In May 2014 I and Ioannis Binietoglou accomplished a secondment to Raymetrics in Athens. Raymetrics is a company focusing on designing and building the laser remote sensing systems for scientific and commercial purposes. The secondment procedure was conducted by George Georgoussis, general manager of Raymetrics. During the secondment we got introduced to the staff personnel of the firm and to the routine of lidar designing and manufacturing.
My PhD project is related to hygroscopicity of aerosols; the water vapor channel of lidar is one of the most important sources of information about water vapor content in the atmosphere. That's why my first task at Raymetrics was to make my knowledge about water vapor channel retrieval more profound. During the lectures given by George I extended my knowledge about water vapor retrieval using 407 nanometers channel from lidar. Apart from this, George presented to me and Ioannis methods of the designing and construction of laser remote sensing systems. Then we attended the lectures on which George told us about the specifications of noise reduction in the lidar systems and the possible causes of various noise types in the systems. And as a final step he introduced us to the routine of the lidar market in Europe and gave some practical advises related to our topics and scientific work in general.
Robert Banks also visited Raymetrics to learn more about the business and practical sides of a science-based technology company. Robert was in Athens already for a month-long secondment to the National Technical University of Athens.It was a pleasure to have such a detailed introduction to the lidar production and designing process conducted by such an experienced person. It was definitely fruitful secondment for both of us.