Abdalati is seconded to NASA from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is Director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences[5] and Associate Professor in the Department of Geography.[6] Abdalati earned a Bachelor of Science (cum laude) from Syracuse University Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 1986,[3] and later completed his graduate studies at the University of Colorado, where he received a M.Sc. in 1991 from the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and a Ph.D. in 1996 from the Department of Geography.[3][7] In his doctoral research, Abdalati developed an algorithm to use the ratio of two microwave bands of the Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) sensor aboard Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) vehicles to remotely detect changes in the spatial extent of the Greenland ice sheet experiencing melt each year.[8]