Qatar National Library is pleased to invite all to a public lecture on how natural forces define Qatar’s environment and their significant role in shaping past, present and future life in Qatar. The lectured will be conducted by Dr. Essam Heggy, a Planetary Scientist at the University of Southern California, and a ROSETTA Co-Investigator at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The term “heritage” is often associated with historical documents, artistic works, and archeological artifacts. A relatively unknown fact is that Qatar’s early population was one of the very few cultures to build an intuitive scientific heritage on natural phenomena, specifically the evolving desert and changing coasts of the Qatar Peninsula. Thousands of years ago, Qatar’s early inhabitants may have developed a unique understanding of groundwater and sea levels, dune movements, coral reef evolution, and navigation in shallow waters. They are likely to have mitigated the effects of complex natural phenomena such as droughts and changing sea levels and to have adapted their daily survival around these climatic shifts. Today, Qatar continues to go through unique environmental changes, making it a valuable case study for understanding the natural phenomena that define arid environments.
* The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session.
Thursday, 19 April 2018
10:00 – 11:00 AM
Venue: QNL Special Events Area
Language: English, but Arabic interpretation will be provided
Seats are limited, please click here to register.
About the Speaker
Essam Heggy is a Planetary Scientist at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, and a ROSETTA Co-Investigator at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Heggy obtained both a Master’s and Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics with a major in Space and Planetary Sciences, in 1999 and 2002, respectively, with distinguished honors from the Sorbonne University in France. His research in space and planetary geophysics aims to understand water and ice distributions in Earth’s arid regions and on Mars, the moon, icy satellites and near-Earth objects. He is currently a member of the science team of the MARSIS instrument aboard the Mars Express Orbiter, the Mini-SAR experiment aboard Chandrayaan-1, the Mini-RF experiment on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the CONSERT radar experiment on board the Rosetta mission. He is also a contributing scientist to several proposed planetary and terrestrial radar imaging and soundings experiments and participated in several NASA radar mission concept designs.