“My research in ocean acoustics is focused on investigations to understand the physics of sound interaction with the ocean bottom.”

Research in geoacoustic inversion is set within the wider context of research to understand the physics of sound propagation in the ocean bottom. The interaction of sound with the ocean bottom is represented by a geoacoustic model of the ocean bottom structure. Several inversion techniques have been developed to estimate the parameters of geoacoustic models from measurements of the acoustic field in the ocean. The paper summarizes the results of a workshop that was held to benchmark the performance of present day geoacoustic inversion techniques against a set of common test cases.

The paper describes the process that was used to generate the benchmark test cases, and analyzes the performance of all the inversion methods that were used to estimate geoacoustic model parameters from the test case data. The test cases continue to serve as standards for development of new inversion techniques.

The benchmark workshop was designed to show the capabilities and limitations of present day geoacoustic inversion techniques. The paper presented a comparison of the performance of various techniques against a set of standard data sets that represented realistic ocean bottom environments. The comparison revealed the techniques that were most effective, and showed the types of ocean bottom environments that presented greater challenges for present day techniques.

My research in ocean acoustics is focused on investigations to understand the physics of sound interaction with the ocean bottom. Most recently, I have become interested in the development and application of inversion methods to estimate geoacoustic model parameters that describe the acoustic properties of marine sediments.