Philip W Dabney
(ELECTRICAL ENGINEER)
| Email: | philip.dabney@nasa.gov |
| Org Code: | |
| Address: |
NASA/GSFC Mail Code 618 Greenbelt, MD 20771 |
| Employer: | Southeastern Universities Research Association |
Brief Bio
Philip W. Dabney received the Master of Science in Electro-Physics from the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) at the University of Maryland, College Park and also holds Bachelor’s degrees in EE and Physics. He has over 27 years of experience in the conceptualization, development, applications, calibration, and operations of active and passive airborne prototype and spaceborne sensors.
He is currently serving as the Instrument Scientist for: the Landsat-8, Landsat-9, and Sustainable Land Imaging (SLI) Missions; the Swath Imaging Multi-polarization Photon-counting Lidar (SIMPL); and several NASA R&D and Internal R&D (IRAD) projects.
Previously, he served as: the Icesat-2/ATLAS Instrument Pre-launch Calibration and Validation Scientist; Principle Investigator for development of a Prototype Inter-planetary Asynchronous Laser Transponder; the Instrument Systems Engineer for the Shuttle Laser Altimeter-03, the photon-counting Multikilohertz Microlaser Altimeter (MMLA); Advanced Solid-state Array Spectroradiometer (ASAS); and Airborne Laser Polarization Sensor (ALPS).
Additionally, he frequently provides Instrument Science support to mission and instrument concept studies involving lidar, thermal radiative, and multi/hyper-spectral reflected light imaging systems.
Research Interests
Remote Sensing Systems
Earth Science: Remote SensingRemote Sensing Instrumentation for Applied Science, Remote Sensing Applications, Requirements Development, Instrument Concept & Development, Hyperspectral and Multispectral Remote Sensing, Laser & Passive Radiometry, Design of Electro-optical Imaging Systems, Instrument Systems Modeling & Optimization, Calibration and Characterization of Active and Passive Remote Sensing Systems, Precision Laser Ranging Applications, Data Analysis and Interpretation, Precision Epoch Time Recovery, Airborne Proof-of-concept Instruments and Field Operations, Radiative & Photon Counting Detectors, Laser Systems, High-performance Airborne Data-systems.
Positions/Employment
Instrument Scientist
NASA-GSFC - Greenbelt, MD
January 2003 - Present
AST, Electrical Engineer
NASA-GSFC - Greenbelt, MD
May 1988 - January 2003
Co-op Student Engineer
NASA/GSFC - Greenbelt, MD
October 1987 - May 1988
Physics & Electronics Lab Instructor/Teaching Assistant
Columbia Union College - Takoma Park, Maryland
August 1985 - October 1987
Teaching Experience
University Physics & Electronics Lab Instructor/Teaching Assistant 1985-1987
Education
University of Maryland
1988 - B.S. Electrical Engineering,
University of Maryland
1988 - B.A. Physics,
Columbia Union College
Professional Societies
American Geophysical Union (AGU) Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) International society of Electrical and Society of Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
1988 - Present
Awards
May 2013 Robert H. Goddard Award Exceptional Individual Achievement in Engineering
May 2013 Robert H. Goddard Award Exceptional Team Achievement in Science
September 2008 Center Director’s Team Recognition Award
July 2008 Performance Award
August 2007 Performance Award
July 2006 Time off Award
May 2005 Performance Award
August 2004 Performance Award
July 2004 Time off Award
May 2003 Group Achievement Award
April 2003 Career Promotion
September 2002 Quality Increase
May 2002 Performance Award
July 2001 Quality Increase
July 2000 Performance Award
December 1999 Quality Increase
June 1999 Performance Award
December 1997 Performance Award
September 1997 Quality Increase
December 1996 Quality Increase
December 1995 Performance Award
September 1994 Career Promotion
May 1994 Group Achievement Award
April 1994 Quality Increase
April 1993 Certificate of Recognition
August 1992 Special Act or Service Award
January 1992 Career Promotion
July 1991 Special Act Award
May 1991 Certificate of Recognition
April 1991 Special Act or Service Award
August 1990 Special Act or Service Award
October 1990 Certificate of Outstanding Performance
Certificate of Recognition
Publications
Refereed
2025. "Towards Seamless Global 30-meter Terrestrial Monitoring: Evaluating 2022 Cloud Free Coverage of Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) V2.0.", IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, 1-1 [10.1109/lgrs.2025.3533923] [Journal Article/Letter]
2017. "Surface-Height Determination of Crevassed Glaciers—Mathematical Principles of an Autoadaptive Density-Dimension Algorithm and Validation Using ICESat-2 Simulator (SIMPL) Data.", IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 55 (4): 1874-1896 [10.1109/tgrs.2016.2617323] [Journal Article/Letter]
2016. "Landsat 9: status and plans.", Earth Observing Systems XXI, [10.1117/12.2238658] [Proceedings]
2007. "Laser Ranging for Gravitational, Lunar and Planetary Science.", International Journal of Modern Physics D, 16 2151 [Full Text] [10.1142/S0218271807011565] [Journal Article/Letter]
2004. "Reconfigurable computing as an enabling technology for single-photon-counting laser altimetry.", 2004 IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings (IEEE Cat. No.04TH8720), [10.1109/aero.2004.1368027] [Proceedings]
1997. "Bidirectional reflectance of selected BOREAS sites from multiangle airborne data.", J. Geophys. Res., 102 (D24): 29505-29516 [10.1029/96JD03880] [Journal Article/Letter]
1993. "Airborne bidirectional radiances of snow-covered surfaces in Montana, USA.", Annals of Glaciology, 17 (1): 35-40 [10.3198/1993AoG17-1-35-40] [Journal Article/Letter]
Non-Refereed
2016. "Laser transmitter design and performance for the slope imaging multi-polarization photon-counting lidar (SIMPL) instrument.", Solid State Lasers XXV: Technology and Devices, Proceedings of SPIE, 9726 [10.1117/12.2213005] [Proceedings]
2011. "Airborne Polarimetric, Two-Color Laser Altimeter Measurements of Lake Ice Cover: A Pathfinder for NASA’s ICESat-2 Spaceflight Mission.", 2011 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 3598-3601 [Full Text] [10.1109/IGARSS.2011.6050002] [Proceedings]
2011. "Landsat Data Continuity Mission Operational Land Imager Thermal In-frared Sensor performance.", Proceedings of SPIE, 8153 81530D-81530D-7 [10.1117/12.895542] [Proceedings]
2011. "Polarimetric, two-color, photon-counting laser altimeter measurements of forest canopy structure.", International Symposium on Lidar and Radar Mapping 2011: Technologies and Applications, Proceedings of SPIE, 8286 10 [10.1117/12.913960] [Proceedings]
2010. "The Slope Imaging Multi-polarization Photon-counting Lidar: Development and performance results.", Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2010 IEEE International, 653-656 [10.1109/IGARSS.2010.5650862] [Proceedings]
2008. "Direct-detection free-space laser transceiver test-bed.", Proceedings of the Free-Space Laser Communication Technologies XX, SPIE.6877 687703 [10.1117/12.758654] [Proceedings]
2007. "Pushbroom Laser Altimetry using Fiber Lasers and Photon Counting Detectors .", 2007 Conference on Lasers & Electro-Optics/Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference (CLEO/QELS, 1-5 1467-1468 [Full Text] [Proceedings]
2002. "Design and Performance of an Airborne Multikilohertz Photon-Counting Microlaser Altimeter.", International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, Volume XXXIV-3/W4, Annapolis, Maryland, 22-24 Oct. 2001, 9-16 [Full Text] [Proceedings]
2001. "Design and performance of a 3-D imaging, photon-counting, microlaser altimeter operating from aircraft cruise altitudes under day or night conditions.", PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY OF PHOTO-OPTICAL INSTRUMENTATION ENGINEERS (SPIE), 4546 1-10 [10.1117/12.453978] [Proceedings]