Aakash Chhabra is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Forest Monitoring at Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment, Western Sydney University. Working alongside Distinguished Professor Belinda Medlyn, he contributes to SkyForest project which is a Australian Forest and Wood Innovations (AFWI) funded initiative that supports a broader vision for a nationally consistent forest inventory that unifies diverse environmental datasets.

Prior to his current role, Aakash was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow at NASA Ames Research Center, where he developed multi-frequency radar approaches to monitor forest biomass and supported NASA’s response to the 2025 Southern California wildfires. He earned his PhD from Monash University, developing advanced satellite-based methods to map wildfire impacts and track post-fire recovery following Australia’s 2019/20 “Black Summer” wildfires. His early career includes roles as an Experimental Scientist at CSIRO’s Centre for Earth Observation and a Senior Research Fellow at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute.

With a career spanning over a decade across remote sensing, vegetation, and wildfire science, Aakash is fundamentally interested in what happens after a map is produced. His research focuses on turning remote sensing data into reliable, repeatable measurements that empower operational agencies, governments, land managers, and researchers to understand ecological change, direct limited resources, and make informed decisions.

Broadly, Aakash's research sits at the intersection of Earth Observation and geospatial science with applications across forest ecosystems and climate-related disturbances such as wildfire, drought, and canopy dieback. His research spans both directions: developing operational monitoring systems and scientific research that involves methodological innovation and applied learning.

Aakash's research is inherently collaborative and international in scope. The work has involved engagement with leading space agencies, including NASA, DLR, and JAXA. Through Opti-SAR and engagement with global initiatives like NASA FireSense, his research contributes to broader international efforts to advance Earth observation technologies for forest monitoring and environmental resilience. 

• Multi-sensor Earth observation and data fusion
• National and regional forest health monitoring
• Forest inventory and structural characterization
• Canopy dieback monitoring
• Wildfire severity and post-fire recovery
• Synthetic aperture radar and multi-frequency SAR
• Airborne and spaceborne LiDAR
• Vegetation structure, biomass, and carbon dynamics
• Forest fuels and live fuel moisture content
• Machine learning and spatial data science
• Time-series analysis of environmental change
• Google Earth Engine and cloud-based geospatial processing
• Operational environmental monitoring and decision support