Spatial Information Management, and RS/GIS application in Soil Conservation (Agriculture), Geotechnical, Water Resources and environmental monitoring.  He believe that, integrating GIS concepts into engineering education is very important not only to meet the urgent needs of GIS professionals in engineering, but also to teach students relevant skills in spatial analysis, reasoning, and data processing.