Geoff mullins

Field Operations, Aerial and Subsea Remote Sensing Consultant

Ellis '97

Field Research & Operations, Aerial & Subsea Remote Sensing Consultant

A passion for multidisciplinary engineering in the wild remote areas of Canada has fueled Dr. Geoff Mullins throughout his career. The past decade has taken him all over Canada, from mapping with volcanologists up in the glacier fed lakes of Garibaldi Provincial Park to rafting past grizzly bears down the pristine rivers of the central coast in support of vital Pacific salmon research. More recently he had opportunities to conduct drone operations north of the Arctic Circle and fulfill lifelong dreams to observe polar bears, beluga whales and narwhal.

After leaving Brentwood, his journey began at Queen’s University, where in 2001 he received a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Physics. During his time there he worked in an experimental physics lab, building scientific instruments such as a scanning tunneling microscope which was then used to probe matter at the atomic scale. Following his undergrad, he moved on to a M.A.Sc degree in Engineering Physics at the University of British Columbia, studying superconducting materials, often glimpsing their bizarre characteristics at temperatures only a degree or so above absolute zero. During his time at UBC he realized that his future was not going to be in a lab, but somewhere outside in the wild. To achieve this end, in 2003 he entered a Doctorial program in Engineering Science at Simon Fraser University, which fused his love of tech with the underwater environment.

He received his Ph.D. in 2010 for research that included working alongside astronauts and submarine developers to explore a lake in the interior of BC that astrobiologists believed might hold answers to the question of life on Mars. A particular highlight of this research was presenting data at NASA in California. After leaving SFU, he consulted with government, academia and industry organizations on a number of multidisciplinary projects in resource sectors. These contracts were often in fisheries research, bathymetric data acquisition and GIS processing for the mining and forestry sectors. In 2016 he joined an emerging Canadian aerial robotics and remote sensing company, where he was a leading team member on numerous projects including infrastructure inspection, environmental monitoring, systems integration engineering, as well as a number of research and development endeavours. He was particularly drawn to the use of automation in robotics for the purpose of mapping the worlds both above and below the waters surface, in conjunction with conducting operations far beyond what is known in the drone world as line-of-sight.

Dr. Mullins is excited about the contracts that await him this year exploring and deploying technology in many of the beautiful, rugged and remote areas of the country.