Dr. Sam Atkinson, Professor, has a background in biology and environmental science and engineering. His bachelor’s degree is in biology from Oklahoma State University (1979), and his master’s in environmental science (1982) and Ph.D. in engineering and applied science (environmental science-1985) are from the University of Oklahoma. After being awarded his Ph.D, he worked as an environmental engineer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He began his teaching career in 1986 at the University of North Texas in Denton, where he became Director of the Center for Remote Sensing in 1988. For a two year period beginning in 2002 he was departmental chair of Environmental and Occupational Health in the School of Public Health at UNT’s sister institution in Fort Worth Texas, the UNT Health Science Center. Dr. Atkinson’s research interests revolve around understanding the capabilities and limitations of current and future satellite remote sensing systems to examine regional scale environmental questions, especially how land use and land cover change affect water quality. He was named UNT’s Decker Scholar in 1997 for outstanding research in science and technology. He has authored or co-authored nearly one-hundred scientific papers, technical reports, books, and book chapters. He research program has been funded by entities such as NASA, the U.S. EPA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Trinity River Authority, the Perot Group and others (more than $4 million). He has presented results of his research at over eighty scientific meetings around the world. He currently teaches primarily graduate level courses in Remote Sensing and Environmental Impact Assessment, as well as Introduction to Environmental Science to freshmen, and has been teaching short courses on environmental assessment for sixteen years.
