Ocean sciences are going through a technical revolution, whic is allowing the community to design new approaches to study pressing questions facing the community. These approaches range from collecting data from within hurricanes to potentially improve the skill in predicting hurricane intensity to studying the ecological dynamics in marine food webs. My seminar will highlight examples from the West Antarctic Peninsula along with Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. I will also discuss the next steps for moving forward, which include development of onboard thinking and behaviors, swarming, and coupled machine-to-machine control networks. These engineering advances will enable the next generation of ocean scientists and help us address the research challenges associated with a changing ocean.

Dr. Oscar Schofield earned a B.A. in Aquatic Biology and Ph.D. in Biology, both from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is currently a Professor at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Science, Rutgers University. Dr. Schofield's research interests include primary productivity in aquatic ecosystems, climate change and the oceans, evolution of phytoplankton and global geochemistry, hydrological optics, and integrated ocean observatories.

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