Dr. Maruthi Sridhar Balaji Bhaskar is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in Forest Resources from Mississippi State University, an M.S. in Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, and a B.S. in Agriculture from Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University in Hyderabad, India. Prior to joining FIU, Dr. Bhaskar served for nine years at Texas Southern University (TSU) in Houston, Texas, where he was an Assistant Professor for six years and an Associate Professor for three years in the Department of Environmental and Interdisciplinary Sciences (EIS). He also served as Director of the Environmental Toxicology Program at TSU from 2014 to 2020. Before his tenure at TSU, he worked for seven years as a Research Scientist and Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geology at Bowling Green State University, Ohio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Bhaskar was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Fellowship in 2018\u20132019, serving as a visiting faculty member at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. He also served as a Visiting Summer Faculty at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee from 2013 to 2016. His research expertise lies in the application of geospatial technologies\u2014remote sensing and GIS\u2014for monitoring and managing environmental and agricultural systems. His work spans landscape ecology, land use and land cover change, soil and plant health, and environmental quality monitoring. He has developed numerous satellite-based models for assessing soil and water quality, contaminant fate, invasive plant species, environmental disasters, and evapotranspiration. For his innovations, Dr. Bhaskar holds five U.S. patents in remote sensing technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He has served as Principal Investigator on multiple research grants funded by USDA, NSF, NASA, DOE, and USDA-NRCS. His scholarly output includes 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, 5 book chapters, 5 patents, 114 conference abstracts, and numerous invited presentations at national and international conferences and symposia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr. Maruthi Sridhar Balaji Bhaskar is a Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in Forest Resources from Mississippi State University, an M.S. in Soil Science and … Continue reading