Ron Kwok is a Senior Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.

His research interests include the mass and energy balance of the Arctic and Southern Ocean ice cover and the role of the sea ice in global climate. His current focus is on the analysis of thickness, small-scale sea ice kinematics, time varying gravity from various spaceborne and airborne remote sensing instruments.

He is a member of NASA’s ICESat-1&2 science teams and ESA’s CryoSat-2 Calibration/Validation team. Dr. Kwok received the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal (2003), the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal (2008), and JPL’s Ed Stone Award for outstanding research publication (2003, 2005) for his work on understanding the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover.

He has published over 110 scientific papers and numerous articles on the state of the polar regions. He received his Ph.D. degree from Duke University, Durham, N.C. and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. Dr. Kwok is a Fellow of the IEEE.