SOBIESKI Piotr was born in Brussels, Belgium on December 7, 1948. He received the degrees in Electrical Engineering in
1971, Ph.D in 1977 and Habilitation in 1987 from Université Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Belgium. He is presently Full Professor (professeur ordinaire) at UCL where he teaches electromagnetism, wave propagation, telecommunications and microwave remote sensing. He has been Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering for the period 1995-2001. Since 2005, he is chairman of all the Examination Jurys for the Louvain School of Engineering.
Between 1971 and 1980, he is involved in propagation of microwaves
through the atmosphere, particularly attenuation and depolarisation of
microwaves by hydrometeors, ground based radiometry, and in the
european communication satellite OTS campaign at the Université
Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
In 1980-1981, he stays at the technical center (ESTEC)
of the European Space Agency, The Netherlands, where his activities
deal with inverse scattering problems in electromagnetics especially in
the frame of microwave remote sensing. The problem of the retrieval of
geophysical parameters from multiple satellite borne microwave sensors
is adressed.
Between 1981 and 1990, he was involved in activities in microwave
remote sensing, the scattering of microwaves by the rough sea surface
with applications to satellite borne observations and maritime mobile
propagation and communications. More specifically he works on a unified
approach of passive and active measurements, the development and
validation of theoretical and numerical electromagnetic scattering
models for the sea and the atmosphere, radiometric and radar
measurements simulation, synergic inversion of field data.
In 1990-1991 he is visiting scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and works on problems related with microwave remote sensing of rain above the ocean from space.
Since 1991 he works at UCL on
various remote sensing problems about precipitation and the ocean on
one hand, vegetation and soil on the other hand, in cooperation with NASA(USA), ESA(NL), CETP(F), IMST(F), Ifremer (F) and other european laboratories with financial support of ESA and the Belgian OSTC. He is involved in several ESA pilot projects in microwave remote sensing and use of data collected by ERS-1/2, TOPEX/POSEIDON, SSM/I and TRMM satellites. He is author and co-author of several papers in this field.
Since 1992 he is also involved in various pedagogical projects at the Louvain School of Engineering, UCL. He significantly contributed to the development of active pedagogy and the set up of a new educational program based on Problem and Project Based Learning started at UCL in 1999.
Since 2005, he significantly contributed at UCL to the
implementation of new Bachelor and Master Degrees in the framework of
the European Bologna Process towards the European Higher Education Area. Since 2008 he is chairman of the Programme Study Group of UCL.
P. Sobieski is member of IEEE, URSI,
the American Geophysical Union and the Belgian society of
telecommunications engineers SITEL. He also acted as Associate Editor
for Radio Science and Editor for the URSI Radio Science Bulletin for the period 1997-2001. He was Vice-Chairman of URSI Commission F devoted to "Wave propagation and Remote Sensing" for the period 2002-2005 and is now Chairman for the period 2005-2008.
