Istvan Laszlo's Biography

Istvan Laszlo received an M.S. degree in Astronomy/Physics and a Ph.D. degree in the Earth Sciences from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. He worked at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics of the Hungarian Meteorological Service before joining the faculty of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland at College Park, Maryland in 1984. Since April 2001 he has also been with the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Research Interests

Istvan Laszlo's research interests include atmospheric radiation, radiative transfer, radiation budget and remote sensing of atmospheric and surface properties from space. He is a co-author of the well-known Discrete Ordinate Radiative Transfer (DISORT) code, worked on estimating the broadband top-of atmosphere albedo from narrowband sensors; developed algorithms for estimating the shortwave radiation budget, surface albedo, aerosol and cloud optical depth from satellite data.

Memberships

Istvan Laszlo was an elected member of the International Radiation Commission of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics (IAMAP) and a member of the Scanner for Radiation Budget (ScaRaB) International Science Team, the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) Science Team, and the Operational Algorithm Teams for the NPOESS Aerosol Polarimeter Sensor (APS) and for the NPOESS Earth Radiation Budget (ERBS) instrument. He is the chair of the GOES-R Radiation Budget Application Team of the GOES-R Algorithm Working Group, and the co-chair of the aerosol Calibration and Validation team for the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on board the Suomi National Polar orbiting Partnership (SNPP) satellite.

Other

Laszlo is currently working on remote sensing of aerosol properties and on the estimation of the shortwave radiation budget from current and future operational satellites. Between September 2007 and August 2008 Laszlo served as the Acting Chief of the Environmental Monitoring Branch of the Satellite Meteorology and Climatology Division of the Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR) of NOAA/NESDIS.