Received his PhD degree in Geomatics Engineering - Remote Sensing from University of New Brunswick (UNB) in 2012, Dr. Salehi joined State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY ESF) in September 2018 as an Assistant Professor of Remote Sensing Engineering in the Department of Environmental Resource Engineering (ERE). Prior to ESF, Dr Salehi was a senior Remote Sensing Engineer with C-CORE, a Canadian-based world leading company in the area of remote sensing of northern latitudes as part of LOOKNorth , a Canadian center of excellence for commercialization and research of remote sensing from 2013-2018. From 2014-2018 he was concurrently a cross-appointed professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (DEECS), Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) where he conducted extensive research and was the major professor of 6 PhD and MSc students and a postdoctoral fellow and established and taught three new courses. From 2012 -2013 Dr Salehi was a NSERC post-doctoral visiting fellow in Canadian Government Laboratories at Earth Observation, Science and Technology Branch of Agriculture and Agri-food Canada in Ottawa.
Dr. Salehi has over 19 years of academic and industrial R&D experience in geospatial engineering and remote sensing. His research areas include machine learning and applications development of multispectral, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and UAV data for environment monitoring with focus on wetland, forest, and water quality mapping and change monitoring. He is the co-author of over 60 peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters with more than 3000 citations and a Google Scholar h-index of 29 as of July 2022. He has many years of teaching experience in remote sensing (optical/ SAR), photogrammetry and UAV, machine learning as well as surveying and geomatics engineering in three universities in Canada and the U.S. Since 2014, Bahram has been the principal supervisor (major professor) of 1 post-doctoral fellow, 8 PhD students, 3 MSc students, and several undergraduate and intern students.
Since 2014, he has been awarded several industrial and governments (Canada and the US) research projects and grants (including the Canada’s NSERC Discovery grant-similar to NSF CAREER) securing a total of some $2.5 m of external funding as PI. Dr Salehi’s current research is focusing on remote sensing of water quality for inland waters, state-wide and regional extent forest above ground biomass and carbon storage change detection and mapping, nation-wide (Canada and the US) wetland inventory mapping (in 2020 he finished (as PI) and published the first high resolution nation-wide wetland inventory of Canada. Dr Salehi is actively involved in many professional societies and has served in various roles including the national executive director for Canadian Remote Sensing Society (CRSS), National Deputy Director, for the Unmanned Aerial System Division (UASD) of ASPRS, the co-chair of Commission III/Working group III ( SAR remote sensing) of ISPRS. In 2022 he co-organized and chaired the IEEE-STRATUS 2022 (a UAV Remote Sensing Conference) hosting more than 150 professionals and students from across the U.S and Canada.
Bahram is a recipient of a number of awards including the 2019 early career achievement medal from the Canadian Remote Sensing Society. He is a licensed member of Canadian Professional Engineer (P.Eng), a licensed project management professional (PMP), and a senior member of IEEE (SM. IEEE).