external funding - The City College of New York - CUNY

esearch at the school of engineering22NOAA-CREST@ The Grove SchoolAs CUNY devotes itself to a Decade of Science,NOAA-CREST (Cooperative Remote Sensing Scienceand Technology Center) has become a magnet whichbrings the best and the brightest to CUNY and attractsimpressive funding to support its dual mission ofresearch and education.CREST’s success is grounded in its ability to meet theneeds of federal agencies for environmental remotesensing data and analyses. These are essential tounderstanding, predicting and protecting the earth’senvironment as it faces the challenge of climatechange. How can we manage water resources to supportthe Earth’s growing population? How are stormpatterns evolving? How can we identify and control thealgal blooms which affect our coastal waters and theaerosols which pollute our air? How can we increasethe accuracy of snowfall estimation? How can weestablish a flash flood warning system? CREST is providingcrucial input to these questions and many more.Established in 2001 with an initial $7.5 million, threeyeargrant from NOAA, CREST has been awarded atotal of $31 million in NOAA funding and $8.5 millionfrom other agencies and CUNY. The Center hasgrown into a powerhouse of 66 faculty members andresearch scientists, including 45 from CUNY, of whom32 are at the Grove School. And, CREST supportsover 50 students a year, mainly at the graduate level.CREST was founded as a consortium of US academicand industrial partners, in which CUNY is the lead institution.Now, says its director, Reza Khanbilvardi, thatpartnership is going international. “Satellite remotesensing is global,” he says, “and we are working withscientists and engineers on other continents to collectinformation and manage and reanalyze the data.