Our team
MethaneSAT brings together experts from some of the world’s most seasoned aerospace organizations in both the commercial and public -sectors, as well as leading experts in remote sensing and atmospheric sciences.
MethaneSAT team
Tom Ingersoll
MethaneSAT Project Co-leadTom has over 30 years’ experience in the space industry. He was CEO of Skybox Imaging, and he led its sale to Google in 2014. Previously, he was co-founder/CEO of Universal Space Network, a global satellite ground-station services company, which he sold in 2009. Tom started his career in the PhantomWorks of McDonnell Douglas Corporation, where he led advanced technology projects in satellite and rocket systems. Tom is on the board of WorldView and was previously a board member of GHGsat, a commercial greenhouse gas detection company.
Dr. Steven Hamburg
MethaneSAT LLC Executive Manager MethaneSAT Project Co-lead Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President, Environmental Defense FundSteve is co-leader of MethaneSAT and, in a separate capacity, Chief Scientist at Environmental Defense Fund, where he initiated and oversaw an unprecedented initiative involving over 150 scientists from more than 40 institutions measuring methane leakage across the U.S. natural gas supply chain. Steven serves as Chief Scientific Officer for the United Nations Environment Programme’s global methane studies, a joint effort of UNEP, EDF, DG Energy (European Commission) and the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative companies. He was previously on the faculty of Brown University for 16 years. He has published more than 100 scientific papers and served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Ed Irvin
MethaneSAT Project DirectorEd served over three decades at Lockheed Martin, including significant management roles on multiple remote sensing satellite system programs. Since 2016, he has operated as a consultant to a number of commercial startup companies. Ed is now providing satellite program management services for the MethaneSAT program. He has extensive systems engineering and management experience in earth observation and telecommunication satellite system developments and operations.
Dr. Joshua Benmergui
Senior Science EngineerJoshua works on MethaneSAT’s science planning, as well as emissions detection and quantification systems. He holds a BSc and MSc from the University of Waterloo in Canada and a PhD from Harvard University.
Jon Coifman
Senior Communications DirectorJon oversees communications and media relations for MethaneSAT LLC, and, in a separate capacity, is Senior Director of Communications at Environmental Defense Fund. He has worked in environmental and energy communications with a wide range of non-profit and private sector clients and partners for more than 20 years.
David Crisp
ConsultantDave is an atmospheric physicist and founder of Crisp Spectra, LLC an environmental science consultancy. Previously his career at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory focused on development of instruments and numerical models for analyzing light reflected, emitted, and scattered by atmospheres and surfaces of the Earth and other planets. He served as a flight instrument provider and science team member on several Earth, planetary and astrophysics missions. He was the Principal Investigator of the NASA Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) mission and served as the science team leader for NASA’s OCO-2 and OCO-3 missions. He also served as the greenhouse gas lead for the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) Atmospheric Composition - Virtual Constellation (AC-VC) and member of the CEOS/CGMS Working Group on Climate Greenhouse Gas Task Team.
Patricia Davis
ConsultantPatricia spent her 35-year career at Lockheed Martin gaining broad and deep knowledge through a series of technical and leadership roles, influencing the designs of LM’s most innovative and successful space missions. She has worked in all phases of complex missions including SXI, GOES-R, DMSP and SBIRS. Previously, she worked at Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratories. She is an expert in Gerontology of Material Science as well as payload and satellite systems engineering.
Cassandra Ely
DirectorCassandra oversees the day to day management and operations for MethaneSAT LLC. She is an experienced leader in strategic project implementation. Before joining MethaneSAT, she managed groundbreaking Methane and the Air Quality Mapping projects at Environmental Defense Fund.
Lisa Fullerton
Senior ManagerLisa helps oversee the daily management and operations of MethaneSAT. She has fifteen years of experience managing a wide variety of projects in the science and technology space. Before joining MethaneSAT, Lisa worked with the National Science Foundation and National Science Board, and most recently, Environmental Defense Fund.
Dr. Ritesh Gautam
Lead Senior ScientistRitesh is a Lead Senior Scientist for EDF, working on the MethaneSAT project. He leads remote sensing efforts characterizing methane emissions linked to the oil and gas sector. Previously, Ritesh was a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center with Universities Space Research Association, and a faculty member at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay. His research experience is primarily in satellite remote sensing and climate effects of air pollution. He has more than 50 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed literature.
Anthony Himmelberger
Geospatial AnalystAnthony is a Geospatial Analyst focusing on source attribution of methane emissions in the global oil and gas sector.
Mads O'Brien
Senior Geospatial AnalystMads (Madeleine) O'Brien is a Senior Geospatial Analyst working on data development and analytics for emissions source attribution. Mads has a Master of Environmental Science degree from the Yale School of the Environment, and a BA from Wesleyan University.
Dr. Mark Omara
Scientist, Methane Remote Sensing/Biogas EnergyMark is a Methane Remote Sensing/Biogas Energy scientist for EDF, working on the MethaneSAT project. His work focuses on global oil and gas methane emission source attribution. His research background is in oil and gas methane emissions measurement and assessment. He holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Clarkson University and previously worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University.
Brad Peterson
ConsultantBrad is a 35-year veteran in the civil and commercial space sector. He led the system commissioning and production operations for the Space Imaging IKONOS system. He was VP of Operations for both GeoEye and Digital Globe, leading satellite operations, production operations, and software development activities. In his early career he was a circuit designer for earth observing systems, planetary probes, and weather satellites. Brad joins the program to spearhead the operationalization of the MethaneSAT system.
Peter Vedder
Senior Director, Mission SystemsPeter leads the ground system development and mission operations for MethaneSAT. He has worked in industry, academia and at NASA, bringing over 30 years of senior leadership experience in space systems and flight operations for a range of space science missions. Most recently, he oversaw development of deep space navigation for the UAE’s Hope Mars mission and systems engineering for a university-led astrophysics cubesat project.
Data platform
To process and manage the enormous volume and sophisticated nature of data from the satellite, MethaneSAT is building a flexible, scalable data platform to serve as the heart of the mission.Tom Melendez
Senior Engineering Director, Data ProductsTom is leading the development of MethaneSAT's Data Platform, transforming sensor bits into actionable analytics. Before joining MethaneSAT, Tom was Technical Lead/Manager of the Geo Imagery Analytics infrastructure team at Google, where he lead the development of scalable, fault-tolerant services to process, store and serve core metrics like oil tank volumes and car counts. Tom has also held senior engineering roles in Open Source and Cloud Commerce (Google), Big Data (Skybox Imaging) and near-real-time content delivery (Yahoo!).
Sasha Ayvazov
Back End EngineerSasha is a backend software engineer for MethaneSAT. He has a background in computational mathematics, and has previously worked in computer graphics (Techsoft3D), data processing pipelines (Google Poly), and computer vision (Google Lens).
Emma Bishop
Front End EngineerEmma is a frontend software engineer for MethaneSAT. Previously, she worked as a fullstack engineer at Tembo and PowerSchool, developing public data-reporting tools for state & local education agencies. In addition to her engineering experience, she brings a background in field biology and environmental education.
David Calhoun
Technical Lead, Front End ArchitectureDavid Calhoun is leading the user interface and visualization efforts for MethaneSAT and will work closely with the EDF advocacy team, along with our industry partners. David previously held engineering positions at Netflix and Google.
Carlos Cervantes
Senior Back End EngineerCarlos is a software engineer focused on the back end of MethaneSAT’s Data Platform. Previously, Carlos was at Google, where he combined his knowledge of photography and software engineering to ensure that Google Maps had the best user-contributed photos possible. Additionally, Carlos has held engineering and leadership roles at Skybox Imaging, Yahoo! and Qualcomm.
Susan Kasper
Senior Product ManagerSusan is the Senior Product Manager for MethaneSAT. After transitioning from the semiconductor industry into the clean tech industry, Susan held engineering positions testing and developing laser analyzers for environmental applications. Most recently she worked as a product leader managing the design and development of a hand-held methane leak detection solution.
Nicholas LoFaso
Technical Lead, Processing PlatformNick LoFaso is leading our data pipeline efforts, working closely with our partners at Harvard University. In his previous role at Lutron Electronics, Nick led development of a cloud-based service to allow programmable control of various lighting components. Nick has also held engineering positions at Red-Spark (advertising tech) and Lockheed-Martin.
Cory Mortimer Martin
Front-end Software EngineerCory works on the front end website for MethaneSAT. He most previously worked as a full stack software engineer at Housecall Pro, building the user interface for service professionals to manage their day-to-day operations.
Kat Sundquist
Project Coordinator/Software ApprenticeFollowing a career as an admin assistant in the legal and educational fields, Kat attended a Software Bootcamp to expand her skills and change careers. MethaneSAT is her first foray in the world of software engineering.
Justin Tyberg
Senior Infrastructure Software EngineerJustin Tyberg is building out the cloud infrastructure that will host both the MethaneSAT data processing pipeline and the data products. Justin has built and managed cloud infrastructure across multiple cloud providers for several companies. He also has experience in software development, data science, and aerospace engineering.
Scientific partners
MethaneSAT has engaged with Harvard University and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to design the scientific and technical approach, and to develop the data acquisition and analysis capability.
Dr. Steven C. Wofsy
Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Chemistry, Harvard UniversitySteven is an Abbott Lawrence Rotch Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Science; Area Chair for Environmental Science and Engineering. His efforts span the range of processes affecting atmospheric chemistry, including pioneering work on determining regional emissions of methane and carbon dioxide using ground, aircraft, and remote sensing measurements. His studies aim to understand underlying causes for change in atmospheric composition in order to mitigate impacts and provide scientific information for societal decisions.
Dr. Kelly Chance
Senior Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsKelly has worked in space-based measurements of atmospheric composition since 1985, and is Principal Investigator of TEMPO. He has developed algorithm physics for ultraviolet and visible measurements, proposed the now-standard method for tropospheric ozone measurements from back scattered light measured by satellites, and made the first global measurements of formaldehyde and glyoxal from space.
Ju Chulakadabba
Graduate Student, Harvard UniversityJu is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Science & Engineering at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. She developed scalable point source emission estimation approaches for the MethaneAIR and MethaneSAT. Her approaches utilize high-resolution atmospheric simulations and remote sensing observations of greenhouse gases.
Dr. John E. Davis
Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsJohn is responsible for the software that extracts the level-0 science data from the MethaneSAT instrument telemetry. He is also principal architect and software developer for the TEMPO Instrument Operations Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Previously, he was a member of the Chandra X-ray Observatory Science Data Systems group at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
Dr. Jonathan E. Franklin
Research Associate, Harvard UniversityJonathan is a research associate in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard specializing in ground-based remote-sensing of methane and carbon dioxide. He operates the Boston regional greenhouse gas column network which provides validation data to Earth observing satellites including GOSAT, OCO-2, OCO-3, and TROPOMI. Jonathan is developing computational analytics for MethaneSAT via the MethaneAIR test flight program.
Dr. Xiong Liu
Research Scientist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsXiong has extensive expertise in satellite retrievals of trace gases and aerosols, and satellite instrument development and calibration. He developed one of the most advanced ozone profile and tropospheric ozone retrieval algorithms for ultraviolet measurements. He is currently the Deputy Principal Investigator for TEMPO, and is the SAO lead on science and algorithms for the MethaneSAT project.
Dr. Bingkun Luo
Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center of AstrophysicsBingkun has extensive expertise in radiative transfer modelling and remote sensing of sea surface temperature, surface radiative budget, and cryosphere. His work includes analyzing instrument calibration and testing data, and developing calibration methods for MethaneSAT.
Dr. Chris Chan Miller
Research Associate, Harvard UniversityChris is an atmospheric physicist who specializes in applications involving radiative transfer in planetary atmospheres. He has developed algorithms for observing atmospheric composition from Earth-observing satellites as part of the TEMPO and OMI science teams, and is currently a Co-investigator of the NASA MEaSUREs project to produce long term records of formaldehyde, glyoxal and water vapor from space.
Dr. Sébastien Roche
Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard UniversitySébastien is a postdoctoral fellow at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He works on algorithms used to derive the MethaneSAT Level 2 products (concentration of traces gases and other derived quantities), optimizing retrievals necessary to permit cloud and aerosol filtering.
Dr. Jenna E. Samra
Instrument Scientist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsJenna is an astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. She is overseeing the design, construction and testing spectrometers used in the MethaneAIR flight simulations for MethaneSAT, and on applications of MethaneAIR for studies of methane emissions in North America.
Dr. Maryann Sargent
Research Scientist, Harvard UniversityMaryann is a research scientist at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. She developed a framework consisting of a sensor array a statistical transport model to quantify methane and carbon dioxise emissions in the Boston urban region. Her work on MethaneSAT includes designing models to quantify methane emissions from point and regional sources.
Dr. Amir H. Souri
Research Scientist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsAmir has worked on the simulations of atmospheric chemistry and physics during NASA-funded campaigns including DISCOVER-AQ. He has incorporated air- and spaceborne remote sensing observations to improve the accuracy of different emissions and atmospheric states. His observationally constrained models have been used to inform mitigation strategies on man-made emissions. His work on MethaneSAT and MethaneAIR includes the forward and inverse simulations of synthetic radiance; development of a geolocation correction algorithm; and denoising.
Dr. Kang Sun
Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering, University at BuffaloKang is an assistant professor affiliated with the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering and the University of Buffalo RENEW Institute. He developed an open-path, quantum cascade laser-based sensor for atmospheric ammonia detection, and has worked with the science teams of OCO-2, OMI, and TEMPO. His research includes methane retrieval algorithm development, emission quantification, and deriving surface concentrations from satellite column measurements.
Dr. Jonas S. Wilzewski
Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard UniversityJonas is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard and a member of the MethaneSAT L1B-L2 team. His current focus is on developing a cloud and aerosol filter for mission sensors. He has previously worked on spectroscopic methods of remote sensing aimed at monitoring anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions using air- and space-borne sensors.
Advocacy for the MethaneSAT project
Environmental Defense Fund will use data shared by MethaneSAT LLC to assist in advocacy around EDF’s goal to protect the climate by reducing global methane emissions.
Fred Krupp
President, Environmental Defense Fund
Fred is an influential voice on climate change, energy, and sustainability, and a champion for using the power of markets to protect our environment. Under his leadership since 1984, EDF has become one of the world’s largest and most influential environmental organizations. More recently, he coined the notion of a “Fourth Wave” of environmental innovation, where new technology, advanced analytics and collaborative problem-solving combine to shape smart policy and reward corporate responsibility, allowing both people and the planet to prosper. Fred introduced the idea for MethaneSAT in an April 2018 TED Talk.
Mark Brownstein
Senior Vice President of Energy, Environmental Defense Fund
Mark is the chief architect of EDF’s global methane campaign, and leads EDF’s Energy Program. Mark was one of two staff leads on the United States Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of corporations and environmental groups championing federal cap-and-trade legislation. Prior to EDF, he held several senior management positions in the electric and gas utility industry, and started his career as an air quality regulator.
Expert advisors
To support the technical and scientific components of the project, we have enlisted some of the space industry’s most seasoned experts to serve on two advisory groups. They are helping to ensure the mission meets the highest scientific and technical standards.
Strategic Advisor
Tony Fadell
Tony Fadell is an active investor and entrepreneur with a 30+ year history of founding companies and designing products that improve people’s lives. He is the Principal at Future Shape, an investment and advisory firm coaching currently coaching over 300 deep-tech startups innovating game-changing technologies. He is also the founder and former CEO of Nest, the company that pioneered the “Internet of Things.” Tony was the SVP of Apple’s iPod Division and led the team that created the first 18 generations of the iPod and the first three generations of the iPhone. Throughout his career Tony has authored more than 300 patents.
MethaneSAT Technical Advisory Group
The Technical Advisory Group is focused on the design and fabrication of the overall MethaneSAT observatory.Bryn Davis
Chair
Bryn brings 40 years of experience in high-tech development to the MethaneSat team. In his most recent role, he served as System Architect at Lockheed Martin Space where he developed conceptual designs for new space systems and executed advanced design studies. Previous roles included Program Manager, Chief Engineer, and Director of Software Engineering as well as serving as the Director of Systems Engineering for Lockheed Martin Commercial Space Programs.
Jim Austin
Jim Austin was lead engineer on numerous spacecraft and space science instrument projects as a materials and processes engineer, and a contamination control engineer during 38 years at Ball Aerospace. He has also consulted with Skybox Imaging and Arizona State University. His background includes optical thin film technology, graphite fiber composite materials and adhesives technology.
Steve Battel
Steve is a graduate of the University of Michigan with 42 years of experience as a system engineer, designer and manager for NASA and DOD space projects. He is well known within the space community for his science and engineering leadership related to the development of unique electronic systems and scientific space instruments for Earth observing, planetary geochemistry, space physics and astrophysics applications. President of Battel Engineering since 1990, Steve is also an Adjust Clinical Professor in the departments of Electrical Engineering and Climate and Space at the University of Michigan. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Jonny Dyer
Jonny leads hardware development for Lyft’s driverless car program, after heading up hardware system development at Google's mapping division, Geo. Before that he spent seven years as Chief Engineer of Skybox Imaging, where he helped develop the first VC-funded NewSpace startup into an organization with the world’s largest constellation of high-resolution Earth Remote Sensing satellites. Prior to Skybox, Jonny spent five years doing fundamental research on rocket propulsion technologies.
Dr. Charles Elachi
Dr. Charles Elachi is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology. From 2001 to 2016, he served as Vice President of Caltech and Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory , overseeing over 45 flight missions and instrument development projects. He was principal investigator on numerous NASA-sponsored studies and flight projects including the Shuttle Imaging Radar series, the Magellan Imaging Radar; the Cassini Titan Radar; and a Co-Investigator on the Europa Sounding Radar.
John R. Frank
An entrepreneur and theoretical physicist, John is Vice President of Collaborative AI at Salesforce National Security, where he leads a team of software engineers creating information retrieval algorithms and a team of intelligence analysts that embed with customers. He has 15 years’ experience as facility security officer at startups with DOD top secret facilities clearances and has led three IT systems through NIST 800-53 accreditations for government customers. In 1999, John founded MetaCarta, which pioneered map-based search and was acquired by Nokia in 2010. John served as Chief Architect for Search at Nokia until 2012, when he founded Diffeo, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2019.
Dr. Darren Garber
Darren has over 25 years of space experience spanning traditional Class A programs to commercial New Space small satellites. Darren started his career at TRW as part of the trajectory section and now as a consultant continues to support the design, development and operations of challenging space missions. He has directly supported over 36 successful missions providing pre-launch orbit analysis through to director of mission operations.
Dennis Hewitt
Dennis Hewitt worked for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), contributing to the design, analysis, and testing of many spacecraft and instrument projects. Positions included Head of Thermal /Contamination Engineering Branch; Observatory Manager for the X-Ray Timing Explorer; and lead thermal engineer on numerous NASA Projects.
Since retiring from GSFC he has consulted for Bay Engineering Innovations, Inc., providing systems, thermal engineering and project management support. Most recently, he has supported the GSFC Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS2) systems team.
Dr. Andy Hock
Andy is a technical product leader with more than 20 years of experience building extraordinary products and teams based on ambitious scientific research and engineering. He is the Vice President and head of Product at Cerebras Systems, where his team is building a revolutionary new computer system to accelerate artificial intelligence. Previously, Andy was a Product Manager lead for geospatial data platform and analytics at Google, Senior Director for advanced technologies at Skybox Imaging, and a Senior Scientist and Program Manager working on remote sensing image and signal processing at Arete Associates.
Shaunak Kashyap
Shaunak works as a Principal Software Engineer at Elastic, helping build their data ingestion products. Previously, he worked at Skybox Imaging, leading the back-end ground systems team responsible for command-and-control and algorithmic tasking of Skybox’s satellites. Additionally, Shaunak has held engineering roles at Code for America (2013 Fellow), Yahoo! (Tech, Music, and News teams), Netflix (Open APIs team), and Rackspace (Developer Experience team).
Mark Lankton
Mark Lankton has over forty years of hands-on experience as an engineer and manager on space science projects. During his career at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics he built instruments that traveled to every planet in the solar system and to the moon. He has been a member of the Standing Review Board for the Emirates Mars Mission and has chaired reviews of many space flight science instruments.
Dr. Dan McCleese
Dan is an atmospheric scientist and founder of Synoptic Science, a space science and mission formulation consultancy. Previously, he was Chief Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Concurrently, he was Director of JPL’s Innovation Foundry. Dan was also Principal Investigator for the Mars Climate Sounder onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. As Chief Scientist for JPL’s Mars Exploration Directorate, he was a principal architect for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
William Preetz
William retired from Lockheed Martin in 2011, where he helped design DigitalGlobe's WorldView 4 imaging satellite. At Lockheed, Bill worked in Attitude Control Systems (ACS) and Systems Engineering for Hubble Space Telescope, Special Programs, Iridium, Ikonos (world’s first commercial imaging satellite), SBIRS and P909.
Dr. Maxime Rizzo
Maxime is an Instrument Systems Engineer for the WFIRST flagship telescope, a wide-field near-infrared imager and spectrometer. Previously, he worked on a visible-light Integral Field Spectrograph for NASA’s WFIRST Coronagraph Instrument, dedicated to the detection and characterization of exoplanets.
Dirk Robinson
Dirk Robinson works at the intersection of imaging, machine learning, and global-scale software engineering. He leads software engineering teams building the Google Maps platform. He previously worked on design and building of the imaging systems for Skybox. Before that, Dirk lead a computation imaging R&D team designing imaging products for Ricoh.
Barry Starr
Barry owns Hoku Akamai LLC, a science and engineering consulting and technical services firm. He is an expert in imaging system design and fabrication, specifically high-performance optical and infrared detectors and focal plane arrays (FPAs). From 2003 to 2018, he was a Senior Engineering Fellow at Raytheon. Previously, Barry worked on optical and infrared FPA development and characterization for Canada France Hawaii Telescope and the US National Optical Astronomical Observatories (NOAO).
Dr. Ion Yadigaroglu
Ion is Managing Partner at Capricorn Investment Group, and an early investor in technology companies including Tesla, SpaceX, Planet, QuantumScape and Saildrone. Previously, Ion was a Director with Koch Industries, executing a range of acquisitions and investments. Before that, he was a founder and CEO of the software startup Bivio, and the second employee of the foreign exchange analytics company Olsen & Associates.
MethaneSAT Science Advisory Group
The Science Advisory Group provides guidance on MethaneSAT’s advanced methane measurement capabilities and data analysis.Dr. Dan McCleese
Chair
Dan is an atmospheric scientist and founder of Synoptic Science, a space science and mission formulation consultancy. Previously, he was Chief Scientist NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Concurrently, he was Director of JPL’s Innovation Foundry. Dan was also Principal Investigator for the Mars Climate Sounder onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. As Chief Scientist for JPL’s Mars Exploration Directorate, he was a principal architect for NASA’s Mars Exploration Program.
Prof. Dr. Ilse Aben
Ilse is senior scientist in the Earth Science Group at the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research and co-Principal Investigator on the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI), an instrument on board ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite. She is an expert on remote sensing of the Earth’s Carbon cycle and shortwave infrared imagery.
Dr. Andre Butz
Dr. Andre Butz heads the Atmospheric Physics branch of the Institute of Environmental Physics at the University of Heidelberg. They explore the gaseous and particulate composition of the Earth's atmosphere with a focus on the greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide. They use and develop spectroscopic sensing techniques enabling accurate measurement of greenhouse gas concentrations from satellites and ground-based platforms.
Dr. Brian Connor
Brian leads BC Scientific Consulting LLC in Wellington, New Zealand, and is a senior advisor for the NZ-based MethaneSAT science team. He is an atmospheric scientist specializing in data retrieval algorithm development and uncertainty assessment for remote spectroscopic measurements of atmospheric constituents. Brian played a leading role in these areas for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2). He is also the founder of Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) in New Zealand.
Dr. Christian Frankenberg
Christian is Professor of Environmental Science & Engineering at the California Institute of Technology and Research Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has over 10 years’ experience in methane remote sensing from space and aircraft, and developed retrieval algorithms enabling the first global observations of total column methane from space.
Dr. Daniel Jacob
Daniel is the Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at Harvard University, and Faculty Associate at the Harvard Center for the Environment. His research covers a wide range of topics in atmospheric chemistry, from air quality to biogeochemical cycles and climate change. He leads the development and management of the GEOS-Chem global 3-D model of atmospheric composition used by over 200 research groups around the world. He has served as Mission Scientist on eight NASA aircraft missions.
Dr. Julia Marshall
Julia is a Research Scientist and Leader of Satellite-based Remote Sensing of Greenhouse Gases Group at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry. The focus of her research is fluxes of carbon dioxide and methane using satellite measurements, and efforts to harmonize flux estimates based on satellite- and surface-based measurements.
Dr. Paul Wennberg
Paul is Director of The Linde Center for Global Environmental Science at the California Institute of Technology. He created the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) to measure the distribution of greenhouse gases across the globe, and is a co-Investigator on NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite. He studies atmospheric photochemistry and the terrestrial carbon cycle.