Background
Christopher Hain is an Associate Program Manager in the Water Resources and Agriculture Application Areas. He is also an Assistant Research Scientist for the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center (ESSIC) at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his B.S. in Meteorology from Millersville University in 2004 and his M.S. and Ph.D in Atmospheric Science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2007 and 2009. He is also currently a Visiting Scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) in College Park, MD. His research interests include thermal infrared remote sensing with applications in surface energy balance modeling, soil moisture retrieval, hydrologic data assimilation and drought monitoring. He has played a significant role in the development of the Atmosphere Land Exchange Inverse (ALEXI) model in ongoing collaboration with scientists at the USDA-ARS Hydrology and Remote Sensing Lab. ALEXI is currently used to monitor continental evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and drought. He also actively works on finding synergistic relationships between soil moisture retrievals from thermal infrared and microwave methods, while showing the benefit of these two soil moisture methodologies in an EnKF dual data assimilation framework. Dr. Hain actively collaborates with a number of national and international scientists in the field of hydrology, land-surface interactions and water resources.