Dr. Sami Samiei Esfahany

Profile

Sami Samiei Esfahany joined Leeds in May 2025 as InSAR scientist and facility manager at Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics, School of Earth and Environment. Prior to that, from 2017–2025, he was assistant professor in group of geodesy at the School of Surveying and Geospatial Engineering, University of Tehran. Sami has PhD degree in Geodesy from Delft University of Technology. His PhD research was on Exploitation of Distributed Scatterers in Satellite Radar Interferometry. Before joining Leeds, he has contributed to various Dutch and Iranian research projects related to subsidence/infrastructure monitoring using InSAR in various roles (e.g., researcher, principal investigator, co-lead).

Alongside his research, Sami has also been involved in different educational activities at Delft university of Technology and university of Tehran. He has been the co-instructor of the master course Geo-Measurement Processing (Estimation Theory), and the co-developer and instructor of the online EdX course Observation Theory: Estimating the Unknown. He was a guest lecturer in courses on Geodesy and Natural Hazards, Radar Remote Sensing and Deformation Analysis, Multivariate Data Analysis, and Geostatistics. He lectured tutorials on InSAR processing during the Advanced Workshop on Evaluating, Monitoring and Communicating Volcanic and Seismic Hazards at International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) (2009 and 2013, Trieste, Italy), and he held a workshop on InSAR for earthquake modelling at University of Tehran (2016, Iran). Since 2017, Sami has taught various geodetic and data analysis courses at university of Tehran, including: Probability and Statistics, Geodetic Network Analysis, Advanced Estimation Theory, Radar Interferometry and Deformation Monitoring, Inverse Problems, and Advanced Geodynamics.

Sami’s research, at Leeds, focuses on tectonic geodesy and the application of satellite observations (mainly satellite radar interferometry) alongside ground-based measurements and geophysical models to study earthquakes and tectonic activities and the hazards they pose. He also interested in study of surface deformation induced by other processes, such as land subsidence, volcanoes, and glaciers. In addition to research activities, Sami’s responsibility at Leeds is to manage the development and maintenance of LiCSAR system which is an Automatic InSAR Tool for monitoring tectonic and volcanic activities. The project is funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council through the Centre for the Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET).

Responsibilities

• Conducting and Contributing to Tectonic-/Volcano-InSAR studies
• Coordinating the LiCSAR working groups
• Managing the development and maintenance of LiCSAR system

Research interests

• Estimation theory and inverse problems with application to modeling earth surface deformation processes
• Satellite radar interferometry (InSAR) timeseries methodologies
• Geodetic qulaity control and uncertaity analysis

Qualifications

• PhD in Geodesy (Technical University of Delft)
• MSc in Gemoatics Engineering (Technical University of Delft)
• BSc in Civil-Surveying Engineering (Amirkabir University of Technology)

Professional memberships

• European Geosciences Union (EGU)

Research groups and institutes

• Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics
• Geodynamics and Tectonics
• Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics