Dr. Umar Waqas has recently joined the KAUST HALO team as “postdoctoral fellow” after graduating from Hanyang University in South Korea. He received his PhD in Water Resources and Environmental Engineering for his work on “Multi-scaled remote sensing for accounting terrestrial water and energy fluxes under contrasting agro-ecological environments”. His research expertise lies in modeling water and energy cycle process, spatial hydrology, surface water-groundwater interactions, agricultural monitoring, climate change impacts on water resources, water balance modelling through innovative remote sensing approaches in different agro-ecological and hydrological zones in data sparse and rich environments across the globe.

Dr. Umar Waqas is currently involved in designing and executing single- and dual-source energy balance methodologies (i.e., METRIC, SEBS and TSEB) to scrutinize the spatial and temporal changes in energy and heat fluxes, mapping the crop water demand and consumption under changing climates, studying climate-related impacts on land use and geohydrology, and in coupling crop growth models with advanced remote sensing dataset to provide high resolution imagery for crop health and productivity.

With his wide technical knowledge on irrigation water use and energy balance in large irrigation systems, he is also targeting to compliment the classical and intelligent irrigation water management subjects with hydrological, remote sensing and GIS tools. He is energetic and active in developing new scientific interactions and welcome the collaborations in aforementioned related subjects.