Meet Our Team

Dr. Joseph A. Shaw

Dr. Joseph Shaw is a Distinguished Professor in the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering and Director of the Optical Technology Center at Montana State University. He is the principal investigator of the Optical Remote Sensor Laboratory and leads the group in developing radiometric, polarimetric, and lidar remote sensing instruments and methods for studying the natural environment.

Favorite Donut: Raspberry

Graduate Students

Nate Field

Riley Logan

Erica Venkatesulu

Working with Lockheed Martin in Colorado, Nate's masters research focused on automated real-time alignment and wavefront sensing. His Ph.D. work is now motivated by Air Force applications and focused on atmospheric effects on polarimetric remote sensing, specifically with pulsed and FMCW LiDAR.

Favorite Donut: Orange Crème

Riley Logan is a Ph.D. candidate interested in developing remote sensing systems for environmental science applications. His current research circulates around developing drone-based remote sensing systems for river ecology. When not terrifying himself by flying expensive drones over rivers, you will likely find him riding bikes, pretending to be a photographer, or chasing his dog around in the mountains.

Favorite Donut: Blueberry

Erica Venkatesulu is a graduate student pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering. She is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and her research project focuses on all-sky polarization imaging of clouds under moonlight illumination. She earned an MS in Optics and Photonics from Montana State University in 2022 and graduated with a BS in electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 2020. Besides working to grow into a better scientist and engineer, Erica is always trying to become a better dog mom and rock climber.

Favorite Donut: Glazed Raised

Preston Hooser

Steve Shea

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Preston earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Utah State University and a master's degree in optics and photonics from Montana State University. He is now working on a Ph.D. at Montana State University while a full-time employee at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. His research area is thermal IR imaging and machine learning for cloud detection and prediction in Earth-space optical communication.

Steve Shea is a graduate student working towards a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. He graduated from Bates College in the spring of 2022 with a B.S in Physics. While there his work focused on ultra cold atomic physics, specifically the construction of an ultra cold atom trap used to create Bose-Einstein Condensates. His primary research now is on material identification through the development of a polarimetric FMCW LiDAR. When not working you can find him on the river fishing in the summer and skiing in the winter.

Favorite donut: Maple bar with bacon bits

Undergraduate Students

Shannon Hamp

Maddie Torrey

Dylan Maxwell

Maddie Torrey is a senior studying environmental engineering in the Civil Engineering Department. She is currently working to establish a method for measuring extinction coefficients to aid in monitoring of river health via drone-based remote sensing.

Favorite Donut: Glazed Blueberry

Kyndra Buglione

Charlie Nicholson

Alumni

Musaddeque Syed
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Preston Hooser


Martin Tauc


Trevor Clark


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Taiga Hashimoto

Bryan Scherrer


 
Laura Eshelman

                         
                      
Ross Blaszczyk


Michael Roddewig



David Riesland



Paul Nugent

                                 


                    

Pushkar Pandit


Jennifer Johnson
   
Michael Hintzman



Justin Hogan
                                       

         
        
Patrick Lokken



Michael Thomas



Mack Wilz



Andrew Dahlberg



Nathan Greenfield



Trent Berg



Joshua Rouse



Kristie Simpson
        


Nathan Pust



Michael Obland



George Hunyadi
                        
Ryan Scheppele



Nathan Seldomridge



Brentha Thurairajah

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Characterization of a division-of-focal-plane polarization imager  

 
IR cloud imaging for Earth-space optical communication

SWIR cloud phase sensing https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/15651
Insect lidar
https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/12810 

Reflective all-sky IR cloud imager testing

Calibration of all-sky eclipse polarization imagers for eclipse polarization measurements
(with K. Oka, Hokkaido University)

  Hyperspectral imaging in agriculture https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/15148

Skylight polarization studies  https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/15084
VIS-SWIR sky polarization spectral distribution

Coherent LADAR & turbulence
(with Zeb Barber, MSU Spectrum Lab)  

Lidar for cloud & lake ecology studies https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/12806

IR cloud imaging for propagation studies  https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/12381

Arctic IR cloud imaging https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/9969
Wide-angle IR cloud imaging https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/1964

Compressive laser ranging
(with Zeb Barber, MSU Spectrum Lab)

Infrared imaging for CO2 detection

Raman conversion for gas sensing https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/1475

Multispectral imager for CO2 detection with vegetation sensing
https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/1482

Sounding rocket data system https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/1745

Solar radiometry aerosol sensing https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/2419

Small satellite GPS system https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/2555

Polarization imaging at Mauna Loa https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/1135

Optical sensors for microsatellites https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/1384

Mid-IR laser source for gas sensing https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/908

Spectral imaging of vegetation https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/2158

Embedded system for cloud imager https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/2283

Atmospheric polarization imaging https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/2086

Diode water vapor lidar https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/1976

Electromagnetic thrusters

Wingbeat modulation bee detection https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/2196

Dual-polarization lidar https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/2240

Infrared cloud imaging https://scholarworks.montana.edu/xmlui/handle/1/2427

Top: ​MSU Photo by Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez