Prof. Arnon Karnieli 

Head of the Remote Sensing Laboratory, Ben Gurion University

Prof. Arnon Karnieli received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in 1988. Since then, he has been the Head of the Remote Sensing Laboratory, Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede Boker Campus, Israel. His main research is focused on processing of spaceborne, airborne, and ground spectroscopic data of drylands with respect to desertification and climate change processes. In this regard, his study’s applications cover dryland ecosystems and agriculture, and to a lesser extent dust and coastal water. In 2014, Prof. Karnieli was ranked among the top 20 researchers in the world in the field of remote sensing discipline by the Scientometrics journal. He is the Israeli Principle Investigator of the forthcoming Vegetation and Environmental New Micro Spacecraft (VENμS) mission. Prof. Karnieli has published more than 180 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has gained a considerable number of national and international proposals. Among these are the FP6 (MSRS), FP7 (PRACTIS and ExpeER), and H2020 (Ecopotential and eLTER). Beside Israel, his world-wide activities were conducted in Central Asia, Mongolia, China, and West Africa.