Presenter: Javier Gonzalez-Rocha

Description: Measuring wind velocity near the Earth's surface is critical for understanding the surface-atmosphere interactions driving the dynamic state of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). How the ABL evolves with respect to space and time affects crop health management, air pollutants transport, extreme weather formation, and wildfire spread. However, most conventional sensors do not reach beyond tens of meters above ground level and are often cost-prohibitive and time-consuming to deploy. This talk will present a dynamical systems framework for performing on-demand and targeted measurements of atmospheric wind flows using aerial robotic systems. The first part of the talk will discuss how data-driven modeling and state estimation techniques can be leveraged to estimate wind velocity. The integration and application of model-based wind sensing and low-cost sensor technology to reduce the uncertainty of methane emissions estimates from both dairy farms and oil and gas fields will be discussed in the second part of this talk.

Bio: Dr. Javier González-Rocha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at UC Santa Cruz. Prior to joining UC Santa Cruz, González-Rocha was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UC Riverside. He received his Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech. Dr. González-Rocha's research explores how dynamic modeling, control, and state estimation frameworks can be leveraged together with low-cost sensors to sense wind, turbulence, and air composition within the atmospheric boundary layer using aerial robotic systems.

Hosted by: Professor Marcella Gomez

Join us in person or on Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/99978793177?pwd=eG9iR21RdEltUElvKzQ0TjJRUldUQT09