Spring Newsletter 2026

It’s been a busy few months behind the scenes here at VolcanoTech!

Incorporation

We are very excited to announce that we have officially incorporated as a UK company as of January. A lot of hard work has happened behind the scenes for the past two years to reach this point and we are now entering a new phase of work as a company as we begin operations. As always, our goal is to make it easier for volcanic communities and researchers around the globe to access vital monitoring equipment.

New Team Member

Alongside our incorporation, we welcomed Dr. Hannah Calleja as our new Technical Product Lead. Hannah has some exciting plans to enhance our instrumentation and has gone straight to work. Hannah spent time in Hawaii working with our PiCam systems as well as a few weeks working in our lab with us last year. It's wonderful to have Hannah on board for this early stage of our journey as a company and we can’t wait to see what she gets up to in the lab.

Website Update

The website has had a fresh update in recent weeks, refreshing some outdated information and adding some new pages. We have updated our PiCam User Guide and Quick Start Guides to reflect changes made last year. 

We have also included a new publications section, where you can find links to publications from our team if you want to learn more about our PiCams and related research. You can also find publications from some of our colleagues who have PiCam Systems, now available in the Past Projects section of the website. We are very excited to be able to share more of our research with you, so keep checking these pages for the latest publications, we have several in the works which should be available later this year.

The website also now includes a Live Data page, where you can see live streamed images and data from some of our PiCam systems, although note that this is in the beta testing stage! We hope to be able to add to this list further in the coming months.

We have updated our Equipment page to include the PiGas, our low-cost portable gas analyser which Dr. Pering has been testing over the last year.

So if you haven’t given the website a look in a while, be sure to check it out!

New 3D Printer

Not only have we welcomed Hannah to the lab this year, we have also upgraded our 3D printer. We are very excited to have the capability to make some more of the custom parts for our PiCams and PiGas in house, making system builds more efficient. The new printer comes with a fun time-lapse camera feature, so we look forward to sharing some of the footage with you via our social media pages very soon.

CIGEFLU

Back in October, Dr. Tom Wilkes travelled to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, to teach on the International Course of Geochemistry of Volcanic and Geothermal Fluids. He focused on gas monitoring and instrumentation, showcasing our PiCam and PiGas systems. As always, our friends and colleagues in Chile at Ckelar were brilliant hosts and Tom had a fantastic time.

VMSG 

In January, Dr. Tom Pering attended the Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group Conference in Southampton, UK. He presented about ongoing work with our suite of UV camera installations globally in his talk, "Towards real-time processing of UV Camera data: first results from a new network". VMSG hosts a collaborative and supportive conference bringing together volcanologists in the UK and beyond to discuss the exciting and ongoing science in our area. So as well as sharing our latest research, Tom enjoyed catching up with fellow colleagues and meeting some new faces.

Upcoming Events

• Vulcano Summer School, 15th-19th June, 2026: Dr. Thomas Wilkes will be joining colleagues from across the globe to teach at the 2026 International Summer School on the island of Vulcano, Italy. The focus of the School is Sampling Techniques in Extreme Environments. Tom will be taking along one of our PiCams and teaching on UV remote sensing.

• NERC COMET, 29th June - 1st July, 2026: The VolcanoTech team will be attending the 2026 annual NERC COMET meeting. We will be sharing the latest developments in our equipment as well as some of the exciting research we have conducted in the past year.

• Costa Rica Field Campaign, August 2026: Dr. Tom Pering and PhD Candidate Rebecca England will be travelling to several volcanoes in Costa Rica to field test the new SpectroGas instrument. This work has been partly funded by grants from The Explorers Club and the ESRC.