UT Advances in XPRIZE Competition To Fight Fire With UAVs

Researchers from UT have advanced to the next stage of the XPRIZE Wildfire challenge — a four-year global competition to use uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) to find and fight wildfires in minutes flat.

The researchers are part of team Texas-Soton, a multidisciplinary group of geoscientists and engineers from institutions in Texas and Europe. The team was one of 29 selected to advance to the next stage and to equally share a $750,000 milestone prize.

The Jackson School of Geosciences has two team members: Associate Professor Ashley Matheny and Research Assistant Professor James Thompson.

The State of Texas Advanced Resource Recovery (STARR) program at the Bureau of Economic Geology is also supporting the team.