Congratulations and Welcome to Dr. Kamal Aryal

GESTAR II congratulates Kamal Aryal, who defended his Ph.D. dissertation in Physics on July 16, 2025. His dissertation was titled "Advancing Aerosol and Ocean Color Remote Sensing Over Coastal Waters Using Multiangle Polarimetry and Machine Learning," and his advisor was Dr. Pengwang Zhai, Professor, Physics/UMBC. Kamal previously was selected as GESTAR II UMBC Graduate Fellow, 2024-2025, and he recently joined GESTAR II as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, working in the Ocean Ecology Laboratory (Code 616) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Photo from Dr. Aryal's PhD defense (l - r): Dr. Pengwang Zhai, Dr. Kamal Aryal, Dr. Susanne Craig (GESTAR II/616/UMBC), Dr. Adriana Rocha Lima (Physics/UMBC), Dr. Belay Demoz (Physics/UMBC), and Dr. Meng Gao (616/SSAI). Photo Credit: Provided by K. Aryal.