{"id":203876,"date":"2018-04-09T20:13:27","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T20:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=25486"},"modified":"2024-09-11T14:13:49","modified_gmt":"2024-09-11T18:13:49","slug":"uconn-students-learn-about-nuwc-newports-cutting-edge-programs-during-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2018\/04\/uconn-students-learn-about-nuwc-newports-cutting-edge-programs-during-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"UConn Students Learn about NUWC Newport\u2019s Cutting-Edge Programs During Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0<\/div>\n University of Rhode Island and University of Connecticut students in the ONR STEM Outreach Workforce Development Program listen to Capt. Michael Coughlin (right) in Chafee Auditorium on March 23 during a tour of NUWC Division Newport. Seated on the stage are Rebecca Chhim (from left), Dr. Christin Murphy, Dr. Joshua Liberty and Elena Gaudette. (US Navy Photos by Rich Allen, ICI Services)\n

 <\/p>\n

Amid a few humorous anecdotes and movie references, Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC)\u00a0Division Newport Commanding Officer Capt. Michael Coughlin had some sage advice for the 30 or so\u00a0University of Rhode Island and University of Connecticut engineering students who visited the\u00a0Division on March 23.<\/p>\n

\u201cWherever you go to work, make sure the quality of the people around you is important,\u201d Coughlin\u00a0said. \u201cOur quality of people [at NUWC Division Newport] is amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brief meeting with Coughlin was the first stop on a tour of some of the facilities at NUWC\u00a0Newport for the group of students and a few of their professors and advisors who are a part of the\u00a0Office of Naval Research (ONR) STEM Outreach Workforce Development Program.<\/p>\n

In addition to the welcome from Coughlin, the day featured a panel discussion with four engineers\u00a0and scientists, a virtual worlds demonstration, a visit to the anechoic chamber and water and wind\u00a0tunnels, and a tour of the Narragansett Bay Test Facility at Stillwater Basin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea really what they would show us, but they did a real good job of keeping me\u00a0interested,\u201d said Sofia Ricciardi, 20, a sophomore electrical engineering student at UConn.\u00a0\u201cEverything that they talked about, in some way, intrigued me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Students in the ONR STEM Outreach Workforce Development Program and ONR STEM Program Administrator Stephanie Wanne (second from left), with the UConn School of Engineering, listen to a presentation by Dr. Elizabeth Magliula (center) in the anechoic chamber at NUWC Division Newport. (US Navy Photos by Rich Allen, ICI Services)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

After fielding a few questions from the audience, Coughlin turned things over to a panel that\u00a0explored the wide variety of engineering work underway at the center.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely interesting to see the people that actually work here,\u201d Kevin Supino, 20, a second-year URI mechanical engineering student said. \u201cThey\u2019re all really smart and very well-spoken.\u201cThey all seem very likeable and very knowledgeable, and they seem like they would be good to
\n work with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Members of the panel each spoke about their responsibilities at NUWC, which gave those in\u00a0attendance perspective on the wide array of talents possessed by NUWC Newport employees.<\/p>\n

Elena Gaudette from the NUWC Chief Technology Office discussed opportunities available to work\u00a0with cutting-edge technology while also highlighting her work as director of the Advanced Naval\u00a0Technology Exercise (ANTX) 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Navy\u2019s primary concern is to maintain superiority, and there are some formidable opponents\u00a0out there,\u201d Gaudette said.<\/p>\n

Dr. Joshua Liberty, one of NUWC Newport\u2019s physicists, talked about his work on the theoretical side\u00a0of troubleshooting navigation issues on unmanned undersea vehicles (UUVs). He also spoke of one\u00a0of the aspects he enjoys about working at NUWC, comparing it to a college campus in the sense of\u00a0its structure with various departments and the building layout of NUWC Newport.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re really good about moving you around and finding a good fit for you,\u201d Liberty informed the\u00a0crowd.<\/p>\n

He further elaborated that his personal experience is that, once you get into NUWC, if you feel like\u00a0you are not happy in your designated area of work, your superiors are more than willing to help you\u00a0find your place. Everyone at NUWC wants to see their fellow colleagues reach their full potential,\u00a0Liberty added.<\/p>\n

Dr. Christin Murphy, a research biologist, focused on her experience looking to nature for biologically\u00a0inspired technology. Her current project has her working with seal whiskers, and she emphasized the\u00a0importance of collaboration in her area of expertise.<\/p>\n

\u201cCross-disciplinary work is really essential in the biomimetic field,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cYou really have to\u00a0have a strong understanding of the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebecca Chhim, who specializes in cybersecurity, discussed her field\u2019s ever-increasing importance in\u00a0a world where cyberattacks are becoming more frequent. She also referenced one of her \u201cmost\u00a0humbling experiences,\u201d when she was part of a team that put one of the first cybersecurity tool sets\u00a0on a Virginia-class submarine. In theory, the design worked, yet logistically it impacted the daily\u00a0lives of the Sailors, and she and her team had to re-evaluate their approach.<\/p>\n

The students next moved to a demonstration on \u201cthe power of the virtual world.\u201d\u00a0\u201cIt unleashes the creativity of your workforce,\u201d said Steve Aguiar, the head of NUWC Newport\u2019s\u00a0development of virtual worlds technologies.<\/p>\n

In his presentation, Aguiar displayed various examples of immersive learning in which virtual worlds\u00a0are utilized. He began by showing one of the first examples from a Second Life program art\u00a0instructor in 2008 who used the technology to bring students inside the works of Vincent Van Gogh.\u00a0From there, Aguiar showed examples specific to the Navy, including a display that demonstrated\u00a0how a sonobuoy uses frequency to locate enemy submarines.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir virtual simulation stuff they were talking about, even though I\u2019ve never heard of it in detail before, I thought that the way he presented it was really interesting,\u201d Ricciardi said. \u201cI just think it\u2019s really cool how we\u2019re able to ask like any question that\u2019s on our mind, and then they answer it to the best of their ability.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, students headed across the NUWC campus for tours of the center\u2019s anechoic chamber\u00a0and wind and water tunnels.<\/p>\n

Dr. Elizabeth Magliula discussed how some people can find it \u201cunsettling\u201d during their first time in\u00a0the anechoic chamber, which produces no echoes thanks to it being completely covered in wedges of\u00a0foam. She also noted how at times people do not realize how much sound something like electronics\u00a0\u2013 in this instance, the computer that was temporarily situated in the center of the room \u2013 can\u00a0produce until one enters an anechoic chamber.<\/p>\n

NUWC\u2019s facility is designed for advanced studies in active noise and vibration cancellation, acoustic\u00a0intensity, acoustic directivity, and measurements of sound and power levels. The chamber\u2019s versatile\u00a0design allows investigations into other areas such as environmental\/community noise studies,\u00a0hearing\/active noise cancellation studies, consumer appliance, automobile noise and commercial\u00a0product airborne sound certifications.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just thought it was really fascinating how all of the technology works, even though it\u2019s not\u00a0technology in the sense of circuits and things like that,\u201d Ricciardi said. \u201cIt\u2019s still something that had\u00a0to be developed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ricciardi\u2019s classmate, Nikolai Serebriakov, 20, a sophomore mechanical engineering student at\u00a0UConn, was equally impressed by some of the same technology that is utilized in the wind tunnel.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s really hard to think about how when you\u2019re outside you can hear wind blowing, but when you\u2019re\u00a0in that room there\u2019s a 40 mph wind blowing and you hear nothing,\u201d Serebriakov said.\u00a0Dr. Aren Hellum described some of the materials that have been tested in the wind tunnel \u2013 from\u00a0objects made of felt to spinning propellers and even a Ford F150 \u2013 and also allowed members of the\u00a0group to experience a 50 mph wind. The tunnel\u2019s top speed is 128 mph, Hellum said.
\n At the water tunnel, Hellum described its capabilities and some of the experiments conducted there\u00a0\u2013 including Murphy\u2019s tests with seal whiskers.<\/p>\n

The engineering students finished the day at the waterfront with a tour of the Narragansett Bay TestFacility at Stillwater Basin. There, they learned about the dive locker, autonomous underwater\u00a0vehicles (AUVs) and waterfront operations.\u00a0In the dive locker, Keith Bruce talked about the role the Engineering and Diving Support Unit plays\u00a0in fixing submarines \u2013 specifically towed array handling systems \u2013 without dry docking the subs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus of the EDSU is to bring our engineering and technical skills to bear on problems that just\u00a0happen to be underwater,\u201d Bruce said.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to read more.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0   Amid a few humorous anecdotes and movie references, Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC)\u00a0Division Newport Commanding Officer Capt. Michael Coughlin had some sage advice for the 30 or so\u00a0University of Rhode Island and University of Connecticut engineering students who visited the\u00a0Division on March 23. \u201cWherever you go to work, make sure the quality of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":218596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2110],"class_list":["post-203876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-28 05:27:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203876"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218601,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203876\/revisions\/218601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/218596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203876"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=203876"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}