Research profile

Professor Dr.-Ing. Forootan holds a B.Sc. in Civil-Surveying Engineering (2006) from Khaje Nasir Technical University and a M.Sc. in Geodesy-Hydrography (2008) from University of Tehran, Iran, as well as a Ph.D. in Geodesy (2014) from University of Bonn, Germany. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Curtin University, Perth, Australia (2015) and a 2-year postdoctoral research at the University of Bonn (2014-2016) in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Between July 2016 to August 2018, he worked as lecturer at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University, U.K. with a research focusing on satellite and mathematical geodesy, as well as hydrology. During September 2018-2019, he worked as senior researcher at the Institute of Physics and Meteorology, University of Hohenheim. The focus of his research was geodetic data assimilation into Earth System Models. During October 2019-July 2020, he worked as senior GNSS expert at Robert Bosch GmbH, Abstatt, Germany. Since August 2020, he has been working at Aalborg University as Professor in Geodesy and Earth Observation.

Professor Forootan's research addresses the application of GNSS, satellite gravity, satellite altimetry and satellite Earth Observations for monitoring and predicting processes within the Earth System. His interest and experience has pioneered various frameworks to analyze remote sensing/satellite geodetic observations, along with hydro-meteorologic/atmospheric and geophysical model outputs to study physical processes (e.g., global/regional mass redistribution, Earth surface deformation, as well as thermospheric/ionospheric density changes and their interactions). The main focus of his research has been on signal processing and integration techniques, including statistical decomposition, inversion, and data-model fusion (data assimilation) methods, to allow a complementary use of available (satellite remote sensing) data and (hydrological/climate/atmosphere) models.

Professor Forootan is vice-chair of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG)'s Sub-Commission 4.3 Atmosphere Remote Sensing, and eitor of the MDPI Remote Sensing and the Remote Sensing in Earth System Sciences (RSESS, Springer).