Columbia: Since joining the Mailman School this fall as Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, Markus Hilpert
has already accomplished an impressive feat: his research team is the
first approved by Columbia University to use unmanned aerial
vehicles—a.k.a. drones—for scientific research in the U.S. Hilpert and collaborators at the School of Engineering and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
are building a research platform for a remote control multirotor
helicopter to measure pollution spewing from industrial smokestacks.
Once complete, the drone will ascend up to 400 feet to collect samples
for later analysis in a lab.
