Yann H. Kerr received the engineering degree from Ecole Nationale Supérieure de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace, the M.Sc. degree in electronics and electrical engineering from Glasgow University, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and the Ph.D. degree in Astrophysique Géophysique et Techniques Spatiales, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France. From 1980 to 1985 he was employed by CNES. In 1985 he joined LERTS; for which he was director in 1993-1994. He spent 19 months at JPL, Pasadena in 1987-88. He has been working at CESBIO since 1995 (deputy director 1995-1999 and director 2007-2016).

His fields of interest are in the theory and techniques for microwave and thermal infra-red remote sensing of the Earth, with emphasis on hydrology, water resources management and vegetation monitoring.

He has been involved with many space missions. He was an EOS principal investigator (interdisciplinary investigations), and PI and precursor of the use of the SCAT over land. In 1989 he started to work on the interferometric concept applied to passive microwave earth observation and was subsequently the science lead on the MIRAS project for ESA with MMS and OMP. He was also a Co-investigator on IRIS, OSIRIS and HYDROS for NASA. He was science advisor for MIMR and Co I on AMSR. He is a member of the SMAP Science Team. In 1997 he first proposed the natural outcome of the previous MIRAS work with what was to become the SMOS Mission to CNES, proposal which was selected by ESA in 1999 with him as the SMOS mission Lead-Investigator and Chair of the Science Advisory Group. He is also in charge of the SMOS science activities coordination in France. He has organised all the SMOS workshops, and was guest editor on three IEEE Special issues and one RSE. He is currently involved in the exploitation of SMOS data, in the Cal Val activities and related level 2 soil moisture and level 3 and 4 development and SMOS Aquarius SMAP synergistic uses and on the soil moisture essential climate variable. He is also working on the SMOS-Next SMOS-HR concepts and is involved in both the Aquarius and SMAP missions. He was nominated Highly cited scientist by Thomson Reuters / Publons in 2015, 2019 and 2020