Autonomous, Directional Acoustic Profiling Float for Soundscape Characterization

Kaustubha Raghukumar

Principal Investigator; Senior Marine Scientist, Integral Consulting Inc.

Kaustubha (Kaus) Raghukumar is an oceanographer with a solid background in physical oceanography, ocean acoustics, and wave propagation physics. He has participated in several international at-sea experiments that focused on the impact of oceanographic fluctuations on ocean acoustic propagation and continues to develop state-of-the-art acoustic monitoring techniques and technologies for the U.S. Department of Energy and the Office of Naval Research.

Paul Chamberlain

Postdoctoral Scholar, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Paul Chamberlain is a postdoctoral scholar at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He specializes in using ocean models to develop tools that make it easier for robots to explore the ocean.

Grace Chang

Senior Science Advisor, Integral Consulting Inc.

Grace Chang has more than 25 years of experience in the fields of limnology and oceanography. She has managed programs involving field operations, data processing and analysis, and numerical modeling for environmental characterization, observational monitoring, scientific research, and technology development in support of marine renewable energy, hydrodynamics and sediment transport, and oceanographic research programs.

Yi Chao

President and Chief Executive Officer, Seatrec Inc.

Yi Chao is the founder and CEO of Seatrec Inc. With a doctoral degree from Princeton University, he worked for NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) studying the ocean from space and with computer models. Yi developed the ocean thermal energy harvesting technology at JPL and demonstrated the first subsea robot that can be 100% powered by the ocean. With an exclusive license, Seatrec spun-off from Caltech to commercialize this patent-granted technology. Seatrec launched the first commercial product — infiniTE float to enable ocean data collection at much reduced cost and longer endurance, enabling improved data-based decision-making to support the emerging Blue Economy.

Sean Griffin

President, Proteus Technologies LLC

Sean Griffin earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Louisiana State University in 1987. He has been developing oceanographic instrumentation since 1991, when he began working at the Naval Research Laboratory. In 1994, Sean was one of the founders of Omni Technologies, Inc. and subsequently started Proteus Technologies LLC in 2010. He has developed, fabricated, prototyped, fielded, and manufactured devices over a wide breadth of technologies, primarily in the oceanographic industry. Over the last 34 years, Sean has developed and developed a variety of systems, including active and passive sonars; a single-point inflatable oil boom; deep-ocean passive acoustic moorings and instruments; a reef passive acoustic system; a high-speed, towed volumetric array; instrumented mines; a marine particle-imaging velocimeter; and a remotely operated geotechnical/geoacoustic measurement system. Proteus has also been heavily involved in the design and manufacturing of components for U.S. Navy vessels. Sean has four patents and more than 20 publications.

John E. Joseph

Faculty Associate (Research), Naval Postgraduate School

John Joseph grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia. Retiring from active service with the U.S. Navy in 2005 at the rank of commander, John became a research associate in the NPS Ocean Acoustics Laboratory, where he conducts research focused on environmental effects on underwater sound propagation, acoustic modeling, and soundscape monitoring. John currently resides in north Monterey County, California, with his wife and their three children.

Josh Laney

Firmware Engineer, Seatrec Inc.

Josh Laney earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia in 2020. He then went on to earn a Master of Science in analog and digital circuit design from Imperial College London in 2021. While at Imperial, his research focused on unique methods of arithmetic to enable the overclocking of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Josh began working for Seatrec Inc. as a firmware engineer in the summer of 2022 and plays a key role in the development of the infiniTE float platform.

Matt Mazloff

Researcher, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Matt Mazloff is a researcher in the Oceans and Atmospheres Section at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on understanding the ocean by using model-observation syntheses. In this project, Matt is using ocean hindcast models to inform float deployment locations and ocean forecast models to inform float navigation.

John Ryan

Senior Research Specialist, MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)

John Ryan began a postdoctoral fellowship at MBARI in fall 1998, working across biological and chemical oceanography research labs. He was awarded a NASA New Investigator grant during his postdoctoral research. Appreciating the strong science/engineering collaborations at MBARI, John remained there and is now senior research specialist. His research focus is on relationships between ecosystem processes and marine life — from plankton to whales.

Michael Zedelmair

Senior Vice President of Engineering, Seatrec Inc.

Michael Zedelmair is the Senior Vice President of Engineering at Seatrec. He received his bachelor’s degree in automotive engineering from the Duale Hochschule Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, in 2003. After working as a design engineer in the automotive and aerospace industries, Michael went on to earn his master's degree with a focus on thermal fluid systems from the California State University Northridge in 2016. Since joining Seatrec the same year, Michael has led a multidisciplinary team of engineers, developing the company's energy harvesting technology and its latest innovation the infiniTE float.