Our team
We have experts from leading institutions worldwide working together to ensure the mission's success
DR. STEVEN HAMBURG
MethaneSAT, LLC Executive Manager / MethaneSAT Project Lead Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President, Environmental Defense Fund
Steve is the project lead 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 join 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 Director
Ed 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.
BOBBY FERRARO
Mission Operations Director
Bobby has over 25 years’ experience in the space industry in various leadership/operations roles, participating in the launch, commissioning, and operation of over 80 spacecraft. During his Air Force career, he served as a member of the organization that completed full operational capability of the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation. In the commercial sector, he has worked in mission operations and develop for the Iridium constellation, GeoEye high resolution imaging satellites, and imaging systems on-board the International Space Station.
DR. JOSHUA BENMERGUI
Senior Science Engineer
Joshua is a Senior Science Engineer for EDF, where he is working on science planning for the MethaneSAT project, 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 Director
Jon 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
Consultant
Dave 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
Consultant
Patricia 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.
LISA FULLERTON
Senior Manager
Lisa 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 Scientist
Ritesh 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 Analyst
Anthony is a Geospatial Analyst focusing on source attribution of methane emissions in the global oil and gas sector.
MADS O’BRIEN
Senior Geospatial Analyst
Mads (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
Senior Scientist, Global Methane
Mark is a Global Methane 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
Consultant
Brad 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 Systems
Peter 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.
DR. CHRIS CHAN MILLER
Research Associate, Harvard University
Chris 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
Scientist, Remote Sensing
Sébastien works on the algorithms used to derive the MethaneSAT Level 2 products (trace gas concentration and other derived quantities). During his PhD at the University of Toronto, Sébastien experimented with a new algorithm of the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) (https://tccon-wiki.caltech.edu/) to retrieve vertical profile information of carbon dioxide concentration (instead of total column amounts). He also took care of the processing of solar spectra from the Eureka (Nunavut, Canada) TCCON site, those observations were made with a Bruker 125HR Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer installed at the Polar Environment Research Laboratory (PEARL) Ridge Lab (https://www.pearl-candac.ca/website/index.php/facilities/#Ridge-Lab). In a different project he made use of NASA's ReFRACtor algorithm (https://github.com/ReFRACtor/framework). It was adapted to run retrievals on simulated observations and characterize how well the instruments considered for the proposed AIM-North mission (http://aim-north.ca/) could measure XCO2, XCH4, and XCO.
KATHLEEN CASEY
Data Processing Operations Manager
Kathleen has 13 years working with satellite, IFSAR, and LiDAR data. She has six years in the utilities industry in incident management, focused on network and computer operations. She has worked with the U.S. Geological Survey on the effects of urbanization on landscape, and with a startup company bringing Geiger-Mode LiDAR to the commercial market.
COREY DURIO
Data Processing Operator
Corey works with our scientists and engineers to execute the day-to-day science data processing operations. She has extensive IT experience with a background across multiple industries including food distribution and logistics, automotive manufacturing, and banking. Before joining MethaneSAT, Corey worked with JP Morgan Chase Bank.
NAT IRONS
Senior Site Reliability Engineer
Nat is the first Site Reliability Engineer on the Mission Operations team, supporting the tools used by satellite operators for command and control. He has a background in software test management, and comes to MethaneSAT from healthcare, where he was developing telehealth software infrastructure for a large hospital network when a pandemic started.
Will Furstenau
Senior Cloud Engineer
Will Furstenau plays a key role in designing and optimizing scalable and resilient cloud infrastructure to help ensure the success of the company’s mission. He joins us from Goldman Sachs, at which he helped manage systems that provided automated retirement advice for thousands of clients daily.
Millie Chu Baird
Vice President, Science Capacity and Innovation, EDF
Millie leads innovative projects that produce actionable data to help solve environmental problems. She currently leads Mission Impact for EDF’s MethaneSAT. Its ability to find and measure methane emissions with unequaled accuracy will provide the data required to motivate and reduce methane emission globally.
Fiona Liao
Director, Global Methane Impact Strategy
A graduate of Harvard Business School, Fiona spearheads strategy and operations for MethaneSAT Mission Impact, applying business, management, and entrepreneurial skills to bring the satellite's data to action and maximize the mission's impact on reducing methane emissions and stabilizing the climate. Fiona manages across MethaneSAT’s engineering, science, marketing & communications, and advocacy teams so that we can deliver emissions data to the public rapidly and effectively. Prior to EDF, she spent many years in international development nonprofit GiveDirectly, playing a pivotal role in the organization’s rapid growth and launching field operations in West Africa. Fiona started off her career as a management consultant at Deloitte Consulting.
Kelsey Robinson
Senior Communications Manager
Kelsey has over a decade of experience communicating about climate change and methane research. She brings expertise in visual storytelling, information design and data visualization to the MethaneSAT team.
ERIN MEADOWS
Data Processing Operator
Erin has over seven years of experience in the geospatial and energy industry with a strong background in LiDAR. She has a Bachelor of Science in Marine Science, Biology, and Environmental Science from the University of Tampa with a publication in Acta Spartae, University of Tampa's first peer-reviewed journal. She has been a Task Lead for several government projects, an operator for the US Geological Survey Topo-bathymetric LiDAR collection in the Everglades National Park in 2017, as well as a sensor operator working with a prototype Riegl LiDAR sensor. She also has a strong background in disaster response data collection and analysis, and was a FEMA contractor for three years.
Eric Moberley
Data Processing Operator
Eric has performed various roles in the satellite imagery industry working on both private sector and government projects, including producing 3D digital stereo airfield products and managing imagery product orders. Prior to working in remote sensing, Eric was an officer in the United States Army.