Ahmad Al Bitar

Ahmad Al Bitar received the B.A. degree from the Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon, in 2001 and the M.E. degree from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, Lyon, France, in 2003, both in civil engineering, and the Ph.D. degree in hydrogeology from the Institut National Polythechnique de Toulouse, Toulouse, France, in 2006. His thesis work focused on numerical modeling in stochastic porous media in the context of surface/subsuface coupling. In 2006, he joined the Centre d’Etudes Spatiales de la Biosphère (CESBIO), Toulouse, as a Research Fellow on integrated hydrological modeling. Since 2008, he has been with the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission team with CESBIO. He contributed to the SMOS commissioning phase, the calibration/validation activities, and the definition of L3 multiorbit SMOS products. He is working on high-end level-4 products from the SMOS mission. His main research interests include assimilation of remote sensing data more specifically from microwave sensors into integrated hydrological modeling.