Biography
Prof. El-Askary received his Ph.D. in Computational Sciences and Informatics from George Mason University in 2004 along with his two MS degrees in Computational sciences and Earth Systems Sciences. He is also a Professor of Environmental Physics on leave with the Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, Egypt. Prof. El-Askary was also affiliated with the National Authority of Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSS), Cairo.
Dr. El-Askary has been also elected on national basis to be a member of 30 in the Ministry of Justice consultant team for Environmental affairs since 2008 until now. He is the 2015 recipient of the Chapman University's elite Senior Wang-Fradkin Professorship award. He was named as one of six ‘Game Changers: Orange County Leaders Transforming the World’ by the Orange County Business Council.
Prof. El-Askary also served as the regional coordinator on a $3 million Euro grant from the European Union’s (EU) Horizon 2020 that started February 2016. The three year project, known as GEO-CRADLE, which stands for Coordinating and integrating state-of-the-art Earth Observation Activities in the regions of North Africa, Middle East and Balkans and Developing Links with GEO related initiatives toward GEOSS.
He is currently serving as the vice leader to the WG3 Dissemination and capacity building work package in the InDUST cost imitative amongst leading scientists from Europe. His research interests include dust storms monitoring and detection using different remote sensing technologies as well as studying other extreme events. He is also involved in studying air pollution problems over mega cities due to natural and man-made effects as well as climate change and its impacts on sea level rise and coral reefs for coastal areas.
In 2019, Prof. El-Askary contributed among only 200 scientists worldwide to the IPCC report on the Desertification Chapter. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC is the official entity that issues the state of the climate report once every 5 years that must get approved, acknowledged and acted upon by all nations of the world. He was also invited by the UN secretariat to the COP14 meeting in New Delhi to present on the sand and dust storms side event to be part of the global sand and dust storms coalition.
Prof. El-Askary has published over a 100 refereed research publications, conferences full paper and book chapters in these research areas. Dr. El-Askary’s research has been supported by National Science Foundation, NASA, United States Department of Agriculture and European Union. Dr. El-Askary has received the Saudi Arabia award hosted by the Arab Administrative Development Organization (ARADO) affiliated with the League of Arab states for the best published article in Environmental Management among 150 articles in 2006. He is also member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), AGU, EGU, COSPAR, and Phi Beta Delta Honor Society.
Today Prof. El-Askary views himself as an Earth System Scientist with a major interest in hazards, atmospheric events and climate. He is particularly interested in events that have a glocal impact (going from global to local) and mixing scenarios between natural and anthropogenic generated aerosols.
