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Belen Franch

I am proud to be the first woman to receive the NASA Early Career Public Achievement Medal in my department. This is a recognition of my first ten years of my research career while I became the mother of two girls. I wish it could encourage women to pursue a scientific career despite the struggle to achieve a balance between personal and professional lives.

2019
First woman in the College of Behavioral & Social Sciences to win the NASA Early Career Public Achievement Medal
Associate Research Professor
Department of Geographical Sciences
College of Behavioral & Social Sciences

Belen Franch is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, and a Science Collaborator at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She is recipient of the 2018 NASA honor award for Early Career Public Achievement, the most prestigious awards of the Agency. A major focus of Dr. Franch’s work is the use of remote sensing data for agriculture monitoring, atmospheric correction in the solar spectral range, the study and application of BRDF inversion methods, and land surface albedo estimation and analysis. Dr. Franch received her Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Valencia (Valencia, Spain) in 2013. She is author or co-author of 37 peer reviewed articles in SCI journals and has presented over 70 works in international conferences. She has participated as researcher in several projects funded by ESA, the European Union and NASA and is currently PI of three NASA projects. She also co-leads the yield working group in the NASA Harvest consortium.