Research Assistant Professor
Physics, Room 328
NASA GSFC Code 613
Email: mcbride1[at]umbc.edu, brent.mcbride[at]nasa.gov
Socials: LinkedIn, Google Scholar, ORCID
Education
PhD, Atmospheric Physics – UMBC, 2022
MS, Atmospheric Physics – UMBC, 2017
BS, Physics – UMBC, 2014
Research Interests
Dr. McBride works at the interface of instrument development and cloud, aerosol, and ocean sciences. He serves as the instrument scientist of the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) family of instruments, which include a CubeSat, two aircraft demonstrators, and the HARP2 sensor on NASA’s PACE mission. This involves pre-launch and on-orbit calibration and characterization, and concept-of-operations (CONOPS) for maintaining instrument performance over the course of the missions. CONOPS includes dark captures, solar and lunar views, validation of measurements over pseudo-invariant calibration sites (PICS), and special calibrations unique to each sensor and science goals.
He has led ESI’s participation in 4 NASA aircraft campaigns to date: the Lake Michigan Ozone Study (LMOS, 2017), Aerosol Characterization from Polarimeter and Lidar (ACEPOL, 2017), the PACE Post-launch Airborne Experiment (PACE-PAX, 2024), and the Injected Smoke and Pyrocumulonimbus Experiment (INSPYRE, 2026).
Dr. McBride also invests in the demonstration and application of low-cost and handheld sensors for STEM workforce development and citizen science, including participation in NASA’s STELLA and GLOBE/Crowdsourcing programs.
Academic Service at UMBC
Since 2015, Dr. McBride has mentored over 20 undergraduate and graduate students in Earth remote sensing topics at the Earth and Space Institute. He also regularly teaches the PHYS 351 Physics and Chemistry of the Atmosphere course in the UMBC Department of Physics in spring semesters.
Each year, Dr. McBride also coordinates a series of courses for UMBC’s Summer Enrichment Academy (SEA). He developed Earth Science with Satellite Imagery, which focuses on the aerosol, cloud, ocean, and land science of NASA’s PACE mission, and also the Atmospheric Science Lab: Build, Test, and Deploy an Air Quality Sensor course in collaboration with Erik Crowe in the Department of Physics. In this course, students build a sun photometer instrument from first electronics principles, use it to study aerosol optical depth in the atmosphere, and compare their measurements against local professional air quality sensors (AERONET).
Selected Publications
Smith, R., McBride, B., Xu, X., Puthukkudy, A., Sienkiewicz, N., Cieslak, J., Remer, L., Fernandez-Borda, R., and Martins, J. V.: A new way to see the clouds: the hyper-angular rainbow polarimeter (HARP2) on the NASA PACE mission, Frontiers in Remote Sensing, 6 – 2025, https://doi.org/10.3389/frsen.2025.1710909, 2026.
Sienkiewicz, N., Martins, J. V., McBride, B., Xu, X., Puthukkudy, A., Smith, R., and Fernandez-Borda, R.: HARP2 pre-launch calibration: dealing with polarization effects of a wide field of view, Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 18(11), https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-18-2447-2025.
McBride, B. A., Twedt, K., Wu, A., Geng, X., and Xiong, X.: Improved characterization of Dome Concordia for tracking calibration changes in MODIS reflective solar bands, Proc. SPIE 13192, Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites XXVIII, 1319210 (20 November 2024); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3031740, 2024.
McBride, B. A., Smith, R. E., Greenberg, A., Dixon, S., Muller, J.-P., and Martins, J. V.: OreSat 0.5: next-generation small satellite for global cirrus cloud detection and mapping. Proc. SPIE 13192, Sensors, Systems, and Next-Generation Satellites XXVIII, 1319208 (20 November 2024);https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3034013, 2024.
McBride, B. A., Martins, J. V., Cieslak, J. D., Fernandez-Borda, R., Puthukuddy, A., Xu, X., Sienkiewicz, N., Cairns, B., and Barbosa, H. M. J.: Pre-launch calibration and validation of the Airborne Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP) instrument, Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/17/5709/2024/, 2024.
Puthukkudy, A., Martins, J. V., Remer, L. A., Xu, X., Dubovik, O., Litvinov, P., McBride, B., Burton, S., and Barbosa, H. M. J.: Retrieval of aerosol properties from Airborne Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP) observations during ACEPOL 2017, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13, 5207–5236, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-5207-2020, 2020.
McBride, B. A., Martins, J. V., Barbosa, H. M. J., Birmingham, W., and Remer, L. A.: Spatial distribution of cloud droplet size properties from Airborne Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (AirHARP) measurements, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 13, 1777–1796, https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-13-1777-2020, 2020.