Meet The Sediment Transport Group

Principals

Jonathan Borden, electronics technician, 1997 to present, brings over 15 years of marine technical experience to the facility. He leads cruises and prepares and maintains instrumentation. He is our coordinator for the Massachusetts Bay cruises. He specializes in our Edgetech acoustic releases, Vector Measuring Current Meters, camera systems and Sea Bird data loggers such as CTD's, Seacats and Microcats. He builds our tripod frames and keeps our deck equipment ready to go. When time permits, he works on special projects such as developing a new camera system with Dann Blackwood and configuring new release float housing and mechanisms.

Fran Hotchkiss, oceanographer, 1990 to present, is our Data Steward. With a PhD in oceanography, research and teaching experience, Fran ensures that all our data is of the highest quality. Fran processes and archives most of the data from our projects. Somehow, she also finds the time to continue to upgrade our processing and editing tools.

Marinna Martini, ocean engineer, 1990 to present, is our lead engineer and coordinator. She leads cruises and prepares and maintains instrumentation. She looks for ways to improve our capabilities by seeking out the latest technologies or developing instrumentation in house. She keeps the MIDAS, BASS and MAVS instruments humming and loves to try out new gear. She develops software code to translate and process instrument data for new instruments, such as ADV's and PCADP's.

Part Time Frequent Contributors

Bob Barton, carpenter, power washer extraordinaire
Dann Blackwood, photographer, diver and deckhand
Ray Davis, mechanical engineer, designer and builder of marine gadgets
Rick Rendigs, sedimentologist, sediment trap specialist, diver and deckhand

From the Menlo Park Office:
Joanne Ferreira, project manager
Dave Gonzales, electronics technician
Kevin O'Toole, field specialist
Hal Williams, mechanical technician
Jingping Xu, sedimentologist, MATLAB guru

Past Contributors

Stephen Ruane, oceanographic technician, 2003 to 2005, learned with lighting speed to be our resident ADCP guru during his tenure, taking over for Andree in preparation, data processing, and maintaining and upgrading the ADCP toolbox for MATLAB. Stephen assisted with cruise logistics, managing detailed mooring logs and instrument records, maintenance of the group's buoys, floatation and bottom tripods, and assisted with the calibration, maintenance, and preparation of sensors and data loggers for at sea oceanographic experiments. He also served as an able deck hand while on cruises.

Polly Hastings, 2000 to 2004, data expert, processed many time series and kept our metadata in order.

Chuck Denham, 1995 to 2003, geologist, MATLAB guru, wrote the underlying code for the first ever version of the netCDF toolbox for MATLAB, conceptualized many methods that we still use today. Wrote the original visual GUIs and some computational methods for the ADCP toolbox.

Andrée Ramsey, 2000 to 2004, sedimentologist, was our resident ADCP expert. She was responsible for all aspects of our pool of over 10 ADCPs from pre cruise preparation to data processing and archival. She took over for Jessica Côté in maintaining and upgrading the ADCP toolbox for MATLAB. Andree is now working at home raising two wonderful children.

Jessica Côté, 1/98 to 6/99 coastal engineer, came to intern with us fresh from a Masters program at the University of Oregon where she left mapping the surf zone on jet skis to help us sort out exactly how to handle our Acoustic Doppler Current Data. Jessica helped with all aspects of our fieldwork, but her major contribution was to take the rudimentary work Marinna started in ADCP processing in MATLAB and with Fran and Chuck's guidance, develop a well thought out, documented MATLAB toolbox for ADCP data. She is now doing research with Applied Coastal Research and Engineering.

Gretchen Begley, 6/98 to 6/99, high school student, maintained our files and electronic databases. She has moved on to college in California to study cultural anthropology.

Kipling Morris, 6/96 to 6/98, high school student, maintained our files and electronic databases until attending college in Colorado.

William Strahle, 1975-1999, electronics engineer. Bill was the group's lead engineer until his retirement. He laid the groundwork for the group as it is today, and it is on this structure that we continue to build our success.