Summary
Dr Philippa Mason is an Earth and planetary geologist who specialises in using satellite imagery to study rocks, minerals, geological structures and tectonics, on Earth and other planets. Her teaching and research at Imperial College London involve the translation of terrestrial techniques in Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) and imaging spectroscopy to assist in the understanding of geological features and processes on other Earth-like planets, such as Venus and Mars.
She is a member of both the ESA Science Study Team (SST) and the NASA VenSAR Science Team (VeST) for the EnVision Venus, mission. EnVision will be heading to Venus around October 2031 and is aimed at gaining a better understanding the geology and climate of Venus, our neighbouring planet, helping determine whether it might once have been habitable in its past.
Biography
I completed by BSc (Hons) Geology at Southampton University, MSc in Remote Sensing at University College London and PhD at Imperial College London. I have spent time in industry in Ghana and Australia, and have broad experience as an independent remote sensing consultant alongside academia. I joined the Department of Earth Science & Engineering after my PhD, in 2000 and have been here ever since.
Current PhD students
Gerard Gallardo i Peres (funded by European Space Agency, Open Space Innovation Platform)
Xu Di (funded by Research Geophysics Academy)
Yiran Zhang (funded by Research Geophysics Academy)
Zayad al Zayer (primary supervisor Cedric John)
Myriam Prasow-Emond (primary supervisor Yves Plancherel)
Raul Adriaensen (primary supervisor Matthew Piggott)
Hsuan-Yi Li (primary supervisor James Lawrence)
Meshal Al-Quraishi (primary supervisor James Lawrence)
Recently completed PhD students from my remote sensing group
Anthony Carpenter (2024)
Stewart Agar (graduated 2023, now PDRA at Imperial)
Jennifer Scoular (graduated 2021, now Technical Director at SkyGeo, Netherlands)
Christine Bischoff (graduated 2018, now Technical lead at Tre-Altamira, Milan)
Publications
Journals
Gallardo i Peres G, Dall J, Mason PJ, et al., 2024, A generalized beta prime distribution as the ratio probability density function for change detection between two SAR intensity images with different number of looks, Ieee Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol:62, ISSN:0196-2892
Aston ER, Mason PJ, 2023, The distributions and variations of Quaternary Thames River Terrace deposits of Greater London, Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology, Vol:56, ISSN:1470-9236
Conference
Li HY, Lawrence JA, Mason PJ, et al., 2023, Unsupervised winter wheat mapping based on multi-spectral and synthetic aperture radar observations, ISPRS Geospatial Week 2023, Copernicus Publications, Pages:1411-1416, ISSN:1682-1750