August 31, 2015
Srinivas Beattadpur
Srinivas Bettadpur became an associate professor in ASE/EM after serving as a research professor for 15 years in the school’s Center for Space Research (CSR).
Bettadpur’s area of expertise is orbital mechanics and space geodesy. His research is focused on the modeling and analysis of Earth's dynamics through space-based metrology and remote sensing, and the connections between global space-geodetic measurements and their regional applications. Current areas of interest include the estimation of Earth's global gravity field variations from satellite tracking; applications of diverse remote-sensing methods to the study of the regional water cycle in Texas; and multi-technique space-geodetic methods for precision global reference frames.
Ufuk Topcu
Ufuk Topcu joins ASE/EM as an assistant professor. Topcu’s research is focused on the design and verification of autonomous networked systems.
Prior to coming to UT Austin, he was a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology and before that, he was a research assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has his bachelor’s degree from Bogazici University in Turkey, and his master’s degree from the University of California, Irvine.
Michael Watkins
Michael Watkins joins the Cockrell School as a professor and the new director of the school’s Center for Space Research.
Before coming to the Cockrell School, Watkins served as manager of the Science Division at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, as well as the project scientist for the GRACE and GRACE Follow-On Missions. He was previously the mission manager for the Curiosity Rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, and was also the manager of the Navigation and Mission Design Section at JPL.
His engineering research interests include estimation theory, precise orbit determination and space navigation. His scientific research focuses on the acquisition and use of global maps of mass variability, derived from measurement of the gravity field, to better understand the earth's complex hydrosphere and cryosphere and their evolution.
