Tuesday, May 5, 2020. 4:30 pm PDT. Register here. Presented by the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles with the Italian Culture Institutes of New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco. Journalist Maria Teresa Cometto in conversation with Dr. Cinzia Zuffada, Associate Chief Scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Reflections on the Earth Viewed from Space

Dr. Zuffada explains how new sustainable remote sensing techniques help us understand dynamic processes of the terrestrial hydrology typical of complex ecosystems like wetlands. She also talks about her journey from a small Italian town to the NASA lab in Southern California, and the process of developing new measurement techniques made possible by technological innovations.

Maria Teresa Cometto is a journalist and award-winning author based in New York. Since 2000 she has been covering business and high-tech for Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian daily, and writing for other important magazines.

Dr. Cinzia Zuffada grew up in Lombardy and received a doctoral degree of Electronic Engineering from the University of Pavia. After beginning an academic career within the Department of Electrical Communications of the Pavia School of Engineering, she moved to the US and eventually joined JPL in 1992. She is currently the JPL Associate Chief Scientist, overseeing JPL-internal R&D investments, academic partnerships and postdoctoral programs, and maintaining an active research in Earth remote sensing with the global navigation satellites’ signals reflected (GNSS-R) from the surface. She is a co-investigator on CYGNSS, a NASA mission to measure ocean surface winds in hurricane conditions and land surface properties with a constellations of 8 small satellites.

In the winter of 2019 she served as the Science Fellow at the US embassy in Rome lending her expertise in Earth remote sensing to catalyze collaborations between Italy and the US. She has been a member of the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF) board of directors since December 2017 and is currently its president.

The event is organized by the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles with the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Washington D.C. and San Francisco in partnership with ISSNAF.