Dr. Thomas U. Kampe

Thomas Kampe is an Optical Engineering Technical Fellow at BAE Space & Missions Systems. Recent program involvement has included serving as optics lead on the Landsat-9 OLI-2, MethaneSat, and Libera. He is the Principal Investigator for the Compact Hyperspectral Prism Spectrometer (CHPS) imaging spectrometer program, a Sustainable Land Imaging-Technology program funded through NASA Earth Science Technology Office. Previously, he was Director for Remote Sensing at the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), where he was responsible for the development and operations of the NEON airborne remote sensing group which survey NEON ecological sites across the United States on an annual basis. Prior to joining NEON, he was with Ball Aerospace for 12 years, at Santa Barbara Research Center, where he was the responsible optical engineer for the MODIS instrument, and with OPTICS 1 and Infrared Industries/Santa Barbara Applied Optics.
Dr. Kampe earned the B.S. degree in physics from UCLA, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in astrophysical, planetary, and atmospheric sciences from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has authored over 35 technical and scientific papers and holds several patents on optical and hyperspectral technology. He is a Fellow of SPIE and the recipient of the 2024 SPIE Arthur E. Conrady Award in Optical Engineering.