The Transportation Research Board (TRB) is a division of the National Research Council, which serves as an independent adviser to the President, the Congress and federal agencies on scientific and technical questions of national importance. Dr. Thomas Wakeman of Stevens Institute of Technology was recently appointed Chair of the TRB’s Marine Group. In this role, Dr. Wakeman will coordinate all marine transportation-related research within the TRB organization with allied research in the National Academies. He was also recently appointed to a 7 member review panel for the US Department of Transportation Maritime Administration’s Panama Canal Expansion Study and to a technical expert group for Federal Highway Administration’s Gateway and Corridors Concept Forum.

“Dr. Wakeman’s experience and expertise have been vital assets to the ongoing research in maritime systems at Stevens,” says Dr. Michael Bruno, Dean of the Charles V. Schaefer, Jr. School of Engineering and Science. “His appointment as Chair of the TRB Marine Group is a testament to the impact of his research and the esteem of his colleagues.”

Several current research projects of the Transportation Research Board focus on freight’s multimodal movement within the United States and thus align with the national drive to increase exports. The White House has proposed the National Export Initiative as an ambitious plan to double US exports by 2014, improving America’s economic future and generating up to two million jobs at home.

Dr. Wakeman believes that a smart maritime transportation strategy is crucial to getting American goods to overseas markets at a competitive price. However he and other maritime leaders at TRB have learned that a broader perspective connecting sea transportation with other modes of transport is necessary to catapult America’s ability to export cost-effectively while maintaining our import supply chains.

The importance of connecting ships with trains and trucks is something Dr. Wakeman learned on the job in Iraq.

Dr. Wakeman’s career started in the US Army Corps of Engineers, where his specialty was navigation infrastructure—dredging channels and ports to allow safe passage for more or bigger ships. He brought this perspective to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, spending nearly fifteen years improving the region’s busy port facilities.

This culminated in his being asked to go to Iraq in 2004 and reopen that country’s ports to accept $14 billion of cargo needed to supply troops and rebuild factories and power plants. In Iraq, improved ports are worthless unless there is also infrastructure on land to allow movement of cargo to where it ultimately needs to go.

“It wasn’t damage from the war that had to be repaired,” Dr. Wakeman says. “It was that there had to be a reliable intermodal connections established between the different modes for moving freight from the southern ports to the northern cities.”

Since his experience in Iraq, Dr. Wakeman has been focused on making transportation infrastructure improvements using designs that take into consideration interaction between different modal networks. He finds that it is a lesson that applies just as much to the United States as it does to Iraq.

It is also a lesson that he brings to the classroom at Stevens, where Dr. Wakeman is Deputy Director of the Center for Maritime Systems and a Research Professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering. He uses his experience aligning complex systems to unite the University’s many disciplines conducting research related to transportation, systems, and security in the maritime domain.

“It is critical that we bring together people from different maritime disciplines to create essential synergistic solutions to problems in finance, security, the environment, transportation infrastructure, and technology,” he says. “Students working in these fields have a wonderful opportunity to play a key role in the development of the United States and world economy in the future.”

Learn more about maritime research at Stevens by visiting the Center for Maritime Systems or reading the Maritime Systems issue of Nexus, the School of Science and Engineering Research Magazine. Start your own maritime journey at Stevens by visiting the Department of Civil, Environmental and Ocean Engineering, or visit Undergraduate Admissions or Graduate Admissions to apply.

Since 2007, Stevens has been home to the Center for Secure and Resilient Maritime Commerce (CSR), the nation’s lead port security research and education center, which conducts innovative research, develops new technologies and delivers educational programs to enhance our nation's maritime security.

What’s different this year is its leadership. In October, Dr. Julie Pullen took the helm as Director and began intensively focusing the CSR on proactively getting its tools and technologies into the hands of end users like the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy and emergency first responders so they can be put to practical use.

“In the past the CSR has been instrumental in responding to unanticipated accidents around our ports because we have situational and predictive technologies to bear at hand,” said Dr. Pullen. “Now we want to make sure we’re collaborating proactively with those on the front lines.”

The CSR was created in 2007 after the Department of Homeland Security solicited proposals from academia for establishing Centers of Excellence aimed at conducting multidisciplinary research and developing education initiatives in areas important for America’s defense and safety. DHS’ goal was to take advantage of the unsurpassed research capabilities and intellectual capital of U.S. colleges and universities to fill knowledge and technology gaps in the department.

One of the centers DHS wanted to create would be focused on maritime and island security, and given the strength of its renowned Davidson Laboratory for vessel testing and marine monitoring and forecasting, Stevens – with the University of Hawaii in Honolulu – was designated a lead institution in DHS’ Center for Maritime, Island and Remote and Extreme Environment Security (MIREES). MIREES is made up of two centers – Stevens’ CSR, which specializes in port security, and the University of Hawaii’s Center for Island, Maritime & Extreme Environment Security (CIMES), which focuses on remote and island security.

Port security is, without a doubt, a pressing issue today. In its four-year history, the CSR has worked tirelessly to achieve its core vision of improving understanding of anything associated with “the maritime domain” – i.e. infrastructure, people, cargo and vessels that are in or near seas, oceans or navigable waterways – that could impact the nation’s security, safety, economy or environment. In fact, in its early years, the CSR’s observation, monitoring and prediction capabilities were critical in the emergency response to the recent Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Hudson River US Airways plane incident, earning “Impact Awards” from DHS.

Today, there are equally serious threats facing our ports – from climate catastrophes like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to worst-case terrorism scenarios like dirty bombs and improvised nuclear devices brought ashore via hijacked small vessels. Resources and knowledge cannot be holed up in academia; they must be at the fingertips of first responders.

“Ports can be especially vulnerable because they are usually located near major urban metropolises,” Dr. Pullen said.

With its numerous academic, public and private partners, Stevens and the CSR is currently involved in three port security vessel detection research projects – space surveillance, HR radar and over-the-horizon surveillance, and nearshore and harbor surveillance. Each project is aimed at developing processes, systems, sensors and algorithms for better detecting and tracking ships in harbors, seas and oceans. Other research is focused on monitoring and forecasting ocean conditions and weather that might threaten ports, and yet another research project works to build a more resilient maritime transportation system by developing essential tools and processes to improve preparedness, response and recovery.

Under Dr. Pullen’s leadership, all of the CSR’s work has the ultimate goal of moving beyond situational awareness to be able to predict and respond to security situations before they get out of hand. She brought to the CSR personal expertise in this area – especially predicting chemical, biological and radiological dispersion in coastal cities in the event of a terrorist or accidental release. She was a principal investigator on a DHS project to improve such prediction capabilities by integrating multi-scale modeling of air, sea and buildings, and was also a member of the management team for the midtown Manhattan 2005 Urban Dispersion Program tracer release study, the largest of its kind in the U.S. She also pioneered the two-way linkage of a high-resolution mesoscale atmosphere and ocean model for realistic applications in the coastal zone, which resulted in superior forecasts and led groups like the Navy SEAL’s to put a state-of-the-art, high-resolution, globally relocatable coupled ocean, atmosphere and wave model into operational use.

In addition to managing its research initiatives, Dr. Pullen is helping the CSR continue to meet its educational mission to develop the maritime security workforce by transferring its research into highly relevant graduate education, professional development programs, and innovative K-12 programs and workshops. The CSR offers maritime systems master’s degree fellowships and summer internships. It also runs a Summer Research Institute (SRI) where undergraduate and graduate students from all over the country can take part in hands-on maritime security research, as well as workshops that introduce K-12 teachers to port security applications in collaboration with Stevens’ Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education (CIESE).

According to Dr. Pullen, it is some of the student work that leads to the biggest breakthroughs that can really help first responders in the field. SRI students from the 2011 program, for example, helped develop a maritime security technology called Magello that pulls together disparate maritime modeling and data sources into one easy-to use-web interface to provide critical, real-time environmental data needed to make informed emergency management decisions, especially related to radiological threats to ports. It is generating great interest among representatives from the U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies.

“It’s thrilling to see the accomplishments of students involved in our work,” said Dr. Pullen, who served as a faculty mentor for the “Consequence Assessment” SRI team that was responsible for Magello. “They take what we teach them and run with it, and it leads to incredibly important enhancements for the CSR.”

Beth DeFares, Director of Education for the CSR, credits Dr. Pullen with the leadership and oversight that allowed this year’s SRI students to reach such unprecedented levels of success.

“The thing that impresses me the most is how she allows the students to discover things on their own,” DeFares said. “She provides the direction, the tools and the mentorship, but then allows them to engage in their own learning process. They wind up learning more and ultimately taking ownership of the projects they are engaged in so they can achieve truly great things.”

Dr. Pullen’s vision of applying the CSR’s research and activities in the real-world was also evident in the Magello project.

“Julie was able to finally push students to integrate different projects that have been taking place across Stevens for so many years,” said Talmor Meir, a Ph.D. student in Ocean Engineering who is affiliated with the CSR and involved in building Magello’s atmospheric model.

The new maritime security technology called Magello -- which was developed during the intensive eight-week 2011 Summer Research Institute (SRI) run by the Center for Secure and Resilient Maritime Commerce (CSR) led by Stevens -- is receiving significant buzz and recognition by representatives from the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard for its user-friendly interface and the environmental monitoring capabilities it offers to first responders and decision-makers in the event of emergency and crisis situations. Magello pulls together disparate data sources into one easy-to use-web interface to provide critical, real-time environmental data needed to make informed emergency management decisions.

Christopher Francis, a Stevens Maritime Systems Master’s Degree Fellowship student, saw the potential impact of Magello first-hand when he demonstrated its capabilities and functionality at the United State Coast Guard Innovation Expo, held Oct. 25-27 in Tampa, Fla.

"I spent the first two days describing and demonstrating Magello to expo visitors as well as other exhibitors and almost all were very impressed,” said Francis, a team leader during the SRI program. “Many said they hadn’t seen anything quite like it before.”

Led by faculty mentors Dr. Julie Pullen, Director of CSR, and Dr. Philip Orton, Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Environmental and Ocean Engineering, Magello was created by a team of undergraduate and graduate students from Stevens, Rutgers, University of Miami, University of Puerto Rico and SUNY Binghamton. The students were tasked with the challenge to provide consequence assessment and situational awareness in the event of a radiological dispersion in the Hudson River Estuary. After analyzing existing plume and oceanic modeling forecast tools, they found there were multiple modeling and data sources available but no one central repository that combined them all.

To address this issue, the students focused their efforts on developing a tool that would provide the U.S. Coast Guard and other relevant emergency management personnel with a one-stop shop vehicle that would provide the capability to graphically overlay multiple environmental and oceanic data sources onto one Google Earth map interface. This unique website combines ultra-high resolution environmental data from various sources with plume and spill modeling tools that are capable of predicting the movement of water and airborne contaminants. 

Francis attended the U.S. Coast Guard Innovation Expo as a guest of the Coast Guard Auxiliary University Programs Detachment, the uniformed, non-military volunteer reserve force of the Coast Guard. Magello was exhibited alongside the innovations of student researchers at other affiliate schools, including Auburn, William and Mary and Virginia Tech. Stevens will also soon be a member of the Auxiliary University Programs Detachment, which sets out to encourage university-based, student-led auxiliary units that are well trained and capable of assisting the U.S. Coast Guard with operational and mission support functions.

During the three-day conference, Francis and Dr. Hady Salloum, Director of Maritime Security Initiatives at Stevens, had the opportunity to meet and discuss Magello with a broad range of U.S. Coast Guard personnel, including Admiral Robert Papp, Commandant of the USCG.

“Overall it was a fantastic educational experience for me, great publicity for Magello, Stevens and CSR, and an extremely effective way to let the U.S. Coast Guard know Stevens is out there and hard at work in the field of maritime security technology,” Francis said.

Dr. Sutin develops acoustical underwater monitoring for port and harbor security.

Dr. Alexander Sutin, Research Professor with the Center for Maritime Systems at Stevens Institute of Technology, has been elected a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). This recognition comes after a lifetime of research on underwater acoustics and powerful security applications that result from these acoustical techniques.

"The research that Professor Sutin undertakes is in great demand as the US government promotes rigorous security for the nation's commercial waterways," reports Dr. Michael Bruno, Dean of the Schaefer School and Engineering and Science. "Fellow status is a great honor and recognizes his important contributions to basic and applied research in the broad area of underwater acoustics."

As a research professor at the Center for Maritime Systems, Dr. Sutin advances understanding of acoustics in maritime applications and for non-destructive testing of structures. His application of acoustical measurements underwater led to the development of a system that can "fingerprint" ships through a port to track their movements without the use of overhead cameras.

Dr. Sutin has worked in many areas of acoustics. He conducted intensive research in time-reversal acoustics, which promises a wide array of applications, including in medicine for ultra-precise medical imaging, diagnostic techniques using ultrasound, incision-free surgical techniques, and land mine detection. He holds several patents in acoustic methods and devices used for non-destructive testing and the detecting of land mines and other buried objects.

In the field of maritime security, Dr. Sutin has applied time-reversal acoustics to develop a technique for passively detecting and deterring malicious divers. By isolating the sound of human breath and radiating an amplified signal of this noise back at potential intruders, this approach spares marine life from explosive charges or underwater sirens, and is also non-lethal to divers.

Dr. Sutin will receive the commendation in San Diego on November 2, at a meeting of the ASA.