Dr. Thomas U. Kampe

Thomas U. Kampe is a Technical Fellow in Optical Engineering at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation. Recent program involvement has included serving as optics lead on the Landsat-9 OLI-2, MethaneSat, and Libera. In addition to sensor development activities, he is the PI on the Compact Hyperspectral Prism Spectrometer (CHPS) imaging spectrometer program, a Sustainable Land Imaging-Technology program funded through NASA Earth Science Technology Office. Previously, he was Director for Remote Sensing at the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), where he was responsible for the development and operations of the NEON airborne remote sensing group which survey NEON ecological sites across the United States on an annual basis. He earned his B.S. in physics from UCLA, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in astrophysical, planetary, and atmospheric sciences from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Prior to joining NEON, he was with Ball for 12 years, and worked at Santa Barbara Research Center, where he was the responsible optical engineer for the MODIS instrument. During his earlier tenure at Ball, he was the PI for the SIRAS-G IIP program and Co-PI for the SIRAS IIP. He has authored over 25 technical and scientific papers, and holds several patents on optical and hyperspectral technology. He is a Fellow of SPIE.