Mark Patterson, Ph.D.
Chief Technology Officer, Global Resilience Institute | Global Resilience Institute
Boston, MA, UNITED STATES
Dr. Patterson directs the Field Robotic Laboratory. He designs and builds free-swimming robots and surface vehicles.
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Biography
I direct the Field Robotic Laboratory. We design and build free-swimming robots and surface vehicles. I have always loved marine ecology and biomechanics, because they are so interdisciplinary. Inspired by Ken Sebens and Steven Vogel, I like asking questions that require new technology to find the answer. Serious students of the history of science know that this is usually how science advances: new instruments lead to new insights that often spawn whole disciplines, rather than vice versa. For the last decade, our lab has been developing Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs), free-swimming robots that survey the bottom and water column in ways superior to previous approaches like towed bodies or lowering an instrument over the side of a ship. I am convinced that AUVs are oceanography’s most important recent technological advance. The FRL has used AUVs to make new discoveries such as coherent structures of lowered oxygen over coral reefs, how krill swarms in the Antarctic appear on high frequency side scan sonar, and how to identify fishes from their side scan sonar images using neural network processing. This last area is poised to become a new tool for fisheries stock surveys. Current initiatives of the ASL include 1) developing a deep-sea autonomous vehicle swarm that can persist on-station for months, and return thousands of miles back to shore with physical samples, using a radical new approach to AUV design, 2) biologically-inspired autonomy whereby behaviors and structures by evolved organisms as diverse as salps, squids, sponges, fishes, marine mammals, and marine reptiles can increase the robust intelligence of AUVs, 3) new software for coordinating AUV swarms (CARNIVORE), and 4) developing methods to thwart the misuse of unmanned systems by terrorists.
Areas of Expertise (3)
Physiological Ecology
Biomechanics
Marine Robotics
Accomplishments (1)
Two Patents
System and method for identification and quantification of sonar targets in a liquid medium Modular Autonomous Underwater Vehicle System
Education (3)
Harvard University: Ph.D., Biology 1985
Harvard University: M.A., Biology 1982
Harvard University: B.A., Biology 1979
Magna cum laude, with highest honors in the discipline
Links (1)
Languages (2)
- English
- French
Articles (3)
Zooplankton as a potential vector for white band disease transmission in the endangered coral, Acropora cervicornis
PeerJ
Rebecca H Certner, Amanda M Dwyer, Mark R Patterson, Steven V Vollmer
2017 Coral diseases are a leading factor contributing to the global decline of coral reefs, and yet mechanisms of disease transmission remain poorly understood. This study tested whether zooplankton can act as a vector for white band disease (WBD) in Acropora cervicornis. Natural zooplankton communities were collected from a coral reef in Bocas del Toro, Panama. Half of the zooplankton were treated with antibiotics for 24 h after which the antibiotic-treated and non-antibiotic-treated zooplankton were incubated with either seawater or tissue homogenates from corals exhibiting WBD-like symptoms...
Mesophotic coral ecosystems: a geoacoustically derived proxy for habitat and relative diversity for the leeward shelf of Bonaire, Dutch Caribbean
Frontiers in Marine Science
Arthur C Trembanis, Alexander L Forrest, Bryan M Keller, Mark R Patterson
2017 Current trends demonstrate coral reef health in serious decline worldwide. Some of the most well preserved coral reefs in the Caribbean basin are located in the waters surrounding Bonaire, in the Dutch Caribbean. In many places on the leeward side on islands dominated by trade winds, the shallow reef systems extend into deeper water where they are known as Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems (MCE). Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) were used to collect geoacoustic data of these leeward reefs at multiple sites as part of an ocean exploration project. AUV swath bathymetry and side-scan sonar data were analyzed for depth, acoustic backscatter intensity, seafloor slope and rugosity..."
How does the proliferation of the coral-killing sponge Terpios hoshinota affect benthic community structure on coral reefs?
Coral Reefs
Jennifer Elliott, Mark Patterson, Natalie Summers, Céline Miternique, Emma Montocchio, Eugene Vitry
2017 Terpios hoshinota is an encrusting sponge and a fierce space competitor. It kills stony corals by overgrowing them and can impact reefs on the square kilometer scale. We investigated an outbreak of T. hoshinota in 2014 at the island of Mauritius to determine its impacts on coral community structure. Surveys were conducted at the putative outbreak center, an adjacent area, and around the island to determine the extent of spread of the sponge and which organisms it impacted...
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