Defense and the Environment: A Common Ground

Elena McCarthy
Mechanical Engineer, Naval Undersea Warfare Center

Elena McCarthy, whose father and brothers are all engineers, never considered any other profession. She studied mechanical engineering at the University of Massachusetts, earning a BS in 1983, and graduated from URI with an MS in ocean engineering (1990). 

I studied mechanical engineering at the University of Massachusetts before getting my master's degree from URI's Ocean Engineering (OE) Department. After leaving URI, I worked in La Spezia, Italy for four years as an engineer at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) undersea research laboratory.
     URI provided a lot of hands-on work. My favorite class was the graduate Ocean Engineering lab that required students to work on board the OE Department's coastal research vessel. It was good preparation for the weeks that I worked north of the Arctic Circle collecting oceanographic data for NATO. I also enjoyed learning scientific diving at URI. It was useful when I worked in Italy, as diving was part of my work for NATO. To this day, my favorite aspect of any job is working in the field.
     I returned to Rhode Island a few years ago and now work as an engineer at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) in Newport, where I conduct research in environmental acoustics. I head up a project that uses sonar technology to map the density and location of eelgrass beds. The Navy's focus on shallow water acoustics led to concerns about backscatter and the masking effects caused by vegetation during mine-hunting operations. Surprisingly, what the Navy considers "noise," biologists consider "data," which helps in their efforts to map and measure eelgrass. This is an ideal marriage of defense and environmental programs. I coordinate a multi-agency team of engineers and biologists who performed experiments in Narragansett Bay using sonar technology to image eelgrass beds. This effort involves the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the R.I. Department of Environmental Management, and NUWC. This work was recognized by Vice President Al Gore for its success in coordinating different federal authorities and programs in a synergistic manner to address natural resource issues. It also received a 1997 Partnership Award from the Coastal America Program.
     I particularly enjoy the collaborative nature of my work and hope to continue working on environmental issues with other agencies.