Congratulations to Dr. Noah Sienkiewicz on his PhD defense!

Thu, 05 Jun 2025 11:30:20 -0400
esi

On June 3, 2025, UMBC graduate student Noah Sienkiewicz successfully defended his dissertation in Atmospheric Physics, titled “Characterization of the HARP2 instrument and its Influences on the Polarimetric Retrieval of Aerosol Particles” in front of his PhD committee members, UMBC Department of Physics faculty, ESI colleagues, family, and friends.

Dr. Sienkiewicz discussed three major components of his doctoral research: (1) the development of a simulation for scheduling and taking data from ESI’s HARP CubeSat satellite sensor over scientifically interesting global targets, (2) the pre-launch calibration of the HARP2 instrument on the NASA PACE mission, and (3) a characterization of HARP2’s measurement uncertainty relative to aerosol properties.

Over the past eight years, Noah was a core member of the HARP2 science team and followed the development of the instrument from conception, assembly, calibration, launch, post-launch support, data processing, and scientific communication at several international conferences and in two first-author publications. He will begin a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) fellowship in July 2025 under Dr. Reed Espinosa at NASA GSFC. In this new role, he will further study the relationship between multi-angle polarimeter measurements, like those from HARP2, and the climate information contained in their datasets.

Congratulations, Dr. Sienkiewicz!

Photo: Dr. Noah Sienkiewicz and his advisor Dr. J. Vanderlei Martins, Physics professor and ESI director, pose together after his defense. Photo credit: Anin Puthukkudy/ESI

Photo: Dr. Noah Sienkiewicz celebrates the end of his PhD journey with ESI colleagues and fellow graduate students. From left to right: Dr. Anin Puthukkudy, Dr. Brent McBride, Greema Regmi, Dr. Noah Sienkiewicz, Nirandi Jayasinghe, Rachel Smith, and Dr. Xiaoguang Xu. Photo credit: Anin Puthukkudy/ESI