Sonam Futi Sherpa

Dr. Sonam Futi Sherpa is an assistant professor at the School of Environment,
Society and Sustainability at the University of Utah. Her research interest is in using
novel remote sensing (radar and others) and machine learning tools to observe
Earth from space for hydrology, climate, and hazard implications. She was a
Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Earth, Environment, and
Planetary Sciences (DEEPS) and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society
(IBES) at Brown University. She was also a recipient of the National Science
Foundation (NSF), Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) Postdoctoral Fellowships, 2023.
At Brown, Sonam used the SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite
mission to observe water and the proglacial environment. 
Prior to Brown, Sonam earned her Ph.D. in Earth Sciences from the Department of
Geosciences, Virginia Tech (VT), where she focused her research on large-scale
water mapping, sea level rise, and exposure utilizing big data from Synthetic
Aperture Radar (SAR) and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) and
machine learning. Additionally, she has also worked on Gravity data (GRACE/FO) to
understand the association between changes in glacier mass and climate
seasonality in High Mountain Asia. At VT, she was NSF’s DRRM (Disaster Risk
Resilience and Management) Fellow and IPCC’s (Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change) Climate Sciences Fellow.
Sonam has a Master’s in science degree from Arizona State University and an M.S.
by research in Glaciology degree from Kathmandu University, Nepal. Before coming
to the USA, she worked at an Intergovernmental Organization known as the ICIMOD
(International Center for Integrated Mountain Development) as a Glaciologist, which
worked to empower eight regional member countries of the Hindu Kush Himalaya –
including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, and
Pakistan.

Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=voXrHKcAAAAJ&hl=en

Website: https://sites.google.com/brown.edu/sonamsherpa/home?authuser=0
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3415-576X
Github: https://github.com/sonamfutisherpa