The Hunt Fellowship: Inspiring acoustics professionals of the future

Abstract

Students may exit a Ph.D. program feeling fatigued, and sometimes a bit directionless professionally. These feelings combined with the challenging academic job market could be part of the reason for this time period being one of the biggest “leaks in the pipeline,” for women scientists in particular. The flexibility and generosity of the Hunt Fellowship can be inspiring at this crossroads of a young scientist’s career. As the 2009–2010 Hunt Postdoctoral Research Fellowship recipient, I studied the acoustic behavior of humpback whales on their Antarctic feeding grounds, working under the mentorship of Dr. Whitlow Au (University of Hawaii) and Dr. Douglas Nowacek (Duke University). This project followed seamlessly from my dissertation, yet brought me to new ecosystems and reinvigorated my research questions with surprising data. The signal processing skills I gained in acoustic and animal movement analysis solidified my interest in quantitative acoustic behavior research and I made strong connections with several interdisciplinary research groups. This all fueled my career path toward my current Research Faculty position at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, using similar sound and movement tags to study the effects of anthropogenic noise on cetaceans in general.