Brief biography

Ake Rosenqvist received the M.S. degree in surveying in 1988 from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, and the Dr. Eng. degree in microwave remote sensing from the University of Tokyo in 1997.

He joined the Swedish Space Corporation in 1990, where he was engaged in the SPOT programme and in the execution of ODA projects in Southeast Asia. As first foreign national, he was invited to the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) in 1993, where he became involved in the development of the JERS-1 applications programme. He was awarded the ISPRS President’s Honorary Citation in 2000 for promotion of Earth observation applications to the UNFCCC Kyoto Protocol. He spent 6 years at the EU Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy, developing regional-scale SAR applications to forestry and CH4 emission models from tropical wetlands, and 5 years as Senior Scientist at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), where he developed the concept of systematic global observation strategies, which were adopted by JAXA and implemented for the ALOS and ALOS-2 missions.

Ake founded solo Earth Observation (soloEO) in 2009 with offices in Stockholm, Sweden and Tokyo, Japan. soloEO has supported JAXA's ALOS-2 applications programme (K&C Initiative), the Argentinian Space Commission’s (CONAE) SAOCOM-1 radar satellite constellation missions, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) TangoSat tomographic and bi-static mission (now discontinued),  CSIRO Australia’s partnership in the UK NovaSAR S-band SAR mission, and NASA's CEOS System Engineering Office. soloEO also supports JAXA’s participation in the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) the Ramsar Wetlands Convention Science and Technology Review Panel.

Ake is also co-founder of the Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) which is an international initiative led by JAXA, soloEO and Aberystwyth University, in collaboration with Wetlands International and The Nature Conservancy (TNC). The GMW provides annual maps of the world's mangroves by use of Earth Observation data.