Biography
Christian Mätzler (M’96–SM’03) received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, in 1970 and 1974, respectively. He was involved with solar radio astronomy and performed post-doctoral studies with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and at ETH, Zürich, Switzerland.
He is currently Titular Professor of applied physics and remote sensing with the Institute of Applied Physics, University of Bern, where he leads the Project Group Radiometry for Environmental Monitoring. Since 1979, his experimental studies have been concentrated on surface-based microwave (1–100 GHz) signatures for active and passive microwave remote sensing of snow, ice, soil, vegetation, and atmosphere including precipitation, clouds, and the boundary layer, and on the development of methods for dielectric measurements of these media with complementary work at optical wavelengths.
He is interested in meteorological applications of remote sensing and in improvements of the physical understanding of the processes involved. Based on the experimental work of his group, he has developed and tested microwave (1–100 GHz) propagation, transmission, emission, scattering, and dielectric models of snowpacks and of the atmosphere.