Rate My Professor Jessica Fayne

Jessica Fayne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Assistant Professor in Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She assumed her tenure-track position in 2023 following joint LSA Collegiate Fellowship and President's Postdoctoral Fellowship appointments. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Southern California in 2022. Earlier roles include Research Associate at the University of South Carolina and University of Maryland Baltimore County, and multiple positions at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from 2014 to 2017. Fayne holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles (2022), an M.S. in Geography and Geoinformation Science from George Mason University (2015), and a B.A. in Political Science from Hampton University (2010). Her research specializes in hydrology, land use, and climate change, employing high-resolution satellite remote sensing to monitor global water resources, changes in terrestrial water storage, land use and land cover change, and hydro-climatic hazards. She directs the Hydrology, Land Use, and Climate Change (HyLUCC) Lab.

Fayne has earned major awards including the NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant ($135,000, 2020-2022), Outstanding Student Presentation Award at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting (2019), Research Incubator Award from Earth Science Information Partners ($5,000, 2018), and two NASA John Mather Nobel Scholarship Awards (2014, 2017). Key publications comprise 'How does wind influence near-nadir Ka-Band radar backscatter and interferometric coherence returns from small inland water bodies?' (Remote Sensing, 2023), 'Characterizing Near-Nadir and Low Incidence Ka-Band SAR Backscatter from Wet Surfaces and Diverse Land Covers' (IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, 2023), and 'Airborne Observations of Arctic-Boreal Water Surface Elevations from AirSWOT Ka-band InSAR and LVIS LiDAR' (Environmental Research Letters, 2020). She serves as Review Editor for Frontiers in Remote Sensing (Microwave Remote Sensing) since 2022, has co-organized and co-chaired multiple sessions at AGU and IGARSS meetings (2021-2024), and delivered invited lectures at the University of Bonn, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and others. Fayne is a member of AGU Hydrology Technical Committees on Hydrogeophysics and Remote Sensing.