Prof. Susan Steele-Dunne

The M-WAVE research group is lead by Prof. Susan Steele-Dunne from the Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft).

Susan obtained her PhD (2006) and SM (2002) in Hydrology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Prof. Dara Entekhabi. Her PhD research focussed on the development of data assimilation techniques to merge observations from the radar and radiometer aboard NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission with a land surface model to estimate surface and root zone soil moisture.  

Paco Frantzen

Paco obtained his MSc degree in the civil engineering (Geoscience and Remote Sensing track) from TU Delft in 2022. He started as a PhD candidate in the M-WAVE group in 2023, focusing on the use of the radar backscatter-incidence angle relation measured by the ASCAT scatterometer for monitoring of vegetation biomass and water status.

Anna Neyer

Anna obtained her MSc degree in Astronomy and Space Physics at Uppsala University. She joined the M-WAVE group in 2024 to support the development of the SLAINTE satellite mission. Her research focuses on simulating sub-daily radar backscatter from vegetation using GNSS-derived vegetation optical depth (VOD).

Nathan van der Borght

Nathan obtained his MSc degree in Applied Earth Sciences (Climate & Weather track) from TU Delft. He joined the M-WAVE group as a PhD candidate in 2024. His research focuses on establishing a Europe-wide GNSS VOD network and leveraging it to support the development of the SLAINTE mission.

Emma Tronquo

Emma is a postdoctoral researcher in the M-WAVE group, where she studies microwave–vegetation interactions at sub-daily timescales to support the design of the SLAINTE satellite mission. Her current work focuses on analyzing sub-daily dynamics of vegetation optical depth (VOD) and linking them to biogeophysical parameters. She joined the team in 2025, after completing a PhD in Bioscience Engineering at Ghent University, Belgium, in 2024. During her doctoral research, Emma investigated the potential of future radar satellite missions for hydrological applications, with a particular focus on the value of innovative multistatic — simultaneous mono- and bistatic — SAR configurations and sub-daily SAR technologies to enhance estimates of soil moisture and evaporation.