The Department of Defense announced awards to ten researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, as part of the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program (DURIP) which awards grants to support the development of instruments that have a wide range of scientific and military applications. Three of the awardees are research affiliates of the Center for Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation — Dr. Ken Melville, Dr. Uwe Send, and Dr. Eric Terrill.
From the Scripps Institution of Oceanography press release:
“The DURIP award to oceanographer Ken Melville’s group at the Air-Sea Interaction Laboratory will be used to purchase an autonomous surface vehicle known as a Wave Glider instrumented for marine atmospheric boundary layer and marine boundary layer measurements across the air-sea interface. Wave Gliders use an array of swim fins on a subsurface platform, capturing propulsive power from surface waves to tow a surface platform. The system will be used in forthcoming ONR-funded research on air-sea interaction involving surface waves and the boundary layers that span the surface.
“A team led by oceanographer Uwe Send received funds to acquire additional equipment for underwater acoustic data telemetry. Send’s lab uses acoustic modems in a wide range of projects to transfer data from bottom-mounted sensors or subsurface moorings in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian oceans. Researchers receive data from these modems either manually by lowering acoustic transducers over the side of a ship and connecting them to an “acoustic deck box,” or from surface platforms such as moored buoys using so-called “portable modems” that are attached to them, or using underwater gliders with an acoustic modem integrated. The new DURIP award allows the Send Lab to obtain another deck unit, another deep self-contained modem, and an additional portable modem in order to expand their use of real-time underwater acoustic data retrieval.
“Researchers Eric Terrill and Sophia Merrifield were awarded a DURIP Award for autonomous sampling equipment for extreme sea states. This award will allow for the procurement of two Boeing Liquid Robotics Wave Glider platforms. Scripps scientists will modify the Wave Gliders for operations in extreme sea states and adaptive sampling across ocean features with sharp gradients known as fronts. The Wave Gliders will also serve as a testbed for advancing autonomous control systems while leveraging the investigators’ prior experience operating the platforms in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Southern oceans.”
Read the full press release here for more information on all projects at Scripps Institution of Oceanography being funded by the DURIP awards.
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