Updates

  • November 24-26, 2025 - Derek Hollenbeck and Rafal Krzysiak presented their research at the 13th International Conference on Control, Mechatronics and Automation (ICCMA). See Derek's paper, "An Optimal Mobile Sensing sUAS Platform Using Digital Twins and the Observability Gramian", and Rafal's paper, "Modeling and Control of a Prescribed Fire with UAVs as Sensors and Actuators", for more details.

  • August 18-20, 2025 - Sachin Giri presented his work at the 21st IEEE/ASME International Conference on Mechatronic and Embedded Systems and Applications (MESA) titled, "AVIRIS-NG-Like Smart Virtual Remote Sensing via Spectra-Aware Physics Informed GANs". 

  • July 16, 2025 - Principal Investigator Marc Beutel, CO PI's Peggy O'day, YangQuan Chen, and Senior Personnel Derek Hollenbeck, were awarded a $350k grant from Savanna River Nuclear Solutions LLC for a project titled, "Development and Testing of Small Unmanned Aerial Systems for Real-Time Detection of Methane Leaks and Mercury Emissions".

  • February 20, 2025 - UC Merced news article published, "Researchers Developing New Tools in Fight Against Methane EmissionsResearchers Developing New Tools in Fight Against Methane Emissions", by Patty Guerra.
  • January 30, 2025 - CMERI hosts a Spring 2025 Mini-Workshop on Methane Detection and Quantification. Special Guest James Zhan from KT Photonics.
  • January 25, 2025 - Derek Hollenbeck, Kristen Manies, Colin Edgar, and Eugenie Euskirchen, published a paper in Drones focusing on understanding wind measurements using a joust configured sUAS for gas flux quantification. https://doi.org/10.3390/drones9020094
  • December 20, 2024 - DOE selected a proposal submitted by IBM to characterize methane emissions in western region of the US. CMERI will act as subcontractor to help measure with sUAS.
  • October 18, 2024 - Rafal Krzysiak presented his research at the DTPI conference. https://doi.org/10.1109/DTPI61353.2024.10778902
  • September 2, 2024 - Dr. Hollenbeck presented research at the MESA Conference in Genoa Italy. https://doi.org/10.1109/MESA61532.2024.10704862
  • June 21, 2024 - CMERI hosts 2024 Summer International Workshop on Methane Emission with talks from Prof. YangQuan Chen, Dr. Derek Hollenbeck, Prof. Pawel Domanski, and undergraduate student Andrew Amavizca.
  • March 15, 2024 - Professors Dr. Marc Beutel, Dr. Peggy O'Day, and Dr. YangQuan Chen kicked off their DOE MSIPP grant to develop and test sUAS for real-time methane leak detection. Dr. Derek Hollenbeck joins as well to serve as mentor to students and facilitate sUAS development.
  • December 4, 2023 - Dr. Derek Hollenbeck rejoins MESA Lab as Postdoc Research Fellow to manage and run CMERI - link
  • September 25, 2023 - CMERI makes UC Merced news. See the article by Patty Guerra outling the recent awardees of the Climate Action Seed Funds titled, "Grants Fund Wide Variety of Climate Change Research Projects". 
  • May 1, 2023 - CMERI's site requested https://methane.ucmerced.edu/ it will take a while to release.
  • May 1, 2023 - 2 years CMERI postdoc position is open.
  • April 30, 2023 - CMERI was selected to win $1M (spendig power, no IDC) award!
  • April 27, 2023 - Derek Hollenbeck passed his Ph.D. dissertation defense, congratulations Dr. Hollenbeck!
  • February 26, 2023 - CMERI internal webpage created. https://mechatronics.ucmerced.edu/methane