September 2022
Name: Alaa Ahmed
Department: Civil, Environmental, and Ocean Engineering
School: Stevens Institute of Technology
Project: Floating Oscillating Surge Wave Energy Converter Using Controllable
Power Takeoff System
Research Advisors: Dr. Muhammad Hajj
Alaa is a PhD student in Ocean Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. She started her studies in 2019. Alaa received her bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering in 2014, and her master’s degree in mechanical engineering in 2017, both from Cairo University in Egypt. Alaa’s research focuses on the hydrodynamic performance of wave energy converters. She is implementing multi-fidelity s imulations for full scale analysis of a dual flap floating oscillating surge wave energy converter based on model scale validation in the wave tank of the Davidson Laboratory at Stevens Institute of Technology. She is also performing system identification to develop state-space models and implement active control strategies to maximize power generation. Her research is a part of developing a system design for a 100-kW wave energy converter that satisfies rigorous engineering requirements including reliable operation in highly energetic wave energy resources.
Name: Ágata Piffer Braga
Department: Engineering and Applied Sciences
School: University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Project: Mixing Freshwater into the Ocean: Using an AUV to Study River Plume Evolution
Research Advisors: Dr. Daniel MacDonald
Ágata is a third year PhD Student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, under advisement of Professor Daniel MacDonald, at the Engineering and Applied Science program. Before that, Ágata obtained her master’s degree in Physical Oceanography at the Oceanographic Institute at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, advised by Ilson Carlos Almeida da Silveira, at the Ocean Dynamics Laboratory. There, her studies were focused on meso-scale features on the Brazil current. Now her object of study is closer to the coast, river plumes, more specifically the mixing caused by the turbulence at the frontal zone of river plumes. With the support of the Link Fellowship, her goal is to understand the evolution of the role of mixing processes at the horizontal boundary between the fresh buoyant discharge and ocean waters. In order to do that she will aligning the input of drone, drifters, shipboard sensors, and the T-REMUS, a custom-designed autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), with the capability of measuring turbulence profiles while underway. These processes have not been completely understood until today, thus with this work she intends to fill some of the gaps in the field and help to comprehend this crucial and critical coastal region, making possible the improvement of water quality, coastal management, and overall ecosystem health.
Name: Tyler Inkley
Department: Ocean and Resources Engineering
School: UH Mānoa
Project: A Hybrid Class Autonomous Underwater Vehicle
Research Advisors: Dr. Michael Krieg
Tyler is a PhD student in the Ocean and Resources Engineering (ORE) Department at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa studying Oceanographic Engineering. He received his Bachelor of Science in Ocean Engineering with a minor in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Rhode Island (URI) in 2017. Tyler continued his studies at URI under research advisors Annette and Stéphan Grilli, performing risk assessment studies for ocean storms and tsunami hazards using the fully nonlinear phase-resolving numerical wave model FUNWAVE. He received his Master of Science in Ocean Engineering in 2019, presenting a baseline status report and gap analysis for the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program along the United States East Coast. After pivoting his research focus towards underwater technology, Tyler returned to graduate school with a focus on the rapid development of autonomous and remotely operated underwater systems to investigate novel sensing capabilities and increase autonomy for oceanography applications. For his future work, with assistance from the Link Fellowship, Tyler seeks to enhance underwater robot performance by evolving conventional methods for robotic sensing and control theory from an overly centralized process requiring numerous assumptions to an instinctive process emphasizing improved perception of and navigation through local fluid surroundings. By focusing on the improved awareness of a vehicle’s fluid surroundings via measurement of pressure and shear stress distributions, coupled with the combination of bio- inspired and gyroscopic actuation, his work seeks to develop a hybrid class AUV capable of both efficient long-range travel and low-speed high-accuracy maneuvering.
Name: Devon Northcott
Department: Scripps Institution of Oceanography
School: UC San Diego
Project: Towed phased array doppler sonar
Research Advisors: Dr. Drew Lucas
Devon is a PhD student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. He graduated from UC San Diego with a BS in Physics and a minor in earth science. After undergrad, Devon worked for a year and a half at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute as a research assistant, working on modeling of coastal ecosystems and autonomous measurement of carbonate system parameters. A desire to work more on physical problems and ocean instrumentation lead Devon to apply for graduate school at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the Multiscale Ocean Dynamics (MOD) group under advisor Drew Lucas. One of the priorities of the MOD group is to better measure ocean velocity structure. Devon has worked on improving velocity estimates from a commercial current profiler mounted to a wave powered profiler (Wirewalker), as well as building processing routines for a state-of-the-art ship mounted current profiler (the hydrographic doppler sonar system on the R/V Revelle). Looking forward, one of the most exciting areas of development in ocean velocity measurement is the application of phased array technology. This technology is found in everything from medical ultrasounds to advanced radars; it relies on signal processing to form virtual beams from tightly spaced sensors. The MOD lab has been a leader in applying this technique to ocean velocity measurement, and is currently developing a new system, the towed phased array doppler sonar (TPADS), which is compact enough to mount on a small towed body behind a ship. Devon will work closely with the engineering team to develop algorithms and deployment strategies that will allow this new instrument to realize its potential and produce novel scientific results. The TPADS will deliver direct measurements of three-dimensional ocean processes that until now have only been studied using high resolution modeling techniques. Understanding the full three-dimensional ocean velocity field is vital to understanding how energy moves through the ocean system, including how sharp gradients in ocean properties are created and broken down, how wind energy is transmitted into the upper ocean, and how heat moves between the ocean and atmosphere. Measuring and understanding these processes at a small scale is vital to producing models of the coupled ocean atmosphere system at global scales.
Name: Casey Den Ouden
Department: Ocean and Mechanical Engineering
School: Florida Atlantic University
Project: Novel Kirigami Inspired Flexible Robotic Extension to Support Versatile
Underwater Sensing and Operations using Hybrid Aerial/Underwater robotiC System
(HAUCS) Platforms
Research Advisors: Dr. Tsung-Chow Su and Dr. Bing Ouyang
Casey is a PhD student in the Ocean and Mechanical Engineering (OME) Department at Florida Atlantic University studying Ocean Engineering. She received her two Bachelor of Science degrees in Engineering Technology and Aquatic Biology from Bemidji State University in 2019. In 2018 she did an internship at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute’s Systems and Imaging Laboratory (HBOI SAIL) under the direction of Dr. Bing Ouyang and Dr. Paul Wills. During that time, she worked on the initial development of the Hybrid Aerial Underwater robotiC System (HAUCS) a USDA-NIFA-supported robotic effort to mitigate deficiencies in aquaculture fish farm production. Upon the completion of her undergraduate degree, she returned to Harbor Branch to continue her HAUCS research. For her future work, with the help of the Link Fellowship, Casey will develop a Kirigami-Inspired robotic extension for measuring fishpond water quality at depth. This novel design implements traditional origami geometry to optimize the expansion ratio of the robotic structure while minimizing drag on the sampling platform during transit detection. Another potential application of the HAUCS platform is to act as a high-bandwidth gateway to connect the above-water control centers and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) through an RF-optical communication link.
Name: Amy Phung
Department: Aeronautics and Astronautics, Applied Ocean Science and Engineering
School: MIT/WHOI Joint Program
Project: Enabling in-situ sampling with underwater manipulators by shore-side
scientists using a shared autonomy framework and virtual reality
Research Advisors: Dr. Richard Camilli
Amy is a PhD student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program in the Aeronautics and Astronautics department at MIT and the Applied Ocean Science and Engineering department at WHOI. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Robotics Engineering from Olin College in 2021. While at Olin, her senior capstone project involved developing a virtual reality (VR) interface for pilots of Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) in collaboration with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Motivated by the performance and usability improvements that resulted from using the interface, her initial research in grad school focused on using VR to enable scientists without piloting experience to complete underwater sampling tasks using a robotic manipulator arm. With shared autonomy, scientists could collect samples without being physically present onboard the ship since delegating low-level control to the autonomous system reduced the data bandwidth required for operations. With the support of the Link Foundation, her future work will focus on switching from virtual to augmented reality to further improve the system’s usability, and using sonar data to aid manipulation and improve the system’s perception capabilities. These improvements will enable scientists without piloting experience to complete more complex sampling tasks despite environmental challenges such as turbid conditions, which can help democratize access to deep-sea research.
If you would like to find out more about our Link Foundation Ocean Engineering and Instrumentation Fellows and projects that have been funded in the field of Ocean Engineering and Instrumentation by the Link Foundation, please visit the Link Ocean Engineering and Instrumentation webpage at http://www.linkoe.org/.