Biosketch

As a student in 2010–2011 Ben worked on power supplies for ocean monitoring equipment, transformers for acoustic tracking systems, and equipment set up and operation for various field experiments.

As an APL-UW engineer, Ben focuses on electronics for acoustic object detection and backscatter experiments in the Gulf of Mexico, and several acoustic and tracking range experiments in the Arctic. He has extensive experience at the APL-UW Acoustic Test Facility calibrating many types of transducers and hydrophones.

Experiments involve designing rugged and reliable electronics for extreme environments: cold, corrosion, and salt water at various depths. As a university-certified diver, Ben has been underwater during many of these experiments. For the Regional Scale Nodes (RSN) project, Ben worked on a 1-mile-deep high-definition camera that monitors the ASHES hydrothermal vent and sends back high-quality uncompressed video of the vent and its surrounding biology.

Department Affiliation

Ocean Engineering

Education

B.S. Electrical Engineering, Washington State University, 2012

Projects

MuST — Multi-Sensor Towbody A modular system of subsea acoustic sensing and topside data acquisition and processing technologies detect, geolocate, and classify UXOs, as well as buried cables, archeological artifacts, and other structures.

7 Mar 2022

Regional Scale Nodes — HD Video Camera A high-definition video stream, sent real-time and uncompressed to shore from the Axial Volcano caldera, will be at a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, 60 frames per second, interlaced. The goal is to obtain the highest resolution views possible of jetting black smoker fluids and coupled biologial activity on this hydrothermal sulfide chimney.

1 Jul 2013

In The News

UW part of $25M NSF-funded effort to retrieve Earth’s oldest ice core UW News The new Center for Oldest Ice Exploration, or COLDEX, will be created under a five-year, $25 million National Science Foundation grant. Roughly $5 million of that grant will go to the UW. One aspect of COLDEX will involve new development of a probe, the Ice Diver, that melts through layers of ice and provides information about the age of the ice and other data without having to lift a core back up to the surface.

14 Sep 2021