This bi-weekly seminar series is an opportunity to present innovation successes and prospects across USGS Mission Areas. It is a forum for our scientists and partners to learn about existing and potential innovative technologies to help fill known observation gaps, as well as to present cutting edge research and technology opportunities which could be leveraged to advance USGS science through extended partnerships. We cover a broad range of topics and science applications, as evidenced from our previous seminar speakers and talk titles listed below.
(Links active for internal Department of the Interior folks only)
2023
Advances in Measuring Suspended Sediment with Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers - Jonathan Czuba (Virginia Tech) and Justin Boldt (USGS) - July 20, 2023
Bouncing Back: Recent innovative applications of a new synthetic aperture radar constellation - Brett Foreman and Kirsten Salter (Capella Space) - July 6, 2023
Environmental monitoring using autonomous marine sensor swarms - Bert Tanner (University of Delaware) and Matt Gyves (USGS) - June 15, 2023
Eyes on Streams: Using Time-Lapse Imagery to Estimate Streamflow in Headwaters - Ben Letcher, Jenn Fair, and Phillip Goodling (USGS) - June 1, 2023
Cracking the Surface: Revealing Bedrock Outcrops in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with Machine Learning – Apoorva Shastry (Universities Space Research Association) - May 18, 2023
Can Species Barcodes be Used for Assessments of Ecosystem Health? A Prototype in the Upper Colorado Basin – Paul Frandsen (BYU) and Daren Carlisle (USGS) - May 4, 2023
Direct-Push Freezing Core Barrel for Sampling Unconsolidated Subsurface Sediments and Adjacent Pore Fluids – Jared Trost (USGS) - April 20, 2023
New sampling technologies to characterize trace metals in coastal waters – John Crusius (USGS) - April 6, 2023
Quantum Technology – The Next Frontier in the Geosciences – Michael Biercuk (Q-CTRL) - March 20, 2023
Finding critical minerals using real-time subsurface imaging, with low power, satellite-enabled seismic nodes - Matthew Pearson and Gerrit Olivier (FLEET) - March 16, 2023
New Tools to Characterize Off-Shore Seismic Hazards – Jared Kluesner and Ben Brooks (USGS) - February 2, 2023
(Links active for internal Department of the Interior folks only)
2022
Machine Learning for Individual Fish Identification – Benjamin Letcher, Nathaniel Hitt (USGS) and Helen Neville (Trout Unlimited) - December 8, 2022
Machine learning for white blood cell profiling in largemouth bass – Jessica Leet, Lillie Bradshaw, Joe Bretz, and Thea Edwards (USGS) - November 10, 2022
Modernizing environmental DNA analysis for scalable biological observations – Kevan Yamahara (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) and Peter Thielen (John Hopkins) - October 27, 2022
Observing the Great Lakes ecosystem at scale with marine autonomous vehicles - Peter Esselman (USGS) - October 20, 2022
Next Generation Wildlife- and Bio-Surveillance: Innovation Success Stories – Susan De La Cruz and Elliott Barnhart (USGS) - October 6, 2022
Once and for All, Cloud or Edge, and Why? - Joe Weinman – September 1, 2022
Open Source, Real-Time AI from Remote Platforms - Matt Brown (Kitware) & Peter Webley (U of Alaska, Fairbanks) - June 16, 2022
NASA WorldWind Subsurface Capabilities - Joseph Rios (NASA), Mark Peterson (NASA, & Miguel ded Castillo (NASA) - June 2, 2022
Development of a depth-integrated sample arm (DISA) to improve water-quality concentration data - William Selbig (USGS) - April 21, 2022
Using enriched stable metal isotopes to assess the bioavailability and toxicity of metals in aquatic systems – Marie-Noele Croteau (USGS) - February 3, 2022
Using Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) to Characterize Health and Environmental Effects of Wildland Fire Smoke – Brian Gullett (USEPA) - January 20, 2022
2021
Field-portable helium isotope detector for continuous monitoring of active volcanoes – Gary McMurtry (U. of Hawaii) and Shaul Hurwitz (USGS) - December 2, 2021
Development of a Low Cost, In Situ Dissolved CO2 Sensor – Karl Haase (USGS) - November 18, 2021
Observing the Great Lakes ecosystem "at scale" with marine autonomous vehicles – Peter Esselman (USGS) - November 4, 2021
High-resolution dynamic stream mapping with Machine Learning – Freddie Kaleitzis, Dolores Garcia, Gonzalo Mateo-Garcia (Frontier Development Lab), October 21, 2021
A New Technique to Simulate Amphibian Exposure to Chemical Compounds – Jill Jenkins (USGS), - October 7, 2021
Wholly halides! Development of a rugged and portable analyzer for measurement of HCl and HF in volcanic gas plumes – Peter Kelly (USGS) – September 16, 2021
Remotely Operated, Affordable, Ground-Based Lidar for Monitoring Earth Surface Processes – Joel Sankey (USGS) – September 2, 2021
Real-Time Measurement of Atmospheric Dust – Rich Reynolds (USGS) - August 19, 2021
Biomedical Imaging Technology Applied to Nanoscale Characterization of Organic Matter in Geologic Materials – Paul Hackley (USGS) - June 3, 2021
Understanding Atmospheric Mercury Sources Across the United States – David Krabbenhoft, Michael Tate, and Sarah Janssen (USGS Mercury Research Lab) – May 20, 2021
DCode: Connecting Technology and Government – Riya Patel, Dustin Homer, Eric Nerenberg, and Mike Flaxman – May 6, 2021
A Forest Observatory for the United States - David Marvin (Salo Sciences) - April 8, 2021
Interferometric SAR from High-Altitude Long-Endurance Platforms - Patrick Rennich (Aloft Sensing) - March 30, 2021
Rapid Response Ocean Bottom Seismology – Nathan Miller (USGS) - March 25, 2021
SUPERball v2: A Deformable Tensegrity Rover for Planetary Exploration – Massimo Vespignani (NASA-Ames) - March 11, 2021
New Rules for UAS Pilots: What You Need to Know – Greg Deeds (AUVSI Silicon Valley) - February 25, 2021
Celestial Mapping System – Parul Agrawal (NASA-Ames) - February 11, 2021
QCam: Drone-based Doppler radar for measuring river discharge – John Fulton (USGS) – January 28, 2021
Portable, Accurate, mm-scale 3D Scanning in the Field or Lab – Jean-Michel Voyer (Creaform) – January 14, 2021
Exploring Extreme Lunar Environments via In-Flight Swarm Deployments - Joshua Ehrlich (Lockheed Martin) – December 17, 2020
Off-World Drilling for Exploration, Sampling, and Constructing with Regolith – Brian Glass (NASA) – December 3, 2020
Wildlife Tracking Using A Weather Radar Network – Robb Deihl – November 5, 2020
Waters of the United States – High Resolution Water Mapping with Machine Learning – Freddie Kalaitzis et al., (Frontier Development Lab) - October 6, 2020
Measuring Snow Albedo in Mountainous Regions Using UAS – Eric Sproles, Andrew Mullen, Jordy Hendrikx (MSU), Erich Peitzsch (USGS) and Charles Gatebe (NASA) - October 1, 2020
Current and Emerging Observation Capabilities with Maxar – Scott Brunton - September 17, 2020
Mapping Soil Moisture, Groundwater, and Snow Depth Using Radar on UAS – Samual Prager, Mahta Moghaddam (USC) and David O’Leary (USGS) - September 3, 2020
Measuring River Discharge from Drones – Carl Legleiter, Paul Kinzel (USGS) and Uland Wong, Michael Dille, Antoine Tardy (NASA) - August 6, 2020
Using Small Unmanned Aircraft (sUAS) to Expand Our Understanding of Methane Fluxes – Kristen Manies (USGS) - July 16, 2020
An Introduction to the New NIC UAS Research Center (and the Engineers who power it) – Elizabeth Hyde, Isaac Anderson (USGS) - July 9, 2020
Remote Sensing of Coastal Change – Advancing USGS Science with Innovation – Jonathan Warrick - July 2, 2020
Tech-Push Innovation Frameworks for the USGS – Pooja Jain (Stanford) - June 18, 2020
Space Commodities Exchange – Adapting Market Mechanisms for the Space Economy – Bruce Cahan (Stanford, Urban Logic) – June 4, 2020
Development of Domestic UAS Fleet – Chris Bonzagni, Matthew Borowski (Defense Innovation Unit) – May 21, 2020 – No Recording
Biosurveillance at Streamgages – eDNA, Early Disease Detection, and More – Elliott Barnhart, Adam Sepulveda (USGS), Jim Birch (MBARI) – May 7, 2020
Carnegie Mellon University Stream Gage Demonstration - System to Enable Adaptive Sampling of Stream Surface Velocity using Sensor-based Optical Flow – Eve Hu, Juntao Li, Poras Siganporia, Matthew Thomas (Carnegie Mellon University of Silicon Valley) – May 5, 2020
Sceye Science Stations in the Stratosphere – Daniel Doulton, Kristian Ullum Vind (SCEYE) – April 23, 2020
Advancing Ecosystem Science with Phylogeny and Remote Sensing of Functional Diversity - Daniel Griffith (USGS Post-Doc) – April 21, 2020
A New Era of Exploration: Using AI for Situational Awareness and Space Exploration – James Parr (Frontier Development Lab), Bill Diamond (SETI) - April 9, 2020
Hivemapper - Building a Living, Intelligent Map by Doing with Video What Waze did with GPS – Ariel Seidman – March 26, 2020
Automatic Satellite-Based Flood Mapping for Disaster Response – Liz Carter (USGS) – March 12, 2020
Next Generation Wildlife Tracking – Susan De La Cruz (USGS), Chad Frost (NASA) – February 13, 2020
Next Generation Stream Gauge Networks for California’s Water Needs – Bob Iannucci (Carnegie Mellon University of Silicon Valley), Matt Marineau (USGS) – January 23, 2020
2019
CSIRO’s California DataCube – Robert Woodcock (CSIRO) – December 6, 2019
Introduction to NASA SpaceShop – Dean Giovannetti (NASA) – May 28, 2019
Using Groups of Robots to Locate and Characterize Environmental Features – Chris Kitts (Santa Clara University) - May 14, 2019
- Overview
This bi-weekly seminar series is an opportunity to present innovation successes and prospects across USGS Mission Areas. It is a forum for our scientists and partners to learn about existing and potential innovative technologies to help fill known observation gaps, as well as to present cutting edge research and technology opportunities which could be leveraged to advance USGS science through extended partnerships. We cover a broad range of topics and science applications, as evidenced from our previous seminar speakers and talk titles listed below.
(Links active for internal Department of the Interior folks only)
2023
Advances in Measuring Suspended Sediment with Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers - Jonathan Czuba (Virginia Tech) and Justin Boldt (USGS) - July 20, 2023
Bouncing Back: Recent innovative applications of a new synthetic aperture radar constellation - Brett Foreman and Kirsten Salter (Capella Space) - July 6, 2023
Environmental monitoring using autonomous marine sensor swarms - Bert Tanner (University of Delaware) and Matt Gyves (USGS) - June 15, 2023
Eyes on Streams: Using Time-Lapse Imagery to Estimate Streamflow in Headwaters - Ben Letcher, Jenn Fair, and Phillip Goodling (USGS) - June 1, 2023
Cracking the Surface: Revealing Bedrock Outcrops in the Sierra Nevada Mountains with Machine Learning – Apoorva Shastry (Universities Space Research Association) - May 18, 2023
Can Species Barcodes be Used for Assessments of Ecosystem Health? A Prototype in the Upper Colorado Basin – Paul Frandsen (BYU) and Daren Carlisle (USGS) - May 4, 2023
Direct-Push Freezing Core Barrel for Sampling Unconsolidated Subsurface Sediments and Adjacent Pore Fluids – Jared Trost (USGS) - April 20, 2023
New sampling technologies to characterize trace metals in coastal waters – John Crusius (USGS) - April 6, 2023
Quantum Technology – The Next Frontier in the Geosciences – Michael Biercuk (Q-CTRL) - March 20, 2023
Finding critical minerals using real-time subsurface imaging, with low power, satellite-enabled seismic nodes - Matthew Pearson and Gerrit Olivier (FLEET) - March 16, 2023
New Tools to Characterize Off-Shore Seismic Hazards – Jared Kluesner and Ben Brooks (USGS) - February 2, 2023
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.USGS researchers deploy the “sparker” sound source on a seismic research cruise off the southwest coast of Puerto Rico, March 2020. (Links active for internal Department of the Interior folks only)
2022
Sources/Usage: Some content may have restrictions. Visit Media to see details.Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) Illustration by Duane Raver; Commissioned by USFWS Machine Learning for Individual Fish Identification – Benjamin Letcher, Nathaniel Hitt (USGS) and Helen Neville (Trout Unlimited) - December 8, 2022
Machine learning for white blood cell profiling in largemouth bass – Jessica Leet, Lillie Bradshaw, Joe Bretz, and Thea Edwards (USGS) - November 10, 2022
Modernizing environmental DNA analysis for scalable biological observations – Kevan Yamahara (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute) and Peter Thielen (John Hopkins) - October 27, 2022
Observing the Great Lakes ecosystem at scale with marine autonomous vehicles - Peter Esselman (USGS) - October 20, 2022
Next Generation Wildlife- and Bio-Surveillance: Innovation Success Stories – Susan De La Cruz and Elliott Barnhart (USGS) - October 6, 2022
Once and for All, Cloud or Edge, and Why? - Joe Weinman – September 1, 2022
Open Source, Real-Time AI from Remote Platforms - Matt Brown (Kitware) & Peter Webley (U of Alaska, Fairbanks) - June 16, 2022
NASA WorldWind Subsurface Capabilities - Joseph Rios (NASA), Mark Peterson (NASA, & Miguel ded Castillo (NASA) - June 2, 2022
Development of a depth-integrated sample arm (DISA) to improve water-quality concentration data - William Selbig (USGS) - April 21, 2022
Using enriched stable metal isotopes to assess the bioavailability and toxicity of metals in aquatic systems – Marie-Noele Croteau (USGS) - February 3, 2022
Using Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) to Characterize Health and Environmental Effects of Wildland Fire Smoke – Brian Gullett (USEPA) - January 20, 2022
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.2021
Field-portable helium isotope detector for continuous monitoring of active volcanoes – Gary McMurtry (U. of Hawaii) and Shaul Hurwitz (USGS) - December 2, 2021
Development of a Low Cost, In Situ Dissolved CO2 Sensor – Karl Haase (USGS) - November 18, 2021
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.Observing the Great Lakes ecosystem "at scale" with marine autonomous vehicles – Peter Esselman (USGS) - November 4, 2021
High-resolution dynamic stream mapping with Machine Learning – Freddie Kaleitzis, Dolores Garcia, Gonzalo Mateo-Garcia (Frontier Development Lab), October 21, 2021
A New Technique to Simulate Amphibian Exposure to Chemical Compounds – Jill Jenkins (USGS), - October 7, 2021
Wholly halides! Development of a rugged and portable analyzer for measurement of HCl and HF in volcanic gas plumes – Peter Kelly (USGS) – September 16, 2021
Remotely Operated, Affordable, Ground-Based Lidar for Monitoring Earth Surface Processes – Joel Sankey (USGS) – September 2, 2021
Real-Time Measurement of Atmospheric Dust – Rich Reynolds (USGS) - August 19, 2021
Biomedical Imaging Technology Applied to Nanoscale Characterization of Organic Matter in Geologic Materials – Paul Hackley (USGS) - June 3, 2021
Understanding Atmospheric Mercury Sources Across the United States – David Krabbenhoft, Michael Tate, and Sarah Janssen (USGS Mercury Research Lab) – May 20, 2021
DCode: Connecting Technology and Government – Riya Patel, Dustin Homer, Eric Nerenberg, and Mike Flaxman – May 6, 2021
A Forest Observatory for the United States - David Marvin (Salo Sciences) - April 8, 2021
Interferometric SAR from High-Altitude Long-Endurance Platforms - Patrick Rennich (Aloft Sensing) - March 30, 2021
Rapid Response Ocean Bottom Seismology – Nathan Miller (USGS) - March 25, 2021
SUPERball v2: A Deformable Tensegrity Rover for Planetary Exploration – Massimo Vespignani (NASA-Ames) - March 11, 2021
New Rules for UAS Pilots: What You Need to Know – Greg Deeds (AUVSI Silicon Valley) - February 25, 2021
Celestial Mapping System – Parul Agrawal (NASA-Ames) - February 11, 2021
QCam: Drone-based Doppler radar for measuring river discharge – John Fulton (USGS) – January 28, 2021
Portable, Accurate, mm-scale 3D Scanning in the Field or Lab – Jean-Michel Voyer (Creaform) – January 14, 2021
Exploring Extreme Lunar Environments via In-Flight Swarm Deployments - Joshua Ehrlich (Lockheed Martin) – December 17, 2020
Off-World Drilling for Exploration, Sampling, and Constructing with Regolith – Brian Glass (NASA) – December 3, 2020
Wildlife Tracking Using A Weather Radar Network – Robb Deihl – November 5, 2020
Waters of the United States – High Resolution Water Mapping with Machine Learning – Freddie Kalaitzis et al., (Frontier Development Lab) - October 6, 2020
Measuring Snow Albedo in Mountainous Regions Using UAS – Eric Sproles, Andrew Mullen, Jordy Hendrikx (MSU), Erich Peitzsch (USGS) and Charles Gatebe (NASA) - October 1, 2020
Current and Emerging Observation Capabilities with Maxar – Scott Brunton - September 17, 2020
Mapping Soil Moisture, Groundwater, and Snow Depth Using Radar on UAS – Samual Prager, Mahta Moghaddam (USC) and David O’Leary (USGS) - September 3, 2020
Measuring River Discharge from Drones – Carl Legleiter, Paul Kinzel (USGS) and Uland Wong, Michael Dille, Antoine Tardy (NASA) - August 6, 2020
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.QCam consisting of a Doppler velocity radar mounted on a Solo 3DR™ UAS used to measure surface velocities, South Platte River, CO, USA. Using Small Unmanned Aircraft (sUAS) to Expand Our Understanding of Methane Fluxes – Kristen Manies (USGS) - July 16, 2020
An Introduction to the New NIC UAS Research Center (and the Engineers who power it) – Elizabeth Hyde, Isaac Anderson (USGS) - July 9, 2020
Remote Sensing of Coastal Change – Advancing USGS Science with Innovation – Jonathan Warrick - July 2, 2020
Tech-Push Innovation Frameworks for the USGS – Pooja Jain (Stanford) - June 18, 2020
Space Commodities Exchange – Adapting Market Mechanisms for the Space Economy – Bruce Cahan (Stanford, Urban Logic) – June 4, 2020
Development of Domestic UAS Fleet – Chris Bonzagni, Matthew Borowski (Defense Innovation Unit) – May 21, 2020 – No Recording
Sources/Usage: Public Domain.Sealing MBARI Environmental Sample Processor into its housing Biosurveillance at Streamgages – eDNA, Early Disease Detection, and More – Elliott Barnhart, Adam Sepulveda (USGS), Jim Birch (MBARI) – May 7, 2020
Carnegie Mellon University Stream Gage Demonstration - System to Enable Adaptive Sampling of Stream Surface Velocity using Sensor-based Optical Flow – Eve Hu, Juntao Li, Poras Siganporia, Matthew Thomas (Carnegie Mellon University of Silicon Valley) – May 5, 2020
Sceye Science Stations in the Stratosphere – Daniel Doulton, Kristian Ullum Vind (SCEYE) – April 23, 2020
Advancing Ecosystem Science with Phylogeny and Remote Sensing of Functional Diversity - Daniel Griffith (USGS Post-Doc) – April 21, 2020
A New Era of Exploration: Using AI for Situational Awareness and Space Exploration – James Parr (Frontier Development Lab), Bill Diamond (SETI) - April 9, 2020
Hivemapper - Building a Living, Intelligent Map by Doing with Video What Waze did with GPS – Ariel Seidman – March 26, 2020
Automatic Satellite-Based Flood Mapping for Disaster Response – Liz Carter (USGS) – March 12, 2020
Next Generation Wildlife Tracking – Susan De La Cruz (USGS), Chad Frost (NASA) – February 13, 2020
Next Generation Stream Gauge Networks for California’s Water Needs – Bob Iannucci (Carnegie Mellon University of Silicon Valley), Matt Marineau (USGS) – January 23, 2020
2019
CSIRO’s California DataCube – Robert Woodcock (CSIRO) – December 6, 2019
Introduction to NASA SpaceShop – Dean Giovannetti (NASA) – May 28, 2019
Using Groups of Robots to Locate and Characterize Environmental Features – Chris Kitts (Santa Clara University) - May 14, 2019