Posted on March 14, 2025 by College of Sciences
#ThisIsWhatAScientistLooksLike
Iyare Oseghae, Environmental Science and Engineering Ph.D. Student
By Ryan Schoensee
From mapping Mars' lava flows to improving air quality on Earth, Iyare Oseghae's passion for geoscience has been a journey of adaptation and perseverance.
Meet Iyare Oseghae, who graduated from the College of Sciences in 2022 with an M.S. in Geoinformatics. Iyare is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at UTSA in Environmental Science & Engineering.
Iyare was born in San Antonio to parents who immigrated from Nigeria. During his undergrad, he moved to Lubbock to attend Texas Tech University. He majored in Geophysics and wanted to pursue a graduate degree and later employment in the oil and gas exploration industry. However, he decided to make a career change in 2019 due to layoffs and hiring freezes that were occurring in the oil and gas industry.
"During this time, I could not find a job and was really feeling the cold reality of the volatility of the oil and gas industry," said Iyare. "That's when I decided I did not want my ability to provide for my family to be reliant on global events that I had no control over."
Iyare's always had a passion for geoscience and in 2019 decided to focus his academics and research on geospatial data science. Because Iyare is from San Antonio, he knew many friends and family who attended UTSA, including two of his sisters. He contacted the chair of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and expressed an interest in the newly-formed geoinformatics program.
"Attending UTSA was a no brainer," said Iyare. "I got to return home to where my family and friends are, pursue my academic goals, and be with my then girlfriend, now wife, who at the time was headed to dental school at UT Health San Antonio."
As a graduate student at UTSA, Iyare gained three years of geoscience internship experience at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA Ames Research Center and Sandia National Laboratory.
At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he worked with an imaging spectroscopy team that used an imaging spectrometer aboard the International Space Station (ISS) to map the mineral composition of arid dust source regions. At NASA Ames, his internship project involved using surface roughness of lava flows on Mars to quantify the crystallinity of the rock as part of a broader mission that could one day lead to colonizing. At Sandia National Labs, Iyare has worked for two years on a variety of projects that have ranged from wildfire simulation modelling to estimating the strength of meteor atmospheric explosions using infrasound measurements.
After graduating with his master's, Iyare was offered a career as a Doctoral Research Scientist in 2023 at UTSA's NASA MIRO Center for Advanced Measurements in Extreme Environments (CAMEE) program. In this role, he is collaborating on NASA's Pandora Project, which studies ultraviolet and visible wavelengths of light to determine the composition of the atmosphere and its interactions with Earth's environment. The project is part of the Pandonia Global Network, a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency to provide long-term measurements of air quality and atmospheric composition to calibrate satellite sensors.
Under his Ph.D. advisor Alberto Mestas-Nuñez, associate professor of instruction in the UTSA Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Iyare studies atmospheric pollution using satellite data from UTSA's Pandora Spectrometer, which was commissioned in 2024 and is located at the UTSA Downtown Campus.
"My favorite part about my current role being at the forefront of scientific innovation," said Iyare. "I get to be there when new instruments and data are released, giving me the freedom to dictate the direction of my research and produce meaningful results that can both advance science and help people from my hometown and beyond live better and healthier lives."
One of the most impactful moments Iyare had at UTSA was participating in a transdisciplinary project that was hosted by UTSA's Graduate School called the Transdisciplinary Team Grand Challenge. As part of the project, Iyare had to opportunity to collaborate with Caden Povolish, a UTSA business student and a friend of Iyare's that he's been close with since elementary school.
Their first proposal was on creating mentorship and scholarship programs for K-12 youth in the underserved populations of San Antonio. Their team was awarded 3rd Place in 2021. In 2022, they collaborated on another Transdisciplinary Team Grand Challenge project to reduce water waste. Their team used mapping, advanced data science, and analytics to locate areas of San Antonio where water waste was occurring. They received a sponsorship from employees at SAWS, which helped them gather information and provided valuable data for their analysis. This time their team took home the 1st Place prize.
In the future, Iyare sees himself working as a research and development geoscientist either in industry or a federal science organization such as NASA or at a national laboratory.
Although the Iyare's path hasn't always been easy or clear, he believes that through perseverance, anyone can discover the right opportunities that will lead to success.
"I have learned that you can't wait for opportunities to fall your way. When there are doors blocking your path, find a way to kick them down," said Iyare. "If you aren't aiming too high, then you're aiming too low. The opportunities to reach your goals are there—you just have to be determined enough to reach them."
— College of Sciences
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