José Ojeda Morala PhD defense (Feb’25)

Last Friday, February 21st, 2025, our colleague José Ojeda Morala (Pepe) successfully defended his PhD thesis, titled “Probabilistic Methods for Robotic Gas Source Localization,” obtaining the highest distinction, Cum Laude. His work represents a significant advancement in the field of robotic olfaction, particularly in Gas Source Localization (GSL), where he systematically framed the problem using probability theory and Bayesian estimation. The research not only introduces novel GSL algorithms but also provides a deeper theoretical analysis, formalizing key intuitions about the problem.

The impact of this work is reflected in its publications in top-tier robotics journals, including IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RAL), IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO), and the Journal of Intelligent & Robotic Systems, among others (link to publications). Additionally, beyond proposing new GSL methods, the thesis contributes essential research tools for the community, which are openly shared in the corresponding chapters. The implementation of the developed algorithms is also publicly available in the following repository: GitHub – MAPIRlab/GasSourceLocalization. Congratulations to Pepe for his outstanding work and contribution to the field! 🎉