Naomi E. Leonard trying to make underwater robots coordinate their behavior like a school of fish.
By: David Campbell
Princeton University engineering professor Naomi Ehrich Leonard is among 23 scientists, artists, scholars and activists being awarded a $500,000 "genius grant" by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
"I’m obviously incredibly thrilled and deeply honored," Professor Leonard said this week. "I’m immensely grateful to all the creative and inspiring people in my life, from family and friends to colleagues that I work with on all these projects. I love what I do, and it’s phenomenal being told that people are willing to invest in me continuing to do it."
This week, the MacArthur Foundation notified Professor Leonard, a 1985 Princeton University graduate who creates mathematical theories that allow underwater robots to coordinate their own behavior like a school of fish, that she is one of this year’s 23 MacArthur Fellows. The award is a no-strings-attached grant to be disbursed over five years.
The fellowships, known informally as "genius grants," underscore the importance of the creative individual in society. Fellows are selected for their originality, creativity and the potential to do more in the future, the foundation said.
Professor Leonard, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, specializes in a branch of engineering and applied mathematics called control theory, according to the university.
The field involves designing methods for influencing the behavior of a dynamic complex system anything from a drug regimen that controls a disease process to software that drives a robot.
In recent years, she has focused on the control of autonomous underwater vehicles that patrol the seas for long periods of time collecting data about ecosystems and ocean dynamics.
Much of Professor Leonard’s work, which she conducts in collaboration with biologists, oceanographers as well as other engineers and applied mathematicians, is inspired by living organisms, such as fish and birds, which coordinate their movements without any overall leader.
"We want our vehicles to forage for data like a school of fish forages for food," she said.
The vehicle systems that Professor Leonard has helped design are giving marine biologists and oceanographers an unprecedented tool for studying hard-to-access environments for long periods and over wide spaces. The technology also may be applied to problems having to do with searching, surveying and mapping in the oceans, the university said.
She is participating in a multi-institution collaboration called the Adaptive Ocean Sampling Network, which has been testing underwater vehicles. In August 2003, the group conducted a month-long experiment in Monterey Bay, Calif.
The engineer said she plans to use her fellowship money in part to deepen her knowledge of biology and ecology.
"This is an incredible opportunity to immerse myself in other fields and move in new directions," she said.