The PacX mission provides a unique source of ocean data, in real time, at an unprecedented scale. Liquid Robotics is keen to explore the possibilities of this type of data gathering, so we created the PacX Challenge. Our aim was to encourage scientists and students to make use of this trove of data in interesting, productive, or innovative ways.
BP, the exclusive oil and gas industry supporter of the PacX Challenge, and Liquid Robotics have established a two-part grand prize that will be awarded to the person(s) whose research “best represents the spirit of exploration and discovery embodied by this journey”. The grand prize consists of a $50,000 BP PacX Research Grant and six months of free Wave Glider data services from Liquid Robotics. This prize provides scientists, educators and students around the world an unparalleled opportunity to advance ocean science and exploration. The winner of the PacX Challenge will work with Liquid Robotics to chart the course and mission for the six month deployment, including the configuration of onboard sensors.
Liquid Robotics is proud to announce that the PacX Science Board has selected five outstanding finalists to compete for the PacX grand prize. These scientists will conduct research into some of the world’s most challenging ocean issues ranging from measuring the ocean’s health and respiration to studying the ocean’s biomass - the most fundamental organisms critical to ocean life.
University of California Merced, Merced, CA
The overarching goal of Mike’s research program is to develop a predictive understanding of microbial ecology and biogeochemistry in the ‘Anthropocene’ sea. His research sits at the interface of microbial ecology, biogeochemistry, and global change science, and he works worldwide in reefs and estuaries, marine lakes and mountain lakes, and the open ocean. He focuses on the responses of microbial communities, and the processes mediated by these communities, to environmental change—including climate change, ocean acidification, ocean deoxygenation, and atmospheric nitrogen deposition.
Mike received a B.S. from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Stanford in Geological and Environmental Sciences; before joining the UC Merced faculty in 2009, he was a postdoc in Marine Environmental Biology at USC, a lecturer at UCLA, and an Assistant Researcher at the University of Hawai’i. He is a member of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute and the Environmental Systems and Quantitative and Systems Biology graduate groups, and teaches classes in Biology, Environmental Systems, and Earth Systems Science.
University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA
Dr. Nicole Goebel is a marine scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz interested in phytoplankton ecology. She studies the factors controlling the growth and diversity of phytoplankton, which are microscopic plant-like organisms that largely impact earth’s ocean and atmosphere. Phytoplankton constitute most of the ocean’s living matter and supports the marine food web, while playing an important role in regulating our climate by producing half of the oxygen we breathe and sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide.Although 1/1000th to 1/100th the size of a pinhead, phytoplankton are abundant and ubiquitous throughout the ocean, rapidly growing and dying in response to environmental fluctuations such as light, nutrients, predators, and transport by ocean currents.
Dr. Goebel's phytoplankton research spans a range of environments - from the nutrient poor waters of Hawaii and the New Zealand fjords, to high nutrient systems of Long Island Sound and the upwelling waters of the California Current Ecosystem - and reveals constant change in phytoplankton productivity, abundance, and diversity over time and space. This variable life cycle presents a challenge for scientists interested in tracking where, when, why, how much, and which types of phytoplankton grow. Without an accurate measure of the abundance or growth of phytoplankton in the ocean, scientists struggle to estimate the contribution of phytoplankton to the ocean food web/fisheries and the effect of phytoplankton on our climate.
Dr. Goebel seeks answers to these questions using ocean measurements, laboratory experiments, and numerical modeling approaches.
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA
Dr. Andrew Lucas is a research scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he makes use of novel ocean sensing approaches to study the inter-relationship between physics in the ocean and the base of the oceanic food web. For example, he utilizes wave-powered profiling technology developed at Scripps to gather concurrent measurements of physical and biological variability in the surface ocean, and from those measurements calculate the turbulence-mediated fluxes of the nutrients necessary for phytoplankton growth and reproduction.
Because the physical dynamics that control turbulence in the upper ocean are unsteady in time and space, we must utilize measurement techniques that combine very fine spatial and temporal resolution with long duration, repeated, and repeatable deployments. The imprint of these physically mediated dynamics on the base of the food web in turn exerts control over many aspects of ocean ecology, and impacts the rate at which the ocean can accommodate the increasing carbon load in the atmosphere due to anthropogenic climate change.
Wise Eddy Software, Boston, MA
Elise A. Ralph has been involved with a start-up educational software company, W.E. Games, since 2010. Their goal is the creation of creative and visual ways to improve education in physics, finance, and the geosciences.
Elise is a physical oceanographer interested in the surface ocean circulation using data analysis, field work, and modeling. She has worked on the surface circulation of the tropical Pacific and also on the dynamics of the Gulf Stream. She has also worked on the circulation of several lakes, including Lake Superior and Issky Kul, Kyrgyzstan.
Prior to working in the private sector, she was a university administrator at the University of Guam and in the University of Washington systems, where she supported faculty and students in graduate education and research. She also served as a program director in the physical oceanography program at the National Science Foundation and was also a tenured physics professor at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.
University of Texas, Port Aransas, TX
Tracy Villareal is a Professor in the Dept. of Marine Science at The University of Texas, Austin. He pursues his interests in biological oceanography and phytoplankton ecology at the Marine Science Institute in Port Aransas, Texas located on Mustang Island. After receiving a B.S. and M.S from Texas A&M University, he got his Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography working with Prof. T. J. Smayda. He has received the Harold C. Bold and Luigi Provosoli Awards from the Phycological Society of America, and the Darbaker Prize from the Botanical Society of America. A collaborative ship-based teacher training program with Dr. N. Hanegan of BYU, was awarded a Eisenhower National Clearinghouse Digital Dozen Award for the STEAMER website.
His first love in oceanography has always been blue water phytoplankton, particularly the unusual, very large diatoms that inhibit the open sea. In recent years, he has returned to his work on nitrogen-fixing symbiotic associations in these diatoms. This work focuses on the Pacific Ocean, hence his interest in the Wave Glider and the PacX challenge.
Oceanographic Data Analyst, Liquid Robotics, Inc.
Luke Beatman is the lead oceanographic data analyst at Liquid Robotics, the company who developed the first, wave powered marine robot. In his position at Liquid Robotics he oversees all data analysis for the over 100 Wave Gliders deployed around the globe.
Prior to joining Liquid Robotics in April of 2011, Luke was Oceanographic Researcher at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in the Biological Oceanography Group and was on staff to the senior scientist, Dr. Francisco Chavez. In this capacity, he worked extensively with software and hardware associated with research vessel flow-through systems, offshore moorings, and land based ocean-observing stations.
From 2000 to 2008, Luke was an Oceanographic Technician at Moss Landing Marine Laboratory (MLML) and was responsible for the creation and maintenance of ocean observation stations for Central and Northern California Ocean Observing System (CeNCOOS); an organization dedicated to the support of science in the service of marine ecosystem health and resource sustainability. Through this work, he developed the first oceanographic data portal for MLML and CeNCOOS. This portal serves data from the various observing stations to the public.
Luke received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Oceanography and Atmospheric Science from SUNY Stony Brook in 1998 and a Masters of Science in Physical Oceanography from San Jose State University in 2008.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Dr Fratantoni’s research interests include observational studies of the general ocean circulation with an emphasis on tropical and low-latitude processes; dynamics of mesoscale rings and their role in the general circulation; abyssal overflows; instrument development.
David holds a B.S. in Ocean Engineering, from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.
Research scientist at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Hobart, Tasmania.
Professor and Chair of the Ocean and Resources Engineering Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa
Bruce M. Howe received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering and engineering science, respectively, in 1978 from Stanford University and the Ph.D. degree in oceanography from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, in 1986. From 1986 to 2008 he worked at the Applied Physics Laboratory and is presently Professor and Chair of the Ocean and Resources Engineering Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
While at Stanford University, he developed laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) instrumentation for air-sea interaction experiments. From 1979 to 1981, he was a Research Associate with the Institut für Hydromechanik, Universität Karlsruhe, Germany, working on long-range LDVs for use in the atmospheric boundary layer. While at the Scripps and since, he has worked on many ocean acoustic tomography projects, including Moving Ship Tomography, Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate (ATOC) and the North Pacific Acoustic Laboratory (NPAL). Howe helped establish on-going Ocean Observatories efforts, and is working on fixed infrastructure (e.g., cable systems and moorings), mobile platforms (e.g., gliders as navigation/communications nodes and acoustic receivers), and hybrids (e.g., moored vertical profilers). A long-term goal is to integrate acoustics systems in ocean observing for navigation, communications, timing, and science applications.
Director of the UCSC Center for Remote Sensing Chair of the Global Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (GEOHAB) Programme, sponsored by IOC and SCOR.
Dr Kudela is a biological oceanographer and phytoplankton ecologist with broad interests in the interactions of light, nutrients, and plankton dynamics. Recent projects have focused on harmful algal bloom organisms, including the role of anthropogenic forcing and climate change impacts, basin-scale changes in ocean productivity focusing on eastern boundary current upwelling systems, and the role of land-sea coupling in the control of plankton communities in the California Current, Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Benguela systems.
My group is particularly interested in assessing and quantifying short-term ecosystem changes versus secular trends in ecosystem functioning due to basin- or global-scale dynamics. Studying these broad questions requires a broad suite of tools, and my lab emphasizes the use of remote sensing/bio-optics, genomics, models, manipulative experiments in both the field and laboratory, and the use of tracers including stable and radio-isotopes and trace metals.
Director of Science and Technology at OceanGate Inc.
Dr. Erika Montague’s research interests involve the development of novel non-destructive methods for the sampling and observation of sensitive species in extreme and remote environments. She received her masters at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and her PhD in Oceanography from Johns Hopkins University. With over 12 years of experience in collaborative multidisciplinary research and development of in-water observatories and video integration, she has participated in numerous oceanographic expeditions and conducted research from submersibles, ROVs and landers.
Dr. Montague worked as a fellow in the Engineering Division at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute on the development of a low-light deep-sea observatory and an autonomous tissue sampler for collection of DNA from deep-sea fishes. She now consults on the development and communication of device technology to meet the needs of science, government and industry.
Technology Theme Leader for BP’s Oil Spill Technology R&D Team
David W. Sweeten is a Technology Theme Leader for BP’s Oil Spill Technology R&D Team, based in Houston, Texas. In this role he provides leadership in the development of the Technology R&D portfolio for the themes of Oil Detection & Surveillance and the environmental and marine monitoring supporting oil spill prevention and preparedness globally. Currently he is the program manager and project interface between BP business units and Liquid Robotics, Inc. for a variety of Wave Glider projects.
Prior to joining BP in 2007, David worked for 17 years as an environmental consultant for a variety of industrial clients with an emphasis on environmental restoration, risk management, and safe and reliable field operations.
