Sarah Cooley鈥檚 research focuses on dynamic hydrologic change using satellite data. She is particularly interested in global water resources, Arctic surface hydrology and Arctic coastal change and its impact on communities. Her research uses new satellite technologies, including both NASA and commercial satellite data to study a wide range of topics including global water storage variability, shorefast sea ice breakup, Arctic lake area dynamics, and pan-Arctic river ice breakup. She has also participated in numerous field campaigns across Greenland, Northern Canada and Alaska. Her current research is funded by NASA Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Among her many accolades, Cooley was a Gates Cambridge Scholar and a NASA New Investigators Program in Earth Science Awardee. 

Cooley has a PhD in Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences from Brown University, an MPhil in Polar Studies from the University of Cambridge and a BS in geophysics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. She was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Earth System Science at Stanford University as part of the inaugural cohort of Stanford Science Fellows.