The University of Newcastle Upon Tyne enjoys a prestigious and long-established reputation for research which has been greatly enhanced by the recent creation of interdisciplinary University research institutes. Our teaching is similarly highly regarded and we are designated as the UK centre of excellence for the teaching of medicine and dentistry. These strengths are underpinned by substantial investment in improved facilities for both staff and students. The university is involved in the development of the regional economic strategy and has strong links with industry and commerce. As one of Britain's largest civic universities, with 16,716 full-time and 1,068 part-time students, we play a major role in the local community. The university has a financial turnover of £276.1m and employs over 4,000 people.
The School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences (160 staff and 830 students) is one of the largest in the UK, strongly research focused and committed to teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. In the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise the School’s civil engineering and geomatics research was rated top in the University and second best nationally. RAE2008 assessed the impact of research over the past seven years, current staff esteem and environment, and vision, plans and potential for the future. 20% of staff were rated 4* (world leading) and a further 70% rated 3* (internationally excellent). The Newcastle Geodesy group is the largest geophysical geodesy group in the UK and one of the strongest University based groups in Europe. Together the group uses geodetic tools to work on problems relating to Earth geophysics, notably Earth's global water cycle, sea level change and polar ice mass balance. We also seek to advance the accuracy and precision of those geodetic tools (e.g., Global Navigation Satellite Systems, GRACE and SLR). At present the geodesy group consists of 5 members of lecturing/professorial staff, 7 postdoctoral researchers and about 10 PhD students. Our research is largely funded by the UK and European research organisations, UK government agencies and UK and European industry.
Main Tasks: WP2 leaders, scientific contributors to WP1 and WP3 and data providers to WP4.
Profile of the UNEW project team:
Professor Philippa Berry founded and developed the Earth and Planetary Remote Sensing Lab at De Montfort University, bringing on previously research-inactive staff and programmers to become active researchers and supporting them both to publish research papers and achieve Ph.D.s. This policy extends to undergraduate placement students; to date, each placement student has published a first author international conference paper. ESA Appointments in 2010 Appointed to the newly formed Mission Advisory Group for Sentinel-3. Cal/Val Principal Investigator for EnviSat Mission ID 476. ‘Cross calibration and synergistic applications of SMOS with derived surface moisture and texture obtained from multi-frequency satellite radar altimetry and in-situ data’. Cal/Val Principal Investigator for SMOS Mission ID 4682. ‘Cross calibration and synergistic applications of SMOS with derived surface moisture and texture obtained from multi-frequency satellite radar altimetry and in-situ data’. Principal Investigator for CRYOSAT-2 Mission ID 6513. ‘Assessment of Enhanced Information Retrieval over Inland Water, Coastal Zone, and Land Surfaces.
Professor Philip Moore has over 25 years of experience in orbital perturbations, precise orbit determination, satellite altimetry, gravity field determination and GNSS. Coordinated development of in-house POD software (Faust). Currently working on Antarctic ice mass loading; the Earth’s temporal gravity field (including gravitation from LAGEOS, mass-loading from GPS, GRACE and loading models); unification of vertical datums (using tide gauges, altimetry, GPS and GRACE); quality control in precise point positioning and on applications of inland water altimetry to ungauged basins. Recipient of numerous research grants and contracts from NERC, EPSRC and ESA. Current industrial collaborations with Fugro Intersite (Leidschendam, Netherlands) and BGS.