Elizabeth A. Menezes

I work at the seam between research and shipped software. Radar algorithms tend to arrive as papers and prototypes; my job is to turn them into capabilities that hold up against real data, in the hands of people who are not radar specialists.

I’m a Senior Product Engineer on the Esri Imagery & Remote Sensing team, and the subject matter expert for synthetic aperture radar across ArcGIS. That means specifying processing behaviour with developers, writing Python reference implementations, and defining the test data and accuracy checks that gate each release — then validating the result against Sentinel-1, NISAR, RADARSAT-2 and commercial X-band data before it ships.

I have a B.S. in Geophysics from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.S. in Geophysics from the University of Colorado Boulder, where I processed InSAR time-series to study induced seismicity in the Raton Basin. Before that I ran real-time drilling operations in the North Sea for Halliburton, worked induced-seismicity hazard at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and built museum exhibits as a science communicator at Denali National Park.

The through-line is science communication. I design as well as engineer — Figma prototypes, scientific illustration, conference talks, a children’s book — because a capability nobody can interpret isn’t finished. I also teach field research and art with Girls on Rock, a wilderness science programme for high school students from underserved backgrounds.

When I’m not in front of a computer screen, I’m probably studying rocks, climbing rocks, and painting rocks.