Dr. Bilal has served as a Distinguished Professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST), Nanjing, China, since October 2017. He is the first Pakistani to have completed his Ph.D. degree through the prestigious Hong Kong Ph.D. Fellowship. In October 2018, the Jiangsu Provincial Education Department (China) conferred him the special title of “Distinguished Professor” based on his outstanding research achievements. In October 2020, he was ranked in the Top 2% World's Scientists in Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences based on a single year (2019) by Stanford University. He has published more than 100 research papers in top SCI(E) journals, including Remote Sensing of Environment, Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmosphere, Environment International, Environmental Pollution, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Atmospheric Environment, and Atmospheric Research, etc. He serves as a “peer-reviewer” for more than 63 scientific journals and has provided more than 280 reviews. He is a certified “top peer-reviewer” by Publons – part of Web of Science. He has devised five innovative methods (1) Simplified Aerosol Retrieval Algorithm (SARA), (2) Simplified Merge Scheme (SMS), (3) Simplified and Robust Surface Reflectance Estimation Method (SREM), (4) Integration of SREM and SARA (SEMARA), and (5) AEROsol classification using Satellite remote sensing Approach (AEROSA).