2026 CanCH4 Symposium Speakers
While we finalize the full speaker line-up, please welcome some of our confirmed 2026 speakers.
Euan Nisbet – Keynote Speaker
Scientific Advisory Panel, United Nations Environmental Programme’s International Methane Emissions Observatory (UNEP IMEO)
Dr. Euan Nisbet is emeritus professor of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, and an Honorary Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge, UK. After studying at University Zimbabwe and in Cambridge, his geology PhD was in Cambridge UK where, following his postdoctoral tenure in Oxford (UK) and ETH Zurich, he became a faculty member. For many years he was in Saskatoon in the Earth Sciences Department, University of Saskatchewan (he has prairie ancestry). With his wife, CMR Fowler, a Solid Earth geophysicist much involved in the Lithoprobe experiments studying the structure of Canada’s lithosphere, he modelled the history of the Williston Basin. He led the Canadian Lithosphere Committee for many years, also advising the government on natural hazards. From 1985-87 he held an EWR Steacie Fellowship, which prompted a switch from hard rock geology to atmospheric methane. At Royal Holloway (part of London University) he led and co-led many large European consortia, such as Meth-MoniEUr, the West European Methane Budget, EuroHydros, Geomon, MEMO etc. and from 2016-2022 the UK MOYA Global Methane consortium. Having recently retired, he serves on the scientific advisory panel for the United Nations International Methane Emissions Observatory, and was a co-author of the 2025 UNEP Global Methane Status report.
Sabour Baray
Environment and Climate Change Canada
Dr. Sabour Baray is a scientist with the Climate Research Division. His research expertise includes greenhouse gas monitoring, satellite remote sensing, field measurements, and atmospheric modeling.
Stefan Bokämper
Kuva Systems
Dr. Stefan Bokaemper is General Manager for the Kuva Business at Sensirion Connected Solutions in Cambridge, MA, USA. He has 25 years of experience at both industrial companies and startups in the energy and high tech sectors. Stefan holds an MSc. in Energy Engineering from TU Clausthal, an MBA from George Washington University, and a PhD from TU Berlin.
Lauren Bowman
Modern West Advisory (MWA)
Lauren Bowman is an LCA and Emissions Advisor at Modern West Advisory (MWA), specializing in GHG quantification, carbon offset project development and applied research supporting methane emissions detection, measurement, and quantification for oil and gas operations. Her work includes contributing to the research and design of Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) frameworks, as well as leading methane field measurement and technology trials in Alberta using a range of technologies, including optical gas imaging, acoustics, LiDAR cameras, and aerial measurement approaches. Before joining MWA in 2023, Lauren conducted research as an M.Sc. Civil Engineering student at the Subsurface Hydrology and Environmental Analysis Laboratory (SHEAL) at McGill University, where she led a multi-year project conducting field measurements and characterizing methane emissions from non-producing oil and gas wells across Alberta and Saskatchewan. She also holds a B. Eng. Civil Engineering degree from McGill University.
William Daniels
Johns Hopkins University
Dr. William Daniels is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University studying anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and the carbon cycle. He uses atmospheric measurements across spatial scales, from point sensors on individual facilities to satellites with global coverage, along with statistical models to better understand complex emission dynamics. Will received a Ph.D. in Statistics from the Colorado School of Mines, where he worked closely with the Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab (EEMDL) and the Payne Institute for Public Policy. He is currently a member of the NASA OCO-2 science team.
Sue Fraser
Environment and Climate Change Canada
Sue Fraser is an engineer in the Waste Reduction and Management Division at Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Anna Hodshire – Symposium Moderator
Energy Institute, Colorado State University
Dr. Anna Hodshire is an Assistant Professor in the Systems Engineering Department at Colorado State University. She leads the modeling group at the Methane Emissions Technologies Evaluation Center (METEC), currently focused on developing verifiable measurement-informed inventories and working on top down/bottom up reconciliation. As a part of this work, she leads field campaigns and intensive modeling efforts for top down/bottom down surveys and basin-wide surveys of oil and gas emissions of methane. Her research interests are broadly on pollution emission and dispersion, air quality, climate change, and the intersection of planetary health among all these topics. Prior to joining METEC, Hodshire worked at small companies focused on measuring properties of atmospheric aerosols for health and climate applications. Hodshire holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University.
Matthew Johnson
Energy & Emissions Research Lab., Carleton University
Dr. Matthew Johnson is a Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and Scientific Director of the Energy & Emissions Research Laboratory (EERL). A two-time winner of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council’s (NSERC) prestigious accelerator award, Matt has worked extensively to translate peer-reviewed research results into practice. His EERL combines advanced experimentation, simulation, and statistical analysis in both large-scale controlled lab experiments and field work and employs a suite of advanced optical diagnostics, analytic tools, and experimental capabilities this is unparalleled in Canada. As of 2023, EERL has successfully completed field measurement studies on four continents with research contributions that include national-scale aerial methane surveys, comprehensive protocols for creating measurement-based inventories, novel “VentX” technology for quantifying unsteady methane flows, “sky-LOSA” technology for measuring black carbon emissions from flares, techno-economic analysis of methane mitigation potential, and quantitative analysis of regulatory equivalency. His work is cited in Canada’s National Inventory Report, incorporated in provincial and federal standards and regulations, and regularly cited in international methane and black carbon mitigation efforts.
Mary Kang
McGill University
Dr. Mary Kang is an associate professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at McGill University. Her laboratory at McGill (Subsurface Hydrology and Environmental Analysis Laboratory, SHEAL) studies energy transition, climate and environmental impacts of energy systems, and subsurface hydrology. Her current projects are on characterization and mitigation of methane emissions from oil and gas wells and urban infrastructure with field measurement campaigns in North America (Canada and United States), Europe, and South America. Since 2024, she is a visiting professor in Environmental Meteorology at the University of Freiburg and in Environmental Sensing and Modeling at the Technical University of Munich. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Earth System Science department at Stanford University. She received a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Princeton University, a Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy certificate from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and a M.A.Sc. and a B.A.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the University of Waterloo. Between her time at Waterloo and Princeton, she worked as an environmental engineering consultant based in Reston, Virginia.
Ray Nassar
Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC)
Dr. Ray Nassar completed his Ph.D. at the University of Waterloo in atmospheric chemistry using satellite observations and then went on to do postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University and the University of Toronto. Dr. Nassar has been a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) since 2010 and an adjunct faculty member of University of Toronto since 2019. His research involves the application of satellite observations of CO2 and CH4 to quantify sources and sinks. He is also the principal investigator of the Arctic Observing Mission (AOM), an innovative Canadian-led mission concept for enhanced observations of the North.
Negar Nazari
Carbon Management Canada
Dr. Negar Nazari is a senior scientist specializing in methane detection, quantification, and data-driven emissions management. She holds a PhD in Geoscience and has extensive experience in numerical modeling, environmental monitoring, and statistical analysis, with work spanning academia, oil and gas, and climate-focused research programs. She currently contributes to the Alberta Methane Emissions Program, focusing on technology performance evaluation, data analytics, and regulatory insights. Negar is passionate about advancing science-based solutions for emissions reduction and actively collaborates with industry and research partners.
Athar Omidi
FluxLab, St. Francis Xavier University
Athar Omidi is a Research Associate at FluxLab specializing in landfill methane emissions. With a background in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, she applies optimization, statistics, machine learning, Gaussian dispersion modeling, and triangulation to analyze and map emissions. Her work focuses on surface emission monitoring (SEM) and mobile surveys of landfills, with research contributions related to active face emissions, regulatory gaps, and source apportionment.
Keyvan Ranjbar
National Research Council Canada
Dr. Keyvan Ranjbar has expertise in airborne atmospheric measurements, sensors and data analysis. Dr. Ranjbar is currently a research officer at the NRC. He obtained his Ph.D degree in atmospheric remote sensing in 2020 from Sherbrooke University. His general research focus is the analysis of airborne, satellite and ground-based Remote Sensing and in-situ data to better understand the aerosol, cloud, and their interactions. He has extensive fieldwork experience. Since joining the NRC in 2021, Dr. Ranjbar has participated in several airborne campaigns, and recently, he was the NRC project Manager for the ESCAPE 2022 and Montreal-GHG airborne campaign. Dr. Ranjbar is experienced with gas and aerosol sampling.
Arvind Ravikumar
Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab (EEMDL), University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Ravikumar is the co-Director of the Energy Emissions Modeling and Data Lab (EEMDL) at the University of Texas at Austin and a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. He has published over 50 articles in peer-reviewed journals, primarily in the areas of greenhouse gas emissions measurements and energy systems analysis. Dr. Ravikumar has been a lead investigator for several large-scale, field campaigns on methane emissions from oil and gas supply chain and evaluating new technologies for monitoring greenhouse gases. He routinely advises state and federal governments, provides expert testimony in Congress on greenhouse gas emissions from energy supply chains, and currently serves on the US Department of Transportation’s Gas Pipeline Advisory Committee. Dr. Ravikumar is a Senior Associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and graduated with a Ph.D. from Princeton University.
David Risk
FluxLab, St. Francis Xavier University
Dr. Dave Risk is the Brian Mulroney Institute for Government Research Chair in Climate Science and Policy at St. Francis Xavier University (StFX). He is a specialist in gas emissions measurement and data processing techniques to quantify emissions in natural and industrial settings. Dr. Risk is a prominent figure in the field of environmental science, research, regulation, and policy. His research focuses on developing innovative sensing technologies to monitor greenhouse gases, track environmental changes, and to understand the impact of industrial activities. Dr. Risk is also involved in developing data analysis techniques and mathematical models to interpret the large datasets generated by his sensor networks and provide meaningful insights into environmental patterns and trends. He has been involved in numerous collaborative research projects, both nationally and internationally. He has collaborated with other researchers, government agencies, and organizations to address pressing environmental issues and advance the field of environmental monitoring.
Scott Seymour
Environmental Defense Fund
Scott Seymour is a senior research analyst at the Environmental Defense Fund, where he leads methane and flare measurement projects, as well as inventory and policy analyses in Canada. He has over eight years of experience in the oil and gas methane space, including designing and deploying laser-based gas detection systems, coordinating field campaigns, and evaluating regulatory/industry datasets. His current work focuses on improving methane and flare quantification methods and supporting science-based methane policy.
Nathan Sweet
University of Colorado, Boulder
Nathan Sweet is a PhD student at University of Colorado, Boulder, and he works at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. His research focuses on a new laser-based technique for quantifying methane emissions from cattle feedlots. Nathan is interested in the intersection of science and policy as it applies to both climate change and air quality. He holds a BS in Chemistry and a BA in Statistics from University of California, Berkeley.
Mu-An Tsai
University of Waterloo
Mu-An Tsai is a Ph.D. student studying Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His research focuses on applying a ground-based hyperspectral camera along with other remote sensing techniques to visualize and quantify methane in the environment.
David Tyner
Energy & Emissions Research Lab., Carleton University
Dr. David R. Tyner is a Senior Research Associate in the Energy and Emissions Research Laboratory (EERL) at Carleton University with over a decade of experience working to quantify and provide insight into methane emissions from upstream oil and gas production in Western Canada. Before joining EERL, Dr. Tyner completed a Ph.D. in Mathematics and Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario in 2007. As part of EERL, Dr. Tyner’s research, in collaboration with governmental and industry partners, has been focused on understanding methane emissions at the source-level. This research has contributed to numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on economic methane mitigation, methane regulatory equivalency, development of laser-based measurement tools for liquid storage tanks and venting sources, and more recently measurement-based provincial methane inventories using large scale aerial surveys.
Shona Wilde
Energy & Emissions Research Lab., Carleton University
Dr. Shona Wilde is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Energy and Emissions Research Laboratory (EERL). Following her PhD in the UK, which focused on quantifying emissions of methane (CH₄) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from offshore oil and gas installations, her current work at EERL focuses on developing measurement-based protocols to derive verified emission intensities within the context of reporting frameworks such as OGMP 2.0.
Jin-Ya Wang
University of Calgary
Jin-Ya Wang has been pursuing a Master’s degree at the Geo Sensor Web Lab at the University of Calgary since September 2023, with a background in Geomatics Engineering. Her technical expertise includes GIS analysis, spatial databases, and geosimulation tools. Her research focuses on the development of agent-based modeling architectures for simulating Leak Detection and Repair (LDAR) programs.