About
Dr. Ritesh Gautam is a Lead Senior Scientist who oversees the MethaneSAT science team at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). He leads satellite remote sensing efforts at EDF in characterizing anthropogenic methane emissions using MethaneSAT observations and it's airborne version MethaneAIR, in order to help empower advocacy efforts to mitigate emissions worldwide. Ritesh ensures scientific validity and high quality of MethaneSAT’s data products in order to effectively quantify methane emissions. Previously, Ritesh was a research scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in the Climate and Radiation division (with USRA), where he was a recipient of the Scientific Leadership Award. Ritesh has also served as a tenured faculty member at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Bombay). His overall research experience is in satellite remote sensing of methane emissions, aerosols, clouds, snow and broadly studying the climate effects of air pollution. Ritesh also serves as Co-Lead for the Atmospheric Composition and Asian Monsoon (ACAM) program - a joint IGAC/SPARC activity and has conducted multiple capacity building workshops in Asia on satellite earth observations. He has nearly 70 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed literature.
