I wonder how animals can do it so well: An ongoing detour to build better sonar, enabled by the Hunt fellowship

Abstract

The Hunt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship gave me the freedom and flexibility to take a detour to pursue research topics that are not on a linear path from my Ph.D. training. My graduate study in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography focused on modeling and measuring the acoustic scattering of marine organisms for improving sonar, or echosounder, performance. Knowing the current limitation of human-made sonar, I have always been curious about how echolocating bats and dolphins can perform acoustic-guided search, identification and tracking of prey so efficiently. As a Hunt fellow in Dr. Cynthia Moss’ lab in Johns Hopkins University, I learned first-hand the sophisticated echolocation and flight behavior of bats, which helped me develop insights for computational modeling. Using the research funds provided by the Hunt fellowship, I was fortunate to work with Dr. Whitlow Au, who first introduced me to the field of acoustics before graduate school, again to investigate the dolphins’ adaptive biosonar beam control during prey capture. These opportunities lay the foundation for me as an early career scientist to integrate the conventional physics-based approach with the study of biological sonar toward a goal of developing better acoustic tools to observe and understand the ocean.