Navy provides $150,000 to get project started
The University of Rhode Island has been awarded a U.S. Navy contract to create a collaborative undersea technology center to develop cutting-edge marine and defense technologies with both military and civilian potential.
The Center of Excellence in Undersea Technology, which will be housed in an office on URI’s Narragansett Bay campus, will act as an umbrella organization for researchers from the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, URI and other universities, and the marine industry to develop technologies that address critical naval and homeland security issues.
Research conducted at the center would be geared to developing technologies to protect the environment, manage crises resulting from tropical storms, and guard against terrorists, said Malcolm L. Spaulding, the ocean engineering professor who will lead the program.
As an example of a technology with both civilian and military applications that could be further developed at the center, Spaulding said that autonomous underwater vehicles used by oceanographers to measure the salinity, temperature and turbulence of ocean-water columns could be outfitted with new sensors for military purposes.
“If you took that same platform and put on a sensor that could detect TNT in the water, you would have yourself something that would be very useful for tracking and finding mines,” Spaulding said. “And those mines could have been placed there for military use, to deny access, or they could be placed there of course as terrorist activity.”
More than a dozen other university and industry partners will join URI and NUWC at the center, including the University of Southern California, North Carolina A&T State University, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and UMass Boston, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Private-sector partners include General Dynamics Electric Boat, Raytheon IDS, SAIC, ARA, ASC, Eminent, Ocean Server, Rite Solutions Applied Science Associates, SubChem Systems, WetLab and United Technology Research Center.
For the Navy, the center offers a chance to mine the talents of marine scientists and engineers in academia and the private sector who are already tackling the same technical issues, albeit for different reasons, said John Muench, who leads NUWC’s undersea distributed network systems project.
“We’re really taking advantage of a community that has been working this problem long and hard, and now asking them to focus on how to take their approaches and propose solutions into a Navy application,” Muench said.
Creation of the center also is good news for the Rhode Island economy, because it will help the state build a highly trained work force for both NUWC and the local defense industry, said Saul Kaplan, executive director of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation.
Rhode Island’s marine trades and defense technology sector is amongst the highest-paid sectors in the state’s economy, paying wages on average of $55,800, Kaplan said.
NUWC, a major Navy laboratory for the research and development of submarines, autonomous underwater systems and underwater weapons systems, has an annual budget of about $1 billion and employs 2,700 people, about 1,900 of which are highly paid technology jobs, Spaulding said.
“It is a sector where we see a lot of potential for growth,” Kaplan said. “So the creation of the Center of Excellence in Undersea Technology is a great catalyst for further energy and economic development within this sector here in Rhode Island.”
NUWC is providing $150,000 in seed funding to assist in the creation of the center, and for an initial project focused on designing and building an undersea distributed network system. URI was awarded the contract to create the center following a competitive bid process.
The center will seek further funding as it defines the scope of future research projects, said John Riendeau, the EDC’s defense industry manager. Initial funding will come primarily from the Navy and the National Science Foundation, he said.
About $1.5 million has already been committed to the center from various sources, and about another $1.5 million has been submitted in proposals to funding agencies, URI spokesman Todd McLeish said.
In addition to Spaulding and Muench, the center will be managed by Kate Moran, associate director and associate dean for research and administration at URI’s Graduate School of Oceanography.
A board of directors will be formed to guide the center’s research and educational programs and will include representatives from the NUWC, URI, the EDC and private industry.
Last Thursday, Gov. Donald L. Carcieri, U.S. Sen. Jack Reed and U.S. Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy and James R. Langevin joined URI and NUWC officials at the State House to announce the details of the program.
“This innovative partnership will enable us to tap the expertise at both NUWC and URI to develop cutting-edge marine and defense technologies,” Carcieri said. “It will also build upon the momentum we’ve gained in becoming one of the nation’s leaders in this important field. Additionally, this center will help us build a highly trained work force for both NUWC and our state’s defense industry.”
