Marcus Okonkwo

(he/him)

Remote Sensing Scientist | Earth Observation & Climate Analytics

Nairobi, KenyaPlanet LabsEarth Observation & Climate
Open To Work

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About

Remote sensing scientist with 10 years applying satellite imagery to environmental challenges across Africa. Specialist in SAR interferometry, multispectral classification, and time-series analysis for agriculture monitoring.

Leading automated crop monitoring at Planet Labs for 15 African countries. Previously at UN Environment Programme on disaster mapping.

Experience

Lead Remote Sensing Scientist

Planet Labs

2022-01-15 - Present | Nairobi, Kenya (Remote)

Leading automated crop monitoring using PlanetScope daily imagery. Built ML pipelines for crop type classification achieving 92% accuracy.

Earth Observation Specialist

UN Environment Programme

2018-04-01 - 2021-12-31 | Nairobi, Kenya

Developed rapid damage assessment workflows using SAR imagery for flood and drought events across 8 countries.

GIS & Remote Sensing Analyst

Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources

2015-08-01 - 2018-03-30 | Nairobi, Kenya

Land cover change detection using Landsat time series. Trained 200+ GIS professionals from 15 African countries.

Education

Ph.D.

University of Twente (ITC) - Earth Observation for Food Security

2019-01-01 - 2023-06-30

M.Sc.

University of Nairobi - Geographic Information Systems

2013-09-01 - 2015-07-01

Skills

SAR InterferometryGoogle Earth EnginePython (Rasterio/GDAL)Machine Learning for EOTime-Series AnalysisSentinel-1/2 ProcessingR (terra/sf)Scientific WritingCross-cultural LeadershipGrant Writing

GIS Software Proficiency

QGISexpert
ENVIexpert
Google Earth Engineexpert
SNAP (ESA)expert
PostGISadvanced

Languages

English (native)Igbo (native)Swahili (full professional)

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