Craig R. Ferguson serves as NASA Earth Science hydrosphere program manager
Dr. Craig R. Ferguson serves as program manager for NASA’s Earth Science Division Research Element Hydrosphere program and holds several additional NASA roles; he joined NASA in March 2024. He is project scientist for the Integrated Modeling Virtual Institute Scientific Computing program and Earth Science Division co-lead for High-End Computing.
He also serves as program scientist for SMAP and deputy program scientist for the NISAR and SWOT satellite missions, the Snow4Flow Earth Venture Suborbital-4 airborne mission, and the Planetary Boundary Layer Decadal Survey Incubation mission concept. Before joining NASA, Dr. Ferguson spent a decade as a tenured research professor in atmospheric science at the University at Albany, SUNY, where he specialized in applying NASA satellite remote sensing data to improve understanding and prediction of drought, evaporation, precipitation, Great Plains low-level jets, mesoscale land-atmosphere interactions, and circumglobal teleconnections.
His work has attracted $5 million in competitively awarded federal funding from NSF, NOAA, DOE and NASA. At NASA he served on the SMAP and Sounder Science Teams and led development of a new calibration and validation strategy for the NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program; for NOAA he co-led a seed project to establish the Northeast Drought Early Warning System.
Dr.
craig r. ferguson, nasa earth science, hydrosphere program manager, integrated modeling virtual institute, scientific computing program, high-end computing co-lead, smap program scientist, nisar deputy program scientist, swot deputy program scientist, snow4flow airborne mission, planetary boundary layer incubation, terrestrial hydrology program, calibration and validation strategy, northeast drought early warning system, great plains low-level jets, mesoscale land-atmosphere interactions, circumglobal teleconnections, satellite remote sensing, 30-meter surface soil moisture, smap data assimilation, university at albany suny, noaa david johnson award, ams journal of hydrometeorology, global land-atmosphere system study, gewex hydroclimatology panel, nsf noaa doe nasa funding, princeton university, environmental resource engineering, sounder science teams