Alex Hay - Students and Staff

Postdoctoral Fellows:

Dr. Colin Rennie (Ph.D., University of British Columbia) is working on nearbed suspended and bedload transport using acoustic Doppler profilers, as part of the MEPS project.

Dr. Qingping Zou (Ph.D., Scripps Institution of Oceanography) has been working on comparisons between the CDP profiles and theoretical models of the vertical structure of the nearbed velocity.

Graduate Student Projects

John Newgard (B.Eng. Queen's University) entered the M.Sc. program in the fall of 2000. John's research focusses on some aspect of wave-seabed interaction, the specifics of which remain to be decided, based on analysis of existing data augmented by an experiment being planned for the Wave Research Flume at the National Research Council in Ottawa.

Keath Borg (B.Sc. University of Victoria) successfully defended his masters thesis in September, 2002. Keath investigated bottom boundary layer data from the 1999 LEO-15 experiment, examining the suspension process using transilient matrix turbulence theory in collaboration with colleague Dr. Keith Thompson.

Anna Crawford (B.Sc. Dalhousie University, M.Sc. Memorial University) successfully defended her doctoral thesis in February, 2000. Anna used results obtained with the laser-video imaging system, which she developed as part of her thesis research, to investigate the migration of small-scale bedforms, in relation to higher-order moments of the fluid velocity, showing for the first time that the on-offshore directional response of the bed can be related to weakly non-linear interactions among the different frequency components of the wave spectrum. Anna is now working as a Defense Scientist at DREA.

Marjo Laurinolli (B.Sc. Simon Fraser University) successfully defended her masters thesis in September, 2002. She worked on the Dalhousie/DREA right whale project. Marjo was able to locate right whales at distances up to 20 km, and has obtained some of the first estimates of right whale sound source levels in their summer/fall habitat. Marjo was awarded an NSERC Postgraduate Fellowship this year, and is now working at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography.

Amani Ngusaru (B.Sc. University of Dar-es-Salaam, M.Sc. Dalhousie University) successfully defended his doctoral thesis in November 1999. Amani was working with the Duck94 data set, comparing measurements of meter-scale bedform migration rates to rates predicted by different sediment transport models, and has returned to Tanzania to take up a faculty position at the University of Dar-es-Salaam.

Carolyn Smyth (B.Sc. University of Victoria, M.Sc. McGill University) successfully defended her doctoral thesis in July, 2001. She was working on the data sets from SandyDuck97 and several other recent nearshore experiments. Carolyn's research focusses on the high-resolution measurements of velocity and suspended sediment concentration extending into turbulence scales obtained with our Coherent Doppler Profiler (CDP), developed in collaboration with Dr. Len Zedel (formerly a Postdoctoral Fellow with me, and now a faculty member at Memorial University). Carolyn has shown from nearbed turbulence intensity measurements that the active adjustment of the mobile bed leads to the bottom stress being nearly constant over an order of magnitude change in wave height, this otherwise counterintuitive result being due to the change in bed roughness associated with different bedstates. Carolyn is now working at the Atlantic Geoscience Centre (NRCan).

Phil MacAulay, one of Tony Bowen's students, has been working closely with the group on a technique for obtaining 2-dimensional acoustic images of the sediment suspension field. Phil is processing imagery obtained with this system during the SandyDuck97 experiment, and is comparing these results to numerical models of the suspension process.

Undergraduate Honours Student Projects

Krista Collins (B.Sc. Marine Biology and Statistics, candidate) is working on pattern recognition among right whale sounds using principal component analysis and sound-sound spectrogram cross-correlation.

Rachel Speller (B.Sc. Marine Geology, spring 2000) used acoustic seabed imagery from SandyDuck97 to investigate the characteristics and conditions of formation for a previously unstudied bedform which we are calling "sand pox". Rachel is now pursuing an M.Sc. in Coastal Management at Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Angelia Vanderlaan (B.Sc. Marine Biology and Statistics, spring 2000; Dr. Chris Taggart, co-supervisor) investigated the temporal and frequency characteristics of vocalizations of right whales. Her work helped to indicate the feasibility of passive acoustic techniques for real-time location of right whales in the Bay of Fundy. Angelia has been working with us for the past year on the right whale project as a Department of Fisheries and Oceans Intern. Angelia was awarded Second Prize for a poster based on her thesis which she presented at the Atlantic Universities Undergraduate Biology Conference.

Research Staff:

Wes Paul (Ocean Acoustics Technologist), Doug Schillinger (Research Assistant), and Walter Judge (Electronics Technologist) form the mainstay of our field-going capability. Wes and Doug are full-time members of the Ocean Acoustics Lab. Walter's time is shared with other members of the Department. Doug's primary responsibilities are the computing/data processing facility and the related development of the real-time monitoring and data storage system for MEPS, and the development of processing algrorithms for the right whale sound detection recognition system. Wes is in charge of the Ocean Acoustics Lab and instrument development. Dr. Robert Craig (Ph.D. Herriot-Watt University) continues to work with us on the software for the QNX-based data acquisition system on a contractual basis. Jackie Hurst (Research Assistant, shared) provides graphics and manuscript preparation support.

This page last updated February 12, 2003.


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