Pietro Milillo
Assistant Professor of Geosensing Systems Engineering
Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Houston
About
Research overview
Pietro Milillo leads the Synthetic Aperture Radar Laboratory at the University of Houston. His group works on the synergistic use of remote sensing data for Earth and cryosphere science and for natural and anthropogenic hazard response. The focus is what the current generation of radar constellations makes measurable that earlier ones did not: surface deformation resolved fast enough to follow a process while it is still changing.
Funding comes from NASA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Air Force Research Laboratory. Satellite tasking is supported by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). He serves on the NASA Surface Topography and Vegetation decadal survey incubation team and on the NASA commercial smallsat evaluation onramp programme. He also leads the US side of a campaign with the Italian and German space agencies that has delivered high-resolution radar coverage of Antarctica and Greenland since 2017.
He has published 92 peer-reviewed articles and conference papers, cited 2,991 times (Scopus, July 2026). His work has been covered by the New York Times, Fox News, NBC News, PBS, The Guardian, The Independent, Vice, Der Spiegel, National Geographic, La Repubblica, Il Sole 24 Ore and RAI.
Appointments
- Assistant Professor (tenure track), Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Houston (2021–present)
- Adjunct Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Houston (2024–present)
- Guest Scientist, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Microwaves and Radar Institute
- Chair, ISSNAF West South-Central Chapter (2022–2025)
- NISAR DART Science Team