Helmut Rott was born in October 1946 in Austria. He received the Ph.D. degree in meteorology and applied physics at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, in 1974.Since that time he has been Research Associate and Lecturer at the Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics of the University of Innsbruck. He has carried out research in the fields of atmospheric transmittance, boundary layer meteorology, and glaciology. His current research work is on the application of synthetic aperture radars and of spaceborne microwave radiometers for snow and ice monitoring, and on the use of meteorological satellite data for hydrological forecasts.