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Emma Woolliams

Emma Woolliams

Principal scientist

Emma Woolliams leads NPL’s work in the application of metrological techniques to satellite Earth Observation, with particular focus on the calibration and validation of satellite level 1 products. 

Emma joined NPL in 1998 after her degree at Imperial College London and started her career by setting up NPL’s spectral irradiance facility, earning her PhD from Manchester in 2003 based on this work. Her early research covered radiometry, photometry and high temperature measurement. During this time she led an international project to establish the transition temperature of high temperature fixed points as references for temperature scales, as well as working on projects covering the calibration of Earth observation sensors and the verification and testing of LED lighting. Throughout this period Emma gained a reputation as an expert in uncertainty and comparison analysis, particularly for spectral quantities.

Emma Woolliams now focusses on the application of the core metrological concepts – traceability, uncertainty analysis and comparison – to satellite Earth observation and particularly to level 1 products (the measurement of radiance from space). She is a founding member (and technical secretary) of the RadCalNet (www.radcalnet.org) working group, establishing a network of instrumented reference sites and is the chief metrologist on the FIDUCEO (www.fiduceo.eu) project that is developing metrologically rigorous climate data records from historical sensor series. Emma’s team works on projects performing in situ measurements in desert and ocean sites, radiometric uncertainty tools for the Sentinel 2 instruments and performing sensor-to-ground and sensor-to-sensor cross comparisons to improve satellite interoperability.

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