{"id":79481,"date":"2026-09-23T13:33:36","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T20:33:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=79481"},"modified":"2026-09-23T14:35:26","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T21:35:26","slug":"team-snuffed-xprize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/team-snuffed-xprize\/","title":{"rendered":"Team of NAU, Flagstaff experts takes second place in global XPRIZE Wildfire competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0group\u00a0of NAU and Flagstaff-based\u00a0scientists\u00a0and\u00a0engineers\u00a0just\u00a0captured a coveted award at the\u00a0XPRIZE Wildfire Competition,\u00a0winning $250,000 and global recognition.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Team Snuffed<\/a>\u00a0won\u00a0the methodological innovation award\u00a0and\u00a0second\u00a0place overall in the competition\u2019s\u00a0Space-Based Detection & Intelligence track, beating out\u00a0a handful of other finalists and\u00a0an initial\u00a0field of more than 300 other teams.\u00a0This is the team\u2019s latest accomplishment on the road to developing hardware and software solutions to a problem\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0relevant both locally and globally.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The award was announced Sept. 23 at the XPRIZE Wildfire Awards Ceremony<\/a>, held at the New York City Fire Museum.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NAU members of Team Snuffed include\u00a0<\/span>David Trilling<\/span><\/b>, a professor in NAU\u2019s Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science, and\u00a0<\/span>Alexander Shenkin<\/span><\/b>,\u00a0assistant research professor\u00a0in\u00a0the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems.\u00a0Shenkin\u00a0is\u00a0the founder and CEO of\u00a0EmberSat<\/a>,\u00a0a software platform that uses machine learning to analyze publicly available satellite observations over time and\u00a0identify\u00a0changes that may signal a developing fire.\u00a0Shenkin\u00a0said\u00a0the tool\u00a0brings\u00a0wildfire detection, ongoing fire\u00a0tracking\u00a0and contextual clues behind developing fires into one view\u2014helping professionals protect communities and cut down on the cost of\u00a0wildfires\u00a0in the United States,\u00a0an estimated\u00a0$394 billion\u00a0to\u00a0$893 billion\u00a0annually.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“The challenge is not just detecting fires\u00a0quickly\u00a0but\u00a0also\u00a0minimizing false positives and making the information easy to act on,”\u00a0Shenkin\u00a0said. “Fire managers are already juggling competing demands, often with limited staff, time and resources.\u00a0EmberSat\u00a0is designed to reduce their cognitive load, not add another stream of data to sort through.”<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At this week\u2019s competition, XPRIZE Wildfire awarded a total of $4.5 million to research teams whose projects will help people and beneficial wildfires coexist safely. The competition challenged teams across two complementary tracks, Space-Based Wildfire Detection & Intelligence and Autonomous Wildfire Response,\u00a0to prove that speed, accuracy and autonomy can transform how wildfires are detected and addressed at heir earliest, most controllable stage to shorten the time between detection and rapid response, inform management practices and minimize negative impacts.\u00a0Launched in 2023, XPRIZE Wildfire\u00a0was\u00a0sponsored\u00a0by\u00a0Pacific Gas & Electric,\u00a0the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the\u00a0Minderoo\u00a0Foundation\u00a0and Lockheed Martin.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Trilling said that during final testing in April, Team Snuffed\u2019s EmberSat technology monitored approximately 800,000 square kilometers in New South Wales, Australia, delivering detection and fire-characterization information to judges through a live portal and data feeds. But the hope is that EmberSat can cover much more ground in the long term, from fire-prone areas in sub-Saharan Africa and South America to the ponderosa pine forests around Flagstaff, where there have been three major wildfires in the last decade.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pursuing much broader, ongoing capabilities in stratospheric sensing, resource allocation and fire suppression,\u201d Trilling said. \u201cBy bringing a really broad range of technical expertise together, we\u2019re\u00a0helping to solve a critical problem that\u2019s both local and global.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jason Wilder, NAU\u2019s vice president for research,\u00a0said the team\u2019s XPRIZE win\u00a0exemplifies NAU\u2019s research goals.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d Wilder said, \u201cis NAU research at its\u00a0best\u2014partnering\u00a0with scientists, engineers and fire professionals in our own community to tackle a threat Arizonans deal with every year and produce a solution with truly global reach.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to Trilling and Shenkin, members of Team Snuffed include Christopher Edwards<\/strong>, a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Science; Flagstaff-based engineer Cody Hartman; Mike Felts, a fire battalion chief and paramedic in northern Arizona; and a number of other scientists, engineers and fire professionals.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/span><\/p>\n


\nJill Kimball | NAU Communications
\n(928) 523-2282 | jill.kimball@nau.edu<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0group\u00a0of NAU and Flagstaff-based\u00a0scientists\u00a0and\u00a0engineers\u00a0just\u00a0captured a coveted award at the\u00a0XPRIZE Wildfire Competition,\u00a0winning $250,000 and global recognition.\u00a0 Team Snuffed\u00a0won\u00a0the methodological innovation award\u00a0and\u00a0second\u00a0place overall in the competition\u2019s\u00a0Space-Based Detection & Intelligence track, beating out\u00a0a handful of other finalists and\u00a0an initial\u00a0field of more than 300 other teams.\u00a0This is the team\u2019s latest accomplishment on the road to developing hardware and software…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2880,"featured_media":79482,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2880"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79481"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79487,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79481\/revisions\/79487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}